ADR-0025: Report executed cell origins rather than value equality¶

• Status: Accepted — owner decision 2026-09-28; private manifest v2.
• Recorded: 2026-09-29. This is the recording date, not an invented original approval date.
• Authority and implementation boundaries: see Evidence below and the register conventions.

Context¶

Equality cannot tell whether a value was preserved, replaced by an equal value or independently generated.

Decision¶

Track the actual branch for each output cell: replacement, synthetic or original. Mapping/literal replacement and explicit type/format transformation are replacement even if values coincide. Generated values remain synthetic after formatting. Unmatched rules use the origin of their actual fallback; preserved null is original.

Report aggregate counts/shares only. Dropped cells are separate and excluded from the output-cell denominator; empty output shares are null. Physical encoding/quoting alone does not change origin. Private manifest v2 uses provenance rather than legacy retention.

Alternatives and consequences¶

The earlier equality-based user report is superseded. Equality-based safety checks are not removed: reporting never authorizes preservation, copying or anonymity claims. Independently rounded percentages may not sum to exactly 100; do not falsify counts to hide rounding.

Evidence¶

Sources: owner provenance decision, report implementation. Executable anchors: report tests, execution provenance. Supersedes the earlier unchanged-percentage narrative, not a previous numbered ADR.

Revisit when¶

Any new action needs a defined origin classification and execution tracking before it appears in the user report.