COMMITMENT 1 — the frozen record, 2026 House Battleground Index

This file exists to be timestamped. It fixes the content of the frozen record at one
instant, attested by a third party, so the dates on the documents below no longer rest
on my word alone.

WHAT A TIMESTAMP ON THIS FILE PROVES
  Every file listed below had exactly the content shown here, at or before the moment
  of the attestation. Change any one of them and this file's own digest changes, which
  breaks the attestation.

WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE
  That any file existed on the date written inside it. These documents are dated 22-30
  August and are anchored here for the first time on the date below. That gap is real,
  it is my fault for not doing this in August, and it is printed rather than hidden.

WHAT IT IS FOR
  The predictions are scored on 2026-10-31. This anchor is made before that date and
  before any outcome is known, which is the property a registered prediction needs.
  It also closes a demonstrated hole: until now every integrity check in this project
  regenerated its digests from the files it described, so an edit to a registered
  prediction passed every check. It no longer does.

SCOPE, AND A CORRECTION
  Frozen documents and frozen data only. An earlier commitment made the same day also
  listed MANIFEST.sha256 and the analysis scripts. Those are a build output and living
  code; both change legitimately, so pinning them would have produced either a
  permanently failing check or a meaningless one. That commitment is superseded by
  this one and is not published. The analysis scripts and the built bundle are covered
  separately, by the manifest, at publication.

Anchored: 2026-08-30T06:36:43Z (UTC), OpenTimestamps -> Bitcoin
Verify:   ots verify COMMITMENT.txt.ots

SHA-256                                                           file
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
342130288fc65b9ad282fa3299a9593e7058eca63318310b9a856396d9a2268c  PREDICTIONS_registered_2026-08-22.md
                                                                  (the register as first written, 18 predictions)
d0cebea416e4a0677468a5113a10c378777a8f8ebeaa15266c384da50e81c065  PREDICTIONS_v2_2026-08-22.md
                                                                  (v2, after four blind reviews)
de5776eda4bd135a176558e2d922bc7217d6f089381f012d696ac9bc8df2f911  PREDICTIONS_v3_2026-08-23.md
                                                                  (v3, after the money finding failed to reproduce)
b1822bbe99af265260565b43be8b55c37a4f47289ee4fd932d55c713213642e9  PREDICTIONS_v4_2026-08-23.md
                                                                  (v4)
b94874b647d62f1ca8f9e3dc07f703cd1d394aa8b527192f108f58cc3aae8aa3  PREDICTIONS_v5_2026-08-24.md
                                                                  (v5 — BINDING. The universe, instrument and baseline rulings)
35e03eceb02a23500ae6c8576a31323b275ae627495371cae4aeb22f78f9614b  ANALYSIS_SPEC_v1.md
                                                                  (the first scoring specification)
f5f6d8830cc0061ad98c216ddd93ca35b7347b4e0429a616f5a6e28cb8ed4e98  ANALYSIS_SPEC_v2_2026-08-30.md
                                                                  (the binding scoring specification)
8666e0cc3354eff7857d20a2ebbaaf997b3f361beef3a4da7a0dbb33d7d89ec7  EVIDENTIARY_STANDARD_v1.md
                                                                  (the coding rulebook, v1.0)
ac0cae0df4fae687c952e70186dbdc076f36fe43e10a3840ecb15a44a7fa9751  EVIDENTIARY_STANDARD_v1.1.md
                                                                  (the coding rulebook, v1.1)
9ee3692c32acf0e55b7760063db92f7eef8bd59eab42ccb6566c25b6fe6ba123  STYLE_PROTOCOL.md
                                                                  (the writing-measurement protocol)
5d76d977b93643bf977d9d6ebd70bc4822a29458c541f1beb3a239bfd15cf820  DEFECT_A_BLOCK_2026-08-23.md
                                                                  (the defect report)
971e490a34b8ce528bac8ae311a1fca2046bbf6ca01f9d69cd77c61093c36ec3  public_data/finance_nominees.csv
                                                                  (the frozen FEC extract, 2026-08-21)
9edff9660e4baf747c9a8121c2dcefcb02ac5eed211f2d688a9bea5fd92fc476  public_data/districts_59.csv
                                                                  (the frozen district selection)
359e36ec288e948b2122891f7a0e11332538d8f17f6c4340a1460fea934c1344  style_corpus_all.csv
                                                                  (the frozen writing corpus)