Isolate speech transport failures and keep experimental media usable

tools/speech-eval/native-validation/README.md

@@ -152,3 +152,28 @@ Seven Rust tests, strict all-target Clippy and five timing-adapter tests passed.
 A retry must use a fresh output directory after the corrected evaluator is
 frozen and the CPU inference slot is granted again; the failed attempt remains
 preserved and has no quality score.
+
+The corrected frozen attempt (commit `f15ee07`, session 39812) completed on CPU
+at `.searchi/qa/speech-live-timing-v1-coverage`, but is **not timing-eligible**.
+All five source checks passed; raw indexing produced 79 chunks (16 audio and
+63 image calls), with no media failures, in 377691.6842 ms. The first speech
+request for the video's initial 30-second window failed with
+`Speech worker transport exited or timed out` after 2382.0169 ms. The four
+remaining sources reported `Unavailable speech session or unbounded PCM`.
+Five failed calls were recorded against 16 expected windows; zero recognized
+speech chunks or citations were published. The public client discards stderr,
+so these artifacts cannot identify the native failure cause. The request
+deadline is 600 seconds, longer than the observed first-call failure.
+
+All eight first files were `clip04`, but their actual origins were raw audio or
+video, not recognized speech. The unchanged scorer therefore records
+`comparison_eligible: false`, `strict_point_score: null` and
+`correct_first_file: null`; no historical score carries over.
+Immutable report SHA-256:
+`7261223ba479ff1c319ded187fcd6e7cf37d351ec9d62437e26b63017d1bccc2`;
+scored artifact SHA-256:
+`361d5fbaf917363bfedd9c3ba2ea368d1714cf28f1bc34544a9ed324761eb4db`;
+preflight SHA-256:
+`97c603b3078831ce0fcf19f0ebb9e15160ee2363b488946c992e881d5509ce6b`.
+This failed speech lifecycle requires investigation before any live-window
+timing claim; no policy, labels or sources were changed after this result.

tools/speech-runtime/README.md

@@ -57,6 +57,11 @@ path; the failed log SHA-256 is
 An unchanged-source build using a shorter owned output path completed. Prefer a
 short build output directory on Windows; no CPU-only distribution was substituted.
 
+If a worker transport dies, the failing source retains its error. `begin_source`
+permits one verified same-fingerprint restart at the next source boundary, keeping
+the current CPU/device choice. Malformed protocol, UTF-8 or alignment outputs do
+not authorize recovery or repeated inference of the failing source.
+
 The persistent worker receives binary requests: operation byte (1 live VAD,
 2 contiguous recognition), little-endian u32 sample count and mono little-endian
 f32 PCM, at most 480000 finite samples. Responses have a four-byte little-endian