Validate complete speech decode windows and retain rejected ASR output

docs/SPEECH-ALIGNMENT.md

@@ -1,14 +1,15 @@
 # Local spoken-passage alignment
 
-Status: researched implementation proposal, 2026-10-13. No transcription worker,
-download integration, or ASR quality result is implemented by this document.
+Status: implementation proposal with an internal CPU diagnostic, 2026-10-13.
+Production transcription, download integration and retrieval acceptance are open.
 Google EmbeddingGemma 2 remains the production semantic model.
 
 A bounded [CPU diagnostic harness](../tools/speech-eval/README.md) is now prepared.
 Seven structural tests passed on Windows, including actual owned subprocess
 failure, timeout, output overflow and retained diagnostics. Both candidate models
-have now been downloaded and their exact bytes/SHA verified. Neither has been
-loaded or evaluated; these tests establish no speech quality.
+have now been downloaded and their exact bytes/SHA verified. Both loaded in the
+internal experiment, whose truncated audio invalidated quality observations.
+Corrected evaluation remains pending; structural tests establish no speech quality.
 
 ## Why add a transcript lane
 
@@ -44,8 +45,8 @@ after checking its bundled upstream revision and backend build flags; avoid mixi
 it blindly with the pinned Google native stack.
 [Rust API](https://docs.rs/whisper-rs/0.16.0/whisper_rs/struct.FullParams.html).
 
-No runtime build or genuine inference proof was run during this research. Obtain
-the coordinator's CPU slot before building or transcribing in the shared VM.
+The initial research performed no inference. Subsequent coordinator-approved CPU
+diagnostics are recorded below; production integration and acceptance remain open.
 
 ## Pinned assets and distribution
 
@@ -64,8 +65,8 @@ Use immutable download URLs of the form
 Both downloads were independently checked against these exact bytes/SHA values
 on 2026-10-13. The clean runtime checkout resolves to the pinned commit; model
 URLs, verified hashes and MIT notices are retained under ignored
-`.searchi/speech/provisioning.json`. This is provisioning evidence only: no
-runtime build, model loading or inference has yet been performed. Commit an
+`.searchi/speech/provisioning.json`. These hashes establish provisioning;
+the subsequent internal runtime experiment does not establish release acceptance. Commit an
 accepted distribution manifest only after model loading and runtime provenance
 checks. Never accept upstream `for-tests-*` empty models.
 [Upstream model provenance](https://github.com/ggml-org/whisper.cpp/blob/master/models/README.md),
@@ -176,3 +177,51 @@ transcripts, worker errors and inferred content never become executable instruct
 Next implementation slice: isolated worker + manifest verification + genuine NASA
 proof. Keep the initial runtime experiment separate from schema/ranking changes
 until it establishes that recognized segments actually fix the measured problem.
+
+## Actual internal CPU diagnostic, 2026-10-13
+
+The clean pinned v1.9.5 source compiled with MSVC in **54.655 seconds**, jobs one,
+static whisper/ggml, `GGML_NATIVE=OFF`; CUDA, Vulkan, Metal, BLAS and OpenMP were
+explicitly disabled in the recorded CMake cache. This is an **internal CPU test
+executable**, not a normal distribution or portability proof. The compiled CPU
+variant uses AVX2; an older-CPU release has not been validated. The executable SHA
+is `12c681b4bcd9c7679b647b9a041e121a2f9e72cb2a9c6f189f529ec8b79c36f8`.
+Help flags were checked and actual runs pass `--no-gpu --threads 1 --processors 1`.
+Dumpbin found Windows system/UCRT and MSVC runtime imports, with no external
+ggml/whisper/GPU imports. Existing VM runtime availability is not a clean-machine
+or older-Windows dependency-closure guarantee.
+
+The initial bounded base experiment completed all five source files; the small
+experiment was stopped by terminating only its owned process tree after a material
+harness bug was identified. Both are classified **INVALID_TRUNCATED_AUDIO**.
+`atrim=end_sample` was applied before explicit 16 kHz resampling: a planned
+30-second window supplied approximately 10 seconds from 48 kHz sources or 10.884
+seconds from 44.1 kHz sources. Recognition omissions and process costs from those
+runs cannot establish complete-window model quality or throughput. Earlier draft
+observations about base/small recognition are withdrawn; no ASR model default or
+improved search score follows from these invalid experiments.
+
+Actual downloaded NASA publisher captions are independently retained: 2204 bytes,
+SHA `80d82def36547d95c512034deb9df9d3d0160579a43c8177e6ca988d3b02b04b`.
+Their utterance intervals agree with the frozen v1 labels. Comparing recognized
+text against these captions must be repeated after corrected decoding.
+[NASA publisher captions](https://images-assets.nasa.gov/video/Artemis%20Origins/Artemis%20Origins.srt).
+No independent human audio listening has been performed.
+
+The decoder now explicitly resamples to 16000 Hz before trimming and resets sample
+timestamps. Every decoded WAV records its frame count and rejects coverage outside
+expected duration minus at most one millisecond. Actual CPU FFmpeg regressions
+verified both 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz sources: a 30-second window has exactly 480000
+samples and a one-second tail exactly 16000. Generated silent WAVs exercise
+resampling mechanics only; they are not ASR quality fixtures. Ten tests passed in
+1.406 seconds, including rejection of threefold truncation, bounded owned-child
+errors/timeouts/output, retained diagnostics and continuation after invalid ASR
+timestamp output. They do not establish speech recognition quality.
+
+Historical raw/checkpoint hashes and invalid classification remain under ignored
+`.searchi/speech/invalid-truncated-audio.json`; model bytes and actual raw outputs
+are excluded from Git. The owned sequential session 20331 is terminal with exit 1
+following intentional invalid-experiment termination. Corrected base/small
+inference is paused pending the coordinator's CPU slot, followed by independent
+caption review and genuine Google transcript ranking. Neither candidate is an
+accepted product default; the media quality rating remains 4/10.