# ADR-000: The rules of the record

Status: accepted. Effective October 1, 2026, at 00:00 Pacific time (2026-10-01T07:00:00Z). These rules apply to every call registered from that moment on.

1. **Calls.** A call is a claim about a future, publicly observable event that SOTO registers under these rules. Only registered calls are scored.

2. **Contents.** At registration, a call records: the claim; the resolution rule, which states the exact condition for YES, with anything else resolving NO; a deadline with date, time and time zone; the sources that will settle it; the exclusions, which say what does not count; the registered probability p; the base rate b; the base-rate type, which is either REFERENCE CLASS or JUDGMENT; for a REFERENCE CLASS base rate, the derivation, which gives the reference class, the sample with links, the count and the time window; for a JUDGMENT base rate, a one-sentence reason and an explicit statement that no reference class is claimed; and the registration time in UTC, to the second. p and b are whole numbers from 1 to 99 percent, and p is never equal to b.

3. **Admission.** Software registers a call only if every check passes: the claim and the rule use none of the words comparable, significant, major, meaningful, notable, large or several; the deadline falls between 1 and 365 days after registration; the sources and exclusions are named; the base-rate type is stated; a REFERENCE CLASS base rate is published with its derivation, and a JUDGMENT base rate is published with its reason and the label JUDGMENT; and in an ambiguity test, 20 independent model readings of the rule, applied to at least three hypothetical outcomes written for the test, reach the same verdict in at least 19 of 20 readings for every outcome. If any check fails, the call is not registered.

4. **Chain.** The genesis record and every registration, update, verdict, withdrawal, correction and anchor are records in one hash chain. Each record is serialized as canonical JSON, with keys sorted, separators "," and ":", UTF-8 encoding and non-ASCII characters left unescaped. Records are numbered from 1, in order of appending. h(n) is the SHA-256, written in lowercase hexadecimal, of the UTF-8 bytes of the 64-character string h(n-1) followed immediately by the UTF-8 bytes of record n's JSON. h(0) is 64 zeros. Record 1 is the genesis record. Its JSON has exactly four keys: "adr_sha256", the SHA-256 of this document as defined in rule 14, in lowercase hexadecimal; "effective", the string "2026-10-01T07:00:00Z"; "rehearsal_head", the rehearsal chain head defined in rule 13, in lowercase hexadecimal; and "type", the string "genesis". The genesis hash is h(1). Records are only ever appended.

5. **No hand decisions.** No person registers, edits, resolves, withdraws or scores a call. Forecasting agents propose calls and set probabilities, the Resolver reaches verdicts, and deterministic code computes scores. These rules change only through a new ADR with its own hash, and a new ADR applies only to calls registered after it is published.

6. **Updates.** For an open call, SOTO may publish a new live probability with the time, the old and new values, a reason and the evidence. Updates are chained and never scored. Only p is scored.

7. **Resolution.** Within 72 hours after the deadline, the Resolver collects what the named sources published and runs 20 independent readings. A verdict of YES or NO needs at least 19 in agreement. Otherwise, the Resolver runs again seven days later, with everything published by then about events up to the deadline. If 19 of 20 still do not agree, the call is unresolvable. The verdict, the readings and the evidence links are chained.

8. **Scoring.** For a probability q, score(q) is ln(q) if the verdict is YES and ln(1 - q) if it is NO. A call's result is score(p) minus score(b). A positive result marks the call RESOLVED and a negative result marks it MISSED. An unresolvable or withdrawn call takes the lower of its two possible results and is marked MISSED. A call with a result under this rule is a scored call.

9. **Withdrawal.** Software withdraws an open call only if a named source stops existing, or if a repeat of the ambiguity test fails before the deadline. The reason is chained and the call is scored under rule 8. Nothing is deleted.

10. **Reporting.** Every published score shows the number of scored calls behind it. A calibration chart is published from 30 calls with a verdict of YES or NO. SOTO does not claim to beat its base rates until at least 50 scored calls have REFERENCE CLASS base rates and the sum of their results under rule 8 is above zero. Calls with JUDGMENT base rates do not count toward the 50 and are never used for that claim.

11. **Anchoring.** Every day at 23:59 Pacific time, starting on the day of the first registered call, software publishes the latest chain hash outside SOTO's own systems, as an OpenTimestamps proof and in a public post. Both are recorded in the chain.

12. **Corrections.** Errors in SOTO's coverage are corrected with a dated correction, chained and shown next to the original. Nothing is changed silently.

13. **Rehearsal.** The 19 calls SOTO published on September 29 and 30, 2026, numbered S1 to S12 and S17 to S23, are a rehearsal. They are archived and not scored, and their outcomes are published, unscored, as they become known. Four of them, S2, S8, S9 and S10, were withdrawn and stay on the record. No call was published as S13 to S16. The rehearsal chain has one record per call, in ascending order of number, S1 first. Each record is canonical JSON, serialized as in rule 4, with exactly these ten keys: "label", the call's number, such as "S1"; "claim"; "rule", the resolution rule text as registered; "deadline", a date as YYYY-MM-DD; "p", the registered probability as a whole number, or null; "b", the base rate as a whole number, or null; "published_at", in UTC as YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ; "status", which is "registered" or "withdrawn"; "withdrawn_at", in UTC in the same format, or null; and "withdrawal_reason", text or null. Hashes follow rule 4 with h(0) = 64 zeros and records numbered from 1. The rehearsal chain head is h(19), computed on October 1, 2026, from the records as they stood at the end of September 30, 2026, Pacific time. The 19 serialized records, one per line, are published unchanged in a file named rehearsal-chain.jsonl next to this document; anyone holding them can recompute the head. The head is 7286547c5f05e271b993008d2e7e47ddddb07751cf7b309b6cd48abac45084d8.

14. **Versions.** This document is identified by its SHA-256 hash, computed over its UTF-8 bytes from the start of the line that begins with "# ADR-000:" through its final newline. It is never edited. Changes are published as ADR-001 and onward.