# Evaluation

The active vNext release evaluation is embedded in
`scripts/chartsmith_vnext.py`: every candidate is reviewed at full and embedded
sizes, then receives a separate final comparison. The former corpus evaluator
at `scripts/chartsmith_evaluator.py` and `config/evaluation/current/` remains
available for v2.6 rollback benchmarking.

Tiers:

- `smoke`: one repeat, fast workflow sanity check.
- `screening`: two repeats for cheap candidate comparison.
- `serious`: three repeats for promotion-oriented decisions.
- `stability`: five repeats for major routing or workflow changes.

The promoted workflow uses GPT-5.6 for reconstruction, concept judgment, render
direction, repair, and final visual comparison. GPT Image 2 is restricted to
generative assets; deterministic code owns exact text and data geometry in
hybrid candidates.

Promotion evidence should report accept rate, score floor, runtime, failure modes,
and usage-limit failures separately. Quality conclusions must cite actual run
artifacts and deltas.

## Milestone 2 evidence

The promotion method was deliberately small-case and diagnosis-led rather than a
broad optimization run: two contrasting development cases, one already-strong
challenge case, direct source/final comparison, and mechanism changes grounded
in failures. All three passed. See `milestone_2_results.md`.

Production integrity and the minimum epistemic floor are hard gates. Communication
power, persuasive force, authorship, purposeful interestingness, perceptual
fidelity, and memorability are comparative axes. A near-copy cannot pass merely
because it preserves the source faithfully.
