quietset 0.16.0

Filter datasets by label stability across evaluators, budgets, seeds, and models
Documentation

quietset

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A model-agnostic stability filter — keeps samples whose labels or scores remain consistent across evaluators, budgets, seeds, and model checkpoints.

quietset is not a model trainer, annotation platform, or image-quality auditor. It is a small stability-filtering primitive designed to compose with other tools.

Note: quietset measures stability, not correctness. A sample can score high because evaluators consistently agree on a wrong answer. Use gold_label-based reliability or --decision-score lcb to add evidence-based conservatism.

Use cases

Game AI / search training data

Multiple engines, depths, or seeds evaluate the same position. Keep only positions where the evaluation is stable — consistent labels and scores regardless of search parameters. --profile game-ai already weights signed-score agreement and defaults --decision-score to lcb, so a small centipawn-like magnitude near zero can't masquerade as "stable" when its sign is actually flipping under search noise (see stability_score below for why raw stability alone isn't a keep/drop guarantee). Evaluating with several distinct engines? Use --profile game-ai. Evaluating with one engine at multiple search depths instead? Use --profile game-ai-single-engine — same weights, but without a min-evaluators floor that a single-engine setup could never satisfy.

quietset score positions.jsonl --profile game-ai > scored.jsonl
quietset stable-wrong-risk positions.jsonl  # flag positions stable evaluators consistently mis-label

# Spend additional search budget only on positions worth re-evaluating, not the whole set.
quietset active-review scored.jsonl --observations positions.jsonl \
  --plan next_eval_plan.jsonl --budget 2000

# Gate a training run on held-out precision before trusting the kept set.
quietset calibrate train_gold.jsonl --heldout heldout_gold.jsonl \
  --target-precision 0.98 --fail-below-target

LLM judge pipelines

Multiple judge models or prompts evaluate the same response. Keep only responses where judges consistently agree, using Wilson LCB to guard against low-n flukes.

quietset score judge_evals.jsonl --profile llm-judge > reliable_evals.jsonl
quietset calibrate judge_evals.jsonl --target-precision 0.95 --decision-score lcb

Synthetic / simulation data

Scores or rewards vary across seeds, budgets, or model checkpoints. Keep samples whose quality signal is robust to these variations.

quietset score runs.jsonl --profile simulation > robust_samples.jsonl
quietset audit robust_samples.jsonl --json | jq '.seed_sensitive[:5]'

Installation

cargo install quietset-cli
quietset --version   # confirm what's actually installed after an upgrade

CLI examples

# Score observations
quietset score input.jsonl > scored.jsonl

# Filter to stable samples
quietset filter scored.jsonl --min-stability 0.85 > quiet.jsonl

# Filter by decision
quietset filter scored.jsonl --decision keep > keep.jsonl

# Pipeline from stdin
cat runs/*.jsonl | quietset score - > scored.jsonl

# Aggregate statistics
quietset summary scored.jsonl

# Machine-readable summary for CI
quietset summary scored.jsonl --json | jq '.drop_rate < 0.1'

# Explain why a specific sample was scored the way it was
quietset explain scored.jsonl --sample-id a

# Compare two scored files (e.g. before/after a model update)
quietset compare before.jsonl after.jsonl

# Per-evaluator reliability (experimental)
quietset reliability input.jsonl

# CSV output
quietset score input.jsonl --output-format csv > scored.csv

# Weight label agreement 2x, ignore score variance
quietset score input.jsonl --weight-labels 2.0 --weight-scores 0.0 > scored.jsonl

# Penalise low-evidence samples: decisions use confidence-adjusted score
quietset score input.jsonl --use-adjusted-score > scored.jsonl

# Penalise low-evidence samples: Wilson LCB on label agreement (most conservative)
quietset score input.jsonl --use-lcb-score > scored.jsonl

# Explicit --decision-score flag (preferred for scripting; --use-* are aliases)
quietset score input.jsonl --decision-score lcb > scored.jsonl
quietset score input.jsonl --decision-score adjusted > scored.jsonl

# Apply a use-case preset (sets weight and decision-score defaults)
quietset score input.jsonl --profile llm-judge > scored.jsonl
quietset score input.jsonl --profile simulation > scored.jsonl

# Require at least 3 observations and 2 evaluators before Keep
quietset score input.jsonl --min-observations-keep 3 --min-evaluators-keep 2 > scored.jsonl

# Filter by LCB, confidence, and dispersion
quietset filter scored.jsonl --min-label-lcb 0.70 > filtered.jsonl
quietset filter scored.jsonl --min-confidence 0.60 --max-score-mad 0.05 > filtered.jsonl

# Compare with per-component deltas (spot regressions)
quietset compare before.jsonl after.jsonl --components

# Deep diagnostic audit report
quietset audit scored.jsonl
quietset audit scored.jsonl --json | jq '.high_raw_low_lcb'
quietset audit scored.jsonl --json --observations input.jsonl | jq '{fleiss_kappa,krippendorff_alpha}'

# Extract samples by diagnostic class for human review
quietset select scored.jsonl --class borderline --top 50
quietset select scored.jsonl --class high-raw-low-lcb > uncertain_keeps.jsonl

# Get re-evaluation recommendations
quietset recommend scored.jsonl

# Compute risk of stably-wrong kept samples
quietset stable-wrong-risk input.jsonl

# Compare with hypothetical policy applied to after file
quietset compare before.jsonl after.jsonl --policy-after lcb

# Calibrate keep_threshold from gold labels to meet a precision target
quietset calibrate input.jsonl --target-precision 0.95
quietset calibrate input.jsonl --target-precision 0.98 --decision-score lcb

Command reference

Command Input What it does
score observation JSONL/CSV Compute per-sample stability scores and decisions
filter scored JSONL Keep samples by stability, decision, LCB, confidence, or dispersion
summary scored JSONL Aggregate statistics; lcb_keep_demotions; --json for CI
explain scored JSONL Per-sample component breakdown with visual bars
compare 2 scored JSONL Before/after transition matrix, regressions, component deltas, policy comparison
reliability observation JSONL Per-evaluator reliability, confusion matrix, Fleiss kappa, Krippendorff alpha
audit scored JSONL Deep diagnostic report: borderline, LCB risk, sensitivity lists
select scored JSONL Extract samples by class for human review queues (pipeable)
recommend scored JSONL Per-sample re-evaluation suggestions with reasons
stable-wrong-risk observation JSONL Rate of stably-wrong kept samples (requires gold_label)
calibrate observation JSONL Find keep_threshold meeting a precision/coverage target
policy observation JSONL Sweep keep_threshold and show the precision/coverage trade-off table
active-review scored JSONL Rank samples by re-evaluation urgency (low LCB, high entropy, dispersion, sensitivity)
block-score observation JSONL Group by block_id and classify block-level trajectory stability
trajectory-audit 2 observation JSONL Diff block-level trajectory stability between a before/after checkpoint
preflight observation JSONL (1 or 2) Pre-experiment instrumentation check: field coverage, block_id uniqueness, seed counts, checkpoint correspondence

Output formats

Output conventions differ by command — deliberately, since some commands are built for human inspection and some for pipeline composition (see select and --embed-stats). There is no single unified format; use this table to know what to expect from each command before scripting against it:

Command Default Flag(s) Notes
score JSONL --output-format jsonl|csv csv is a terminal/export format — see below
filter JSONL (pass-through) none Always echoes original input lines unchanged
select JSONL (pass-through) none Always echoes original input lines unchanged
reliability JSONL none One object per evaluator, plus an optional trailing kappa/alpha line
active-review JSONL none One object per ranked sample
block-score JSONL none One object per block
trajectory-audit text --json (JSONL, one object per block) Sorted most-destructive block first
preflight text --json (single pretty object) Exits 1 on a blocking issue (0 with --report-only); warnings never affect the exit code
recommend JSONL --text Only command where JSONL is the default and text is the opt-in
stable-wrong-risk single pretty JSON object none
calibrate single pretty JSON object --output-format json|csv csv is a single header row + one data row
summary text --json (single pretty object)
explain text --json (single pretty object)
compare text --json (single pretty object)
audit text --json (single pretty object)
policy text table --output-format text|json|csv (legacy --json still works as an alias for json) json is JSONL, one line per swept threshold; csv has fixed columns (empty cells when no gold_label)

CSV is a dead end for piping. score --output-format csv, calibrate --output-format csv, and policy --output-format csv exist purely for spreadsheets/BI tools. No other quietset command can parse CSV back in (filter/summary/explain/compare/audit/select/ recommend/active-review all expect JSONL StabilityReports; stable-wrong-risk/calibrate/ reliability/policy expect JSONL Observations). If you plan to pipe score's output into another quietset command, use the default jsonl, not csv.

score also prints a kept X / Y (Z%), review N, drop M summary to stderr by default after scoring, plus a configuration warning if applicable (see Minimum requirements for Keep) — stdout stays pure data either way, so this never needs --skip-invalid-style opt-in and never breaks piping; redirect stderr (2>/dev/null) if you don't want it in scripted output.

Input JSONL format

{"sample_id":"a","label":"win","score":0.91,"evaluator_id":"m1","budget":4,"seed":1,"gold_label":"win"}
{"sample_id":"a","label":"win","score":0.88,"evaluator_id":"m1","budget":8,"seed":1,"gold_label":"win"}
{"sample_id":"b","label":"win","score":0.52,"evaluator_id":"m1","budget":4,"seed":1}
{"sample_id":"b","label":"loss","score":-0.10,"evaluator_id":"m2","budget":8,"seed":2}

All fields except sample_id are optional. gold_label provides the known-correct label for a sample; when present, the reliability command uses it as ground truth instead of majority vote.

Trajectory stability fields (optional)

10 additional optional fields let a training harness feed precomputed per-run trajectory signals into quietset for block-score/trajectory-audit and the score components below — quietset only ever aggregates these numbers; it never reads a checkpoint or computes a gradient itself:

{"sample_id":"p1","block_id":"B5","seed":1,"shuffle_seed":1,"model_id":"ckpt143","loss_recipe":"recipe_a","layer_id":"ft","gradient_sign":0.3,"update_cosine":0.8,"teacher_residual":0.02,"trajectory_effect":-0.4,"dead_unit_count":0,"saturated_unit_count":0}
Field Meaning
shuffle_seed Second seed axis (data-order/shuffle), distinct from seed (init seed)
loss_recipe Loss-function/training-recipe variant — same role as model_id/evaluator_id
block_id Groups this sample into a training block (e.g. a 32-position block), distinct from sample_id. Must be unique within one input dataset and within one trajectory-audit before/after pair — a producer combining independent training runs into one file must namespace it itself, e.g. "{run_id}:{block_id}"
layer_id Generic layer identifier for dead_unit_count/saturated_unit_count — quietset assigns no meaning to specific values (e.g. "ft", "l2" are just strings you choose)
gradient_sign Signed per-run scalar; only its sign is used
update_cosine Per-run cosine similarity of this update to a reference direction
teacher_residual Per-run signed scalar (e.g. model output minus teacher output)
trajectory_effect Signed per-run scalar driving block growth/shrink classification (e.g. a radial-norm delta); positive = growth, negative = shrink
dead_unit_count Count of newly-dead units in layer_id for this (sample, run)
saturated_unit_count Count of newly-saturated units in layer_id for this (sample, run)

Split-integrity fields (optional)

2 additional optional fields identify which root artifact a sample was derived from, so calibrate --group-by can detect when a calibration/held-out split accidentally separates correlated samples:

{"sample_id":"p1","source_root_id":"game_00042","opening_family":"sicilian_najdorf"}
Field Meaning
source_root_id One game record/kifu, source document, or conversation. Samples sharing this value are not independent — nearby positions from the same game record correlate strongly.
opening_family Coarser grouping above source_root_id (e.g. an opening family for game records, a topic cluster for judge data). Same independence caveat one level up.

Output JSONL format

Key fields in the output (optional fields are omitted when not computable):

{
  "sample_id": "a",
  "n_observations": 2,
  "majority_label": "win",
  "label_agreement": 1.0,
  "label_agreement_lcb": 0.342,
  "label_margin": 1.0,
  "label_entropy": 0.0,
  "score_mean": 0.895,
  "score_std": 0.015,
  "score_mad": 0.015,
  "score_iqr": 0.030,
  "confidence": 0.40,
  "adjusted_stability_score": 0.782,
  "stability_score": 0.97,
  "decision": "keep",
  "components": {
    "label": 1.0,
    "score_consistency": 0.985
  }
}

Optional fields are omitted when not computable (e.g. label_agreement_lcb only appears when labels are present; score_mad / score_iqr require at least two numeric scores).

Stability score

The stability_score is a value in [0.0, 1.0]:

  • 1.0 = highly stable
  • 0.0 = highly unstable

stability_score is a convenience aggregate for ranking and inspection — not a calibrated probability and not a correctness guarantee. It has no uncertainty model of its own; a sample where every evaluator consistently agrees on a wrong answer still scores 1.0. For real accept/reject decisions, prefer a component with an actual statistical or model-based basis — label_agreement_lcb (Wilson interval), --decision-score latent-truth (Dawid-Skene EM), gold-weighted, or a threshold picked by calibrate --heldout — over the raw stability_score/--keep-threshold default. See Where these numbers come from and docs/metrics.md for the full provenance of every field below.

It is the weighted mean of available sub-scores (all in [0.0, 1.0]):

Component Value
label_agreement fraction of observations with the majority label
score_consistency 1 - normalized_score_std
budget_robustness 1 - budget_sensitivity
seed_robustness 1 - seed_sensitivity
model_agreement label agreement across models
evaluator_agreement label agreement across evaluators
score_sign_agreement fraction of numeric scores sharing the majority sign — weight defaults to 0 (excluded); opt in with --weight-score-sign (--profile game-ai enables it at ×2 by default)
gradient_sign_agreement fraction of gradient_sign observations sharing the majority sign — weight defaults to 0; opt in with --weight-gradient-sign
update_direction_agreement fraction of update_cosine observations sharing the majority sign — weight defaults to 0; opt in with --weight-update-cosine
teacher_residual_stability 1 - normalized_std(teacher_residual) — weight defaults to 0; opt in with --weight-teacher-residual
shuffle-seed robustness 1 - shuffle_seed_sensitivity — weight defaults to 0; opt in with --weight-shuffle-seed
loss_recipe_agreement label agreement across loss_recipe values — weight defaults to 0; opt in with --weight-loss-recipe

Missing dimensions (e.g. no labels, no budgets) are excluded from the mean. Single observations receive stability_score = 0.5 (review by default).

Additional diagnostic fields on StabilityReport:

Field Meaning
label_margin (majority_count - runner_up_count) / total. 0.0 = perfectly split
label_entropy Normalised Shannon entropy [0, 1]. 1.0 = uniform label distribution
label_agreement_lcb Wilson confidence interval lower bound of label_agreement. More conservative than raw label_agreement — guards against low-n coincidences.
score_mad Median absolute deviation of numeric scores. More robust to outliers than score_std.
score_iqr Interquartile range (Q3 − Q1) of numeric scores.
score_sign_agreement Fraction of numeric scores sharing the majority sign (negative / zero / positive). Domain-aware complement to score_std/score_mad/score_iqr for signed, zero-centered scores (chess/shogi-style eval): [+0.01, -0.01] reads as near-perfectly stable by magnitude alone but is a coin-flip on sign. Always computed but excluded from stability_score by default (--weight-score-sign 0); pass --weight-score-sign <f> to make it contribute. --profile game-ai enables it at ×2 by default — for every other profile, this stays a purely informational field unless explicitly weighted.
budget_slope Score trend as budget increases (positive = converges upward)
confidence n / (n + k) — how much to trust the score given evidence count
adjusted_stability_score stability * confidence + 0.5 * (1 - confidence)
update_cosine_mean Mean of update_cosine across observations. Diagnostic only, not a stability_score component.
dead_unit_rate / saturated_unit_rate Fraction of observations where dead_unit_count/saturated_unit_count is > 0.0 — how often this sample induces new dead/saturated units. Diagnostic only; feeds block-score's pathological classification, not stability_score.
trajectory_effect_mean / trajectory_effect_sign_agreement Mean and sign-agreement of trajectory_effect. Diagnostic only; feeds block-score's growth/shrink classification, not stability_score.

Components field

Each sub-score is also exposed in components so you can see why a sample was scored as it was:

{
  "sample_id": "a",
  "stability_score": 0.91,
  "decision": "keep",
  "components": {
    "label": 1.0,
    "score_consistency": 0.96,
    "budget_robustness": 0.88
  }
}

Use --weight-* flags to tune individual dimensions, or use --profile (see Profiles).

Profiles

Apply a use-case preset with --profile instead of tuning weights manually. Explicit --weight-* and --decision-score flags always override the preset.

Profile Weight changes Default decision-score
llm-judge evaluator ×2, model ×2 lcb
simulation budget ×2, seed ×2 adjusted
game-ai budget ×2, seed ×2, score_sign ×2; min-observations 4, min-budgets 2, min-seeds 2, min-evaluators 2 lcb
game-ai-single-engine same as game-ai, but no min-evaluators floor — for one engine evaluated at multiple depths lcb
benchmark label ×2, evaluator ×1.5 raw
# LLM judge preset (equivalent to --weight-evaluators 2 --weight-models 2 --decision-score lcb)
quietset score input.jsonl --profile llm-judge > scored.jsonl

# Override one weight from the preset
quietset score input.jsonl --profile simulation --weight-budget 3.0 > scored.jsonl

Confidence and adjusted score

confidence = n / (n + k) where k defaults to 3.0.

n_observations confidence (k=3)
1 0.25
2 0.40
5 0.63
10 0.77
20 0.87

adjusted_stability_score = stability_score * confidence + 0.5 * (1 - confidence)

A sample with stability_score = 0.95 but only 2 observations gets adjusted_stability_score ≈ 0.68 — unlikely to reach the keep threshold (0.85) without more evidence.

Use --use-adjusted-score to make decisions based on the adjusted score. Use --confidence-k to tune the convergence speed.

Minimum requirements for Keep

High stability does not guarantee sufficient evidence. Use --min-*-keep to demote underevidenced samples to Review:

quietset score input.jsonl \
  --min-observations-keep 3 \
  --min-evaluators-keep 2 \
  --min-seeds-keep 2 \
  > scored.jsonl

score warns on stderr if a --min-evaluators-keep floor (explicit, or via a profile like game-ai) can never be satisfied by the input — e.g. requiring 2 distinct evaluator_id values on data that only ever has one. If you're evaluating with one engine at multiple search depths rather than multiple engines, use --profile game-ai-single-engine instead, which sets no min-evaluators floor.

Decisions

By default, decisions use stability_score. Five decision modes are available:

Flag Alias Score used Behaviour
--decision-score raw (default) stability_score Raw stability. Fast; can overfit small-n.
--decision-score adjusted --use-adjusted-score adjusted_stability_score Penalises low-evidence samples proportionally.
--decision-score lcb --use-lcb-score label_agreement_lcb (label) Wilson LCB — most conservative. A 2/2 label match gives LCB ≈ 0.34 at 95% confidence, so it will not be kept without more evidence.
--decision-score gold-weighted stability_score (label component reliability-weighted) Replaces the raw majority label vote with a gold_label-reliability-weighted vote. Falls back to identical behaviour as raw when no gold_label is present anywhere in the input.
--decision-score latent-truth stability_score (label component EM-weighted) Replaces the raw majority label vote with a Dawid-Skene EM-estimated vote — infers per-evaluator reliability from disagreement patterns alone, no gold_label required. Falls back to identical behaviour as raw when the input has fewer than 2 distinct evaluators or labels. Adds latent_truth_label, latent_truth_confidence, latent_truth_label_distribution, majority_latent_conflict, evaluator_effective_n, correlated_evaluator_warning, latent_truth_converged, latent_truth_iterations, latent_truth_convergence_delta, latent_truth_demotion_reason to the output. latent_truth_confidence is EM's fitted posterior, which saturates toward 0/1 with only a few evaluators and can be confidently wrong when evaluators are correlated in their bias — it is not a correctness guarantee. evaluator_effective_n/correlated_evaluator_warning diagnose that same risk (Kish design effect on pairwise-correlated evaluator errors) but can only detect it when other evaluators reveal a correlated block's shared deviation — if the block captures the EM consensus outright, no warning fires; it's a self-consistency diagnostic, not an independent correctness check. latent_truth_converged is false when the EM loop exhausted its iteration cap without settling (latent_truth_iterations hits the cap, latent_truth_convergence_delta stays above the convergence epsilon) — the posterior is still valid but less certain; the same value applies to every sample scored in that batch, since EM runs once per batch.

MinRequirements are always applied after the threshold comparison. For --decision-score latent-truth, three additional opt-in, default-off safety demotions apply after that: --demote-on-correlated-warning (demotes when correlated_evaluator_warning fires), --min-evaluator-effective-n <f64> (demotes when evaluator_effective_n falls below this absolute value, independent of the relative 70%-of-nominal warning above), and --demote-on-non-convergence (demotes when latent_truth_converged is false). Each only ever demotes KeepReview — never further to Drop, since these are uncertainty signals, not certainty-of-wrongness signals — and never touches stability_score itself. When a demotion fires, latent_truth_demotion_reason names which condition (correlated_evaluator_warning, evaluator_effective_n_below_minimum, or latent_truth_not_converged, in that priority order if more than one fires at once). Available on score and stable-wrong-risk; no-op on calibrate/policy/compare --policy-after, which compare raw scores directly rather than reading decision.

Condition Decision
score >= 0.85 keep
score <= 0.40 drop
otherwise review

This maps onto selective classification / reject option / risk-coverage tradeoffs: rather than forcing every sample into a class, uncertain ones are routed to review to control the risk of what's actually accepted. keep = accept, review = abstain/defer, drop = reject for training use. calibrate/policy operationalize this — see calibrate — but they pick a threshold empirically against one gold-labeled sample, not a conformal-style formal guarantee; use --heldout for a more honest (still empirical) precision estimate. Full discussion: docs/metrics.md.

The defaults — 0.85 keep, 0.40 drop — were chosen to leave a deliberate review band. 0.85 requires strong agreement across most observations before a sample is trusted; 0.40 only rejects samples with clear, consistent disagreement. Everything between is uncertain enough to warrant human review rather than an automatic decision. For high-stakes training data, raise --keep-threshold to 0.90–0.95. For noisy synthetic data where volume matters more than purity, lower it to 0.75–0.80.

Configurable via --keep-threshold and --drop-threshold. Use --confidence-level to tune the Wilson LCB confidence level (default 0.95).

The --use-adjusted-score and --use-lcb-score boolean flags are aliases for --decision-score adjusted and --decision-score lcb respectively, kept for backwards compatibility. When both --decision-score and a boolean alias are specified, --decision-score takes precedence.

explain command

Print a detailed breakdown for one sample:

quietset explain scored.jsonl --sample-id a
sample_id:          a
decision:           keep
n_observations:     3
stability_score:    0.9700
confidence:         0.5000
adjusted_score:     0.7350
label_agreement_lcb:0.4380
label_margin:       1.0000
label_entropy:      0.0000

score stats:
  mean:             0.8950
  std:              0.0150
  mad:              0.0150
  iqr:              0.0300

components:
  label                      1.0000  ████████████████████
  score_consistency          0.9850  ███████████████████
  budget_robustness          0.8800  █████████████████
  seed_robustness            0.9200  ██████████████████

Add --json to get the full StabilityReport as JSON.

Note: this example uses the default raw-score decision mode (stability_score = 0.97 → keep). With --use-adjusted-score (confidence ≈ 0.50 at n=3), adjusted_score = 0.74 falls below the keep threshold — the decision would be review unless --keep-threshold is lowered. With --use-lcb-score, label_agreement_lcb ≈ 0.44 also falls below 0.85 — review.

compare command

Compare two scored JSONL files by sample_id:

quietset compare before.jsonl after.jsonl
matched samples:  10000
mean stability:   0.7412 → 0.7801
rank stability:   0.8912  (Spearman's rho of stability_score ranks)

decision transitions (before → after):
              →keep   →review    →drop
      keep↓    7210       311       42
    review↓     508      2101      301
      drop↓      19       104      404

top 5 regressions:
  sample_001  0.9100 → 0.4400  (Δ-0.4700)
  sample_382  0.8800 → 0.3900  (Δ-0.4900)

rank stability is Spearman's rank correlation (average-rank tie handling) between the before/after stability_score orderings among matched samples — 1.0 means the relative ranking didn't change at all even if absolute scores drifted, -1.0 means the ranking fully reversed. Omitted (from both text and --json output) when fewer than 2 matched samples or either side has zero variance (undefined). --json adds it as rank_stability.

Add --json for machine-readable output.

Add --components to show per-dimension mean deltas:

quietset compare before.jsonl after.jsonl --components
matched samples:  10000
mean stability:   0.7412 → 0.7801

decision transitions (before → after):
...

component deltas (mean before → after):
  label                      0.88 → 0.90  (+0.02)
  score_consistency          0.79 → 0.86  (+0.07)
  budget_robustness          0.91 → 0.72  (-0.19)  ← regression
  seed_robustness            0.88 → 0.89  (+0.01)

--json adds a component_deltas object with signed delta values.

summary command

quietset summary scored.jsonl
samples:              1000
  keep:                621  (62.1%)
  review:              291  (29.1%)
  drop:                 88   (8.8%)
  lcb_keep_demotions:  139  (stability_score >= 0.85, label_agreement_lcb < 0.85)

stability_score:
  mean:              0.7412
  median:            0.7810
  p10 / p90:         0.4200 / 0.9600

score dispersion (mean across samples):
  mad:               0.0421
  iqr:               0.0812

top instability drivers (review + drop samples):
  label disagreement        38%
  score variance            24%
  seed sensitivity          21%
  budget sensitivity        17%

lcb_keep_demotions counts samples where stability_score >= keep_threshold (raw mode would keep them) but label_agreement_lcb < keep_threshold (LCB mode would not) — the number of samples that switching to --decision-score lcb would demote from keep. Samples already below the threshold in raw mode are excluded. Pass --keep-threshold to match the value used during scoring.

Use --json for CI integration:

quietset summary scored.jsonl --json | jq '.drop_rate < 0.1'

filter command

In addition to --min-stability, --max-disagreement, and --decision, filter supports diagnostic field filters:

Flag Keeps records where
--min-label-lcb <f> label_agreement_lcb >= f (drop low-evidence keeps)
--min-confidence <f> confidence >= f (drop low-observation-count samples)
--max-score-mad <f> score_mad <= f (drop high-dispersion samples)
--max-score-iqr <f> score_iqr <= f (drop high-spread samples)
# Keep only samples with high evidence and low score dispersion
quietset filter scored.jsonl --min-label-lcb 0.70 --min-confidence 0.60 --max-score-mad 0.05 > clean.jsonl

Records that lack the filtered field (e.g. label_agreement_lcb is absent when no labels were provided) are excluded by --min-* filters and included by --max-* filters.

reliability command (experimental)

Stability measures agreement, not correctness. Use stable-wrong-risk to quantify how many of your kept samples are consistently wrong — the most dangerous failure mode in stability-filtered datasets.

Estimate per-evaluator reliability from observation JSONL:

quietset reliability input.jsonl
{"evaluator_id": "m1", "reliability": 0.94}
{"evaluator_id": "m2", "reliability": 0.71}
{"evaluator_id": "m3", "reliability": 0.52}
{"fleiss_kappa": 0.81, "krippendorff_alpha": 0.83}

Reliability is the fraction of evaluations where the evaluator's label matches the reference label. By default, the reference is the majority label across evaluators. If gold_label is set on any observation for a sample, it is used as the reference instead — enabling ground-truth-based reliability without changing the scoring output.

The trailing line reports two dataset-level agreement statistics:

Field Meaning
fleiss_kappa Inter-rater agreement corrected for chance (nominal labels, variable raters per subject). 0 = chance, 1 = perfect, negative = worse than chance.
krippendorff_alpha Agreement coefficient using the coincidence-matrix formulation for nominal labels. More general than kappa; same scale.

Both are omitted when fewer than 2 subjects have at least 2 ratings each (undefined). Use jq 'select(.fleiss_kappa)' to extract the summary line.

When gold_label is present, each evaluator line also includes a confusion matrix (predicted → gold → count):

{"evaluator_id": "m1", "reliability": 0.94, "confusion": {"win": {"win": 120, "loss": 8}, "loss": {"win": 11, "loss": 101}}}
{"evaluator_id": "m2", "reliability": 0.71, "confusion": {"win": {"win": 98, "loss": 31}, "loss": {"win": 4, "loss": 107}}}
{"fleiss_kappa": 0.81, "krippendorff_alpha": 0.83}

audit command

Deep diagnostic report for a scored JSONL file:

quietset audit scored.jsonl
quietset audit scored.jsonl --json           # machine-readable
quietset audit scored.jsonl --top 20         # show top 20 in each list (default 10)
=== quietset audit ===
total:              1000
  keep:              621  (62.1%)
  review:            291  (29.1%)
  drop:               88   (8.8%)
  lcb_keep_demotions:  139  (stability >= 0.85, lcb < 0.85)

stability_score:
  mean:            0.7412
  median:          0.7810
  p10 / p90:       0.4200 / 0.9600

top instability drivers:
  label disagreement        38%
  score variance            24%

--- borderline (0.75 <= stability <= 0.95, top 10) ---
  sample_042  0.8201  review
  sample_187  0.8490  keep

--- high_raw_low_lcb (stability >= 0.85, lcb < 0.85, top 10) ---
  sample_003  stability=0.9100  lcb=0.3423

--- budget_sensitive (top 10) ---
  sample_091  budget_sensitivity=0.8200

--json output includes borderline, high_raw_low_lcb, high_score_mad, budget_sensitive, and seed_sensitive as arrays of {sample_id, ...} objects, suitable for piping to downstream tools.

calibrate command

Find a keep_threshold that meets a precision or coverage target, using gold_label observations:

quietset calibrate input.jsonl --target-precision 0.95
quietset calibrate input.jsonl --target-precision 0.98 --decision-score lcb
quietset calibrate input.jsonl --target-precision 0.90 --target-coverage 0.50
{
  "decision_score": "lcb",
  "keep_threshold": 0.91,
  "drop_threshold": 0.40,
  "achieved_precision": 0.982,
  "precision_ci_low": 0.943,
  "precision_ci_high": 0.997,
  "coverage": 0.61,
  "n_keep": 610,
  "n_total": 1000,
  "validated_on_heldout": false,
  "note": "achieved_precision and its confidence interval were selected and measured on the same gold-labeled data; the threshold search makes this optimistic. Pass --heldout <path> for an independent estimate."
}

calibrate grid-searches keep_threshold from 0.99 down to 0.50 (step 0.01) and returns the loosest threshold that meets the target. Requires gold_label on at least one observation per sample. Returns an error if no threshold meets the target (try a lower --target-precision).

precision_ci_low/precision_ci_high is a Wilson score interval around achieved_precision at --confidence-level (the same knob used for the lcb decision score) — it widens automatically when few gold labels back the estimate, so don't treat achieved_precision alone as exact when n_keep is small. The interval covers sampling noise at the chosen threshold only, not the fact that the threshold itself was picked to hit the target on these same gold labels — it is still optimistic. Treat it as a lower bar, not the full uncertainty; a held-out gold set is the more conservative check. note makes this caveat machine-readable: it's always present when --heldout was not used (as above), and present when --heldout was used but the training-set precision at the selected threshold exceeded the held-out precision by more than 0.05 (a likely overfit); null when --heldout was used and the gap was small enough to be ordinary sampling noise.

Use --heldout <path> to get that more conservative check: keep_threshold is still selected by grid search on the primary input, but achieved_precision/precision_ci_low/ precision_ci_high/coverage/n_keep/n_total are instead measured on the held-out file's own gold_labels at that fixed threshold. For raw/adjusted/lcb/latent-truth this fully removes the circularity — the threshold-selection circularity is gone, and latent-truth's EM never consumes gold labels at all, so grading its inferred labels against held-out gold is a genuine independent check even on the same samples. For gold-weighted, one layer of circularity remains: the per-evaluator reliability weights are fit from the held-out file's own gold_labels and then graded against those same labels, so treat its held-out precision as better than the in-sample number but not fully independent. Not stdin-capable (-); the primary input already claims stdin. Requires gold_label on the held-out file, or the command errors. The reported precision can legitimately land below --target-precision when the primary-input-selected threshold overfits — that's the correct, honest signal, not a bug. validated_on_heldout in the output discloses whether --heldout was used, so a saved result still says what it measured. train_precision exposes the in-sample precision at the same threshold alongside achieved_precision (which becomes the held-out precision once --heldout is used) — null unless --heldout was given, since otherwise it would just repeat achieved_precision:

quietset calibrate input.jsonl --target-precision 0.95 --heldout heldout_gold.jsonl
{
  "decision_score": "raw",
  "keep_threshold": 0.99,
  "drop_threshold": 0.40,
  "achieved_precision": 0.71,
  "precision_ci_low": 0.44,
  "precision_ci_high": 0.89,
  "coverage": 1.0,
  "n_keep": 24,
  "n_total": 24,
  "train_precision": 0.97,
  "validated_on_heldout": true,
  "note": "in-sample precision at this threshold was 0.970, held-out precision is 0.710 (gap 0.260) — the training-selected threshold likely overfit the training gold labels"
}

Use --output-format csv for a single header row + one data row instead of a JSON object:

quietset calibrate input.jsonl --target-precision 0.95 --output-format csv
decision_score,keep_threshold,drop_threshold,achieved_precision,precision_ci_low,precision_ci_high,coverage,n_keep,n_total,train_precision,validated_on_heldout,note,group_field,leaked_group_count,group_coverage
lcb,0.910000,0.400000,0.982000,0.943000,0.997000,0.610000,610,1000,,false,"achieved_precision and its confidence interval were selected and measured on the same gold-labeled data; the threshold search makes this optimistic. Pass --heldout <path> for an independent estimate.",,,

The original 12 columns keep their order and meaning unchanged; group_field/ leaked_group_count/group_coverage are appended at the end and are empty unless --group-by was used with --heldout. group_coverage is named to avoid colliding with the unrelated coverage column (precision/recall coverage, not group-field coverage) already at position 7.

Use --fail-below-target to make calibrate a CI gate: it exits non-zero (after still printing the result) if achieved_precision falls short of --target-precision. Without --heldout this is effectively a no-op — the grid search already guarantees achieved_precision >= --target-precision on the primary input, or fails outright with an error. With --heldout, achieved_precision is the held-out measurement, which can legitimately fall short — this flag turns that honest signal into something a CI pipeline can act on:

quietset calibrate train.jsonl --heldout heldout.jsonl --target-precision 0.98 --fail-below-target
echo "exit code: $?"

calibrate --group-by

--heldout only works if the two files are genuinely independent. If nearby samples from the same game record (or the same opening family, conversation, etc.) end up split across the two files, the held-out precision is measuring partly-seen data and reads more optimistic than a genuinely independent estimate. --group-by reports that leakage — it does not build or repair the split for you; you still prepare --heldout yourself:

quietset calibrate train.jsonl --heldout heldout.jsonl --target-precision 0.95 \
  --group-by source-root-id
warning: 1 group key(s) (source_root_id) appear in both the calibration input and --heldout; achieved_precision is optimistic
  leaked source_root_id: game_00042
{
  "group_leakage": {
    "group_field": "source_root_id",
    "train_rows": 3,
    "heldout_rows": 2,
    "rows_with_group": 5,
    "rows_missing_group": 0,
    "train_unique_groups": 3,
    "heldout_unique_groups": 2,
    "leaked_group_count": 1,
    "leaked_keys_sample": ["game_00042"],
    "leaked_keys_truncated": false,
    "coverage": 1.0
  },
  "note": "1 group key(s) (source_root_id) appear in both the calibration input and --heldout — those held-out samples are correlated with samples the threshold was selected on, so achieved_precision is optimistic."
}

--group-by accepts source-root-id or opening-family (reading the source_root_id/ opening_family observation fields — see Split-integrity fields). group_leakage is null when nothing was checked (no --group-by, or no --heldout) — distinct from leaked_group_count: 0, which means the check ran and found a clean split among the rows it could check. Without --heldout, --group-by has no split to check and only prints a warning.

Two counts guard against leaked_group_count: 0 being misread as "verified clean":

  • No row on either side carries the field at all (rows_with_group: 0) — quietset warns that leakage could not be checked, rather than silently reporting a clean split. A field-name mismatch between your producer and --group-by would otherwise read as "0 shared groups" by coincidence, not by verification.
  • Some, but not all, rows carry the field (rows_missing_group > 0, coverage < 1.0) — quietset warns incomplete_group_coverage on stderr: a leak found among the covered rows is still reported (the check never hides a leak by excluding the missing rows), but a clean result on partial coverage means only the covered portion was verified, not the whole file.

leaked_group_count is always the exact total, computed over every leaked group regardless of dataset size. leaked_keys_sample lists at most 100 of them (sorted, so it's deterministic which 100), so a dataset with a very large number of leaked groups can't make an ordinary calibration run's output grow without bound; leaked_keys_truncated is true when the sample is a prefix rather than the complete set (leaked_group_count > leaked_keys_sample.len()). If you need the complete, uncapped list, call the Rust API's leaked_group_keys(calibration, heldout, key) directly — it's the same computation group_leakage uses internally, just without the cap.

compute_calibration's parameter list is unchanged and never grows — --group-by is implemented via a separate compute_calibration_with_options(..., &CalibrationOptions { group_by }) entry point in the Rust API, so existing library callers of compute_calibration are unaffected by this feature.

Note: calibrate cannot separate stable-correct from stable-wrong samples — if a sample consistently gets the wrong label, its stability_score is indistinguishable from a correct sample. Use gold_label-based reliability diagnostics to identify systematically wrong evaluators.

select command

Extract samples by diagnostic class, outputting the original scored JSONL lines (pass-through, pipeable to other commands):

quietset select scored.jsonl --class borderline --top 100
quietset select scored.jsonl --class high-raw-low-lcb > uncertain_keeps.jsonl
quietset select scored.jsonl --class budget-sensitive --top 20 | quietset explain - --sample-id x
Class Selects
borderline keep_threshold ± 0.10 stability band (uncertainty zone)
high-disagreement sorted by disagreement_score descending
budget-sensitive sorted by budget_sensitivity descending
seed-sensitive sorted by seed_sensitivity descending
high-raw-low-lcb stability_score >= keep_threshold but label_agreement_lcb < keep_threshold
high-score-mad sorted by score_mad descending

Use --top N to limit output. Use --keep-threshold to adjust the band for borderline and high-raw-low-lcb (default 0.85).

recommend command

Emit a re-evaluation suggestion for each sample that has a detectable issue, in priority order:

quietset recommend scored.jsonl
quietset recommend scored.jsonl --unstable-only   # skip clean keeps
{"sample_id": "x42", "reason": "high_raw_low_lcb", "recommended_action": "add_observations", "stability_score": 0.91, "label_agreement_lcb": 0.34, "n_observations": 2}
{"sample_id": "y17", "reason": "high_seed_sensitivity", "recommended_action": "add_seeds", "seed_sensitivity": 0.71}
Reason Action
high_raw_low_lcb LCB below threshold despite high raw stability → add_observations
low_evaluator_agreement evaluator_agreement < 0.7 → add_evaluators
high_seed_sensitivity seed_sensitivity > 0.3 → add_seeds
high_budget_sensitivity budget_sensitivity > 0.3 → increase_budget
low_model_agreement model_agreement < 0.7 → add_models
low_score_consistency score_consistency < 0.7 → reduce_score_variance

Each sample emits at most one recommendation (highest priority rule wins).

stable-wrong-risk command

Scores observation JSONL internally and reports kept samples whose majority_label differs from gold_label:

quietset stable-wrong-risk input.jsonl
quietset stable-wrong-risk input.jsonl --keep-threshold 0.90
{
  "n_total": 1000,
  "n_keep": 621,
  "n_stable_wrong": 12,
  "stable_wrong_rate_among_keep": 0.019,
  "samples": [
    {"sample_id": "x42", "stability_score": 0.96, "majority_label": "loss", "gold_label": "win"}
  ]
}

Requires gold_label on observations. Sorted by stability_score descending — the most confidently-kept wrong samples appear first. Use --top N to limit the sample list.

Use --breakdown to also report stable_wrong_rate per evaluator_id/model_id/budget value among Keep-decision samples — spotting a specific evaluator/model/budget that shows up disproportionately often in stably-wrong-but-kept samples:

quietset stable-wrong-risk input.jsonl --breakdown
{
  "n_total": 1000,
  "n_keep": 621,
  "n_stable_wrong": 12,
  "stable_wrong_rate_among_keep": 0.019,
  "samples": [ ... ],
  "by_evaluator": [
    {"evaluator_id": "m1", "n_keep": 340, "n_stable_wrong": 9, "stable_wrong_rate": 0.026},
    {"evaluator_id": "m2", "n_keep": 281, "n_stable_wrong": 3, "stable_wrong_rate": 0.011}
  ],
  "by_model": [ ... ],
  "by_budget": [ ... ]
}

Each breakdown is sample-level, like the top-level rate: by_evaluator[i].n_keep counts Keep samples that touch that specific evaluator_id, not observations. A sample can touch multiple evaluators/models/budgets at once, so rows within a breakdown do not sum to the top-level n_keep — that's intentional, not a partition; it answers "which evaluators/models/budgets show up in wrong-but-confident samples," not "whose fault is it." Off by default, since it clones the input and does an extra grouping pass.

compare --policy-after

After the standard comparison output, show how decisions in the after file would change under a hypothetical decision-score policy:

quietset compare before.jsonl after.jsonl --policy-after lcb
quietset compare before.jsonl after.jsonl --policy-after adjusted --policy-keep-threshold 0.80
policy comparison: current → lcb (keep_threshold=0.85):
              →keep   →review    →drop
    keep↓         0       850        0
  review↓         0      2291      300
    drop↓         0         0      200
  demoted by policy: 850  promoted: 0

Note: --policy-after lcb uses label_agreement_lcb as a proxy for the LCB policy score. Other components are not recomputed, so results are approximate. Use for directional signal ("how many keeps would be demoted"), not precise prediction.

policy command

Sweeps keep_threshold from 0.99 down to 0.50 and reports the precision/coverage/stable-wrong-rate trade-off at each step, so you can pick a threshold before running score:

quietset policy input.jsonl
quietset policy input.jsonl --target-precision 0.95
quietset policy input.jsonl --decision-score lcb --json
threshold  n_keep  coverage
0.99            1     0.500
0.98            1     0.500
0.97            1     0.500

With gold_label present on observations, the table also gains precision and stable_wrong_rate columns. --target-precision/--target-coverage mark the loosest threshold meeting that target with . --output-format json emits one JSONL object per threshold row instead of the formatted table (--json still works as an alias; passing both warns and --output-format wins). --output-format csv emits one row per swept threshold with fixed columns threshold,n_keep,coverage,precision,stable_wrong_rate,bestprecision/ stable_wrong_rate are empty when no gold_label is present, and best is true only on the row matching --target-precision/--target-coverage:

quietset policy input.jsonl --target-precision 0.95 --output-format csv
threshold,n_keep,coverage,precision,stable_wrong_rate,best
0.99,1,0.500000,1.000000,0.000000,
0.98,1,0.500000,1.000000,0.000000,true

active-review command

Ranks scored JSONL samples by re-evaluation urgency — a weighted combination of low label_agreement_lcb, high label_entropy, high score_mad, and high budget/seed sensitivity:

quietset score input.jsonl | quietset active-review -
quietset active-review scored.jsonl --unstable-only --top 20
{"budget_sensitivity":0.625,"cost":1.0,"expected_coverage_gain":1.0,"expected_risk_reduction":0.0,"label_agreement_flip_ratio":0.818,"label_agreement_lcb":0.301,"label_entropy":0.811,"primary_reason":"high_entropy","sample_id":"b","seed_sensitivity":0.075,"suggested_action":"add_evaluator","urgency_score":0.502,"utility":0.818}

--unstable-only skips samples already decided keep with no instability signals. Per-signal --weight-* flags (--weight-lcb, --weight-entropy, --weight-score-mad, --weight-budget-sensitivity, --weight-seed-sensitivity, --weight-order-sensitivity, --weight-teacher-conflict, --weight-gradient-instability) let you emphasize the signal most relevant to your review budget. suggested_action is one of request_gold_label, add_evaluator, add_model, increase_budget, add_seed, add_shuffle_seed, flag_teacher_conflict, add_init_seed (the first five renamed from the earlier add_observations/diversify_evaluators/reduce_score_variance/add_budget/add_seeds — a breaking change, see CHANGELOG; the last three added for trajectory stability — see Trajectory stability fields). The 3 trajectory signals only fire when the corresponding Observation fields (shuffle_seed, teacher_residual, gradient_sign) were present when score ran:

Signal primary_reason suggested_action Cost flag
Order-dependency (shuffle_seed_sensitivity) high_order_sensitivity add_shuffle_seed --cost-shuffle-seed
Teacher conflict (1 - teacher_residual_stability) high_teacher_conflict flag_teacher_conflict --cost-gold-label
Gradient instability (1 - gradient_sign_agreement) high_gradient_instability add_init_seed --cost-seed

Five additional fields turn the urgency heuristic into an expected-value ranking:

  • label_agreement_flip_ratio — a distance-to-threshold ratio in [0.0, 1.0]: 1.0 exactly at --keep-threshold/--drop-threshold, shrinking toward 0.0 further away, relative to label_agreement's own Wilson-CI margin of error. Not a probability — only label_agreement's sampling uncertainty is modeled; stability_score's other components (score dispersion, budget/seed sensitivity, model/evaluator agreement) have no uncertainty model in this codebase, so this ratio is a loose proxy whenever those other components actually drive stability_score. None when the sample has no labels.
  • expected_coverage_gain1 / n_total if the sample's decision (read verbatim from the input, not re-derived) is not keep, else 0.0: the exact coverage change if this sample's decision flipped to keep.
  • expected_risk_reduction1 / n_keep if the sample is a keep whose label_agreement_lcb falls below --keep-threshold (the same "at-risk keep" condition stable-wrong-risk's lcb_keep_demotions counts), else 0.0.
  • cost — the cost of suggested_action, from --cost-seed/--cost-budget/ --cost-evaluator/--cost-gold-label (all default 1.0; --cost-evaluator also backs add_model).
  • utilitylabel_agreement_flip_ratio * (expected_coverage_gain + expected_risk_reduction) / cost. A ranking score, not a literal expected value — ordering by it is sound (closer to threshold, higher payoff, cheaper actions rank higher), but don't read the absolute number as a calibrated expectation.

--keep-threshold/--drop-threshold (defaults 0.85/0.40, matching score's own defaults) feed only label_agreement_flip_ratio and the at-risk-keep gate — they do not re-derive decision. --rank-by urgency (default) sorts by urgency_score; --rank-by utility sorts by utility instead, surfacing samples where additional review effort pays off most rather than samples that merely look unstable.

Use --plan <path> to write a budget-constrained evaluation plan — a JSONL file, always sorted by utility descending regardless of --rank-by, in addition to the normal stdout output. --budget <f64> caps the total cost of entries it includes: entries are taken greedily by utility, skipping (not stopping at) any that don't fit so a cheaper lower-utility entry later in the list can still be included. Without --budget, --plan writes every entry (still utility-sorted):

quietset active-review scored.jsonl --plan next_eval_plan.jsonl --budget 20.0

This is a standard greedy value-density approximation for a knapsack-style budget allocation problem — not guaranteed globally optimal, but sound for "what should the next batch of review effort go toward."

Pass --observations <path> (the same raw observation JSONL score was run on) to also size a concrete target for suggested_actionStabilityReport only carries derived stats (sensitivity/robustness scores), not the raw budget/seed/evaluator/model values needed to size one, the same gap audit --observations fills for agreement stats:

quietset active-review scored.jsonl --observations input.jsonl
{"cost":1.0,"expected_coverage_gain":1.0,"expected_risk_reduction":0.0,"label_agreement_flip_ratio":0.766,"label_agreement_lcb":0.510,"label_entropy":0.0,"primary_reason":"high_seed_sensitivity","sample_id":"pricey","seed_sensitivity":0.8,"suggested_action":"add_seed","target_seed":2,"urgency_score":0.423,"utility":0.766}

Only the field matching suggested_action is populated, from that sample's own observations:

  • increase_budgettarget_budget = the sample's max observed budget × 2
  • add_seed / add_init_seedtarget_seed = the sample's max observed seed + 1 (both actions size the same seed field — "run one more seed")
  • add_shuffle_seedtarget_shuffle_seed = the sample's max observed shuffle_seed + 1
  • add_evaluatortarget_evaluator_slot = the sample's distinct evaluator_id count + 1
  • add_modeltarget_model_slot = the sample's distinct model_id count + 1
  • request_gold_label / flag_teacher_conflict → no target field (nothing to size for a review/label request)

All fields are omitted without --observations, and omitted per-sample whenever the relevant raw value is missing from the observations file — never a fabricated default.

block-score command

Groups observations by block_id (e.g. a 32-position training block) instead of sample_id and classifies each block's trajectory stability:

quietset block-score observations.jsonl
{"block_id":"B5","n_samples":2,"n_observations":4,"seed_effect_consistency":1.0,"shuffle_direction_consistency":1.0,"checkpoint_reproducibility":1.0,"block_stability":1.0,"trajectory_effect_mean":-0.45,"dead_unit_rate":0.5,"classification":"stable_shrink"}

block_stability = seed_effect_consistency × shuffle_direction_consistency × checkpoint_reproducibility — the product of whichever of those three factors are computable (each requires ≥2 distinct groups on its axis: seed, shuffle_seed, model_id respectively). classification is one of:

Class Meaning
stable_growth block_stability >= --stable-threshold and net trajectory_effect_mean > 0
stable_shrink block_stability >= --stable-threshold and net trajectory_effect_mean < 0
seed_sensitive Unstable, and seed_effect_consistency is the lowest sub-threshold factor
order_sensitive Unstable, and shuffle_direction_consistency is the lowest sub-threshold factor
trajectory_sensitive Unstable, and checkpoint_reproducibility is the lowest sub-threshold factor
pathological dead_unit_rate/saturated_unit_rate exceeds --pathological-dead-rate — overrides every other signal
insufficient Not enough condition-axis diversity (or no trajectory_effect to read a growth/shrink sign from), or the block mixes more than one non-null loss_recipe — see below

stable_growth/stable_shrink are not "good"/"bad" labels — they describe reproducibility of trajectory_effect's sign, not whether that effect is desirable. Growth is not always an improvement; shrink is not always a regression (a shrink with rising dead/saturated-unit rates is caught separately by pathological, but a clean shrink could be healthy regularization). Recommended handling, pending your own held-out/downstream validation:

Class Suggested handling
pathological Exclude from training
insufficient Collect more observations before deciding
seed_sensitive Add another seed and re-classify
order_sensitive Add another shuffle seed and re-classify
trajectory_sensitive Re-evaluate at another checkpoint
stable_growth Send to downstream validation — do not auto-keep
stable_shrink Send to downstream validation — do not auto-drop

--stable-threshold (default 0.85), --sensitivity-threshold (default 0.5), and --pathological-dead-rate (default 0.5) tune the classification, same "operational default, not a derived constant" status as score's --keep-threshold/--drop-thresholdnot a calibrated probability of anything (in particular, not of a downstream playing-strength improvement); validate against your own held-out data and match results before trusting it to gate training data unattended. See docs/metrics.md for why the three consistency factors are multiplied rather than averaged. Warns on stderr (doesn't error) if no observation carries block_id.

A block mixing more than one non-null loss_recipe is never aggregated as ordinary variation. Different recipes confound every other axis this classification measures — a block can't be called "seed-stable" or "pathological" if the loss function itself also changed underneath it. block-score warns on stderr and forces classification to insufficient for any such block (this overrides even pathological, since the dead/saturated-unit rate itself is confounded too). A block where loss_recipe is present but missing on some observations (all present values agreeing) only gets an "incomplete coverage" warning — classification is unaffected. layer_id is unrelated to this: a block naturally spans multiple layers, and mixing layer_id values within one block is normal, not a data problem.

trajectory-audit command

Diffs block-level trajectory stability between a before/after observation file (e.g. two training checkpoints) — the destructive-sample detector:

quietset trajectory-audit --before checkpoint_143.jsonl --after checkpoint_176.jsonl --group-size 32
B5  stable_shrink → pathological
  dead_unit_delta[ft]:       +1.0000
  trajectory_effect_delta:      -0.4500

Matches blocks by block_id (blocks present on only one side are skipped) and reports, per matched block: dead_unit_delta/saturated_unit_delta (per layer_id, after_rate - before_rate; a layer seen on only one side is treated as 0.0 on the other, so a brand-new problem layer still shows its full rate as the delta), trajectory_effect_delta, before_classification/after_classification, and reproducibility_3seed (seed_effect_consistency on the after side, only when ≥3 distinct seed values are present there). Sorted by the largest dead/saturated-unit delta magnitude descending — most-destructive blocks first. --json for machine-readable JSONL output (one object per block).

--group-size N warns on stderr for any block whose distinct sample_id count doesn't match N on either side — a malformed block grouping (e.g. a truncated 32-position block), not a destructive-training signal. Same --stable-threshold/--sensitivity-threshold/ --pathological-dead-rate flags as block-score, including the same loss_recipe mixed/incomplete-coverage warnings on both --before and --after.

If a block's loss_recipe differs between --before and --after (e.g. before is "baseline", after is "teacher_conflict_masking"), the entry is not treated as an ordinary trajectory diff — recipe change and training progress can't be told apart from the deltas alone. Its comparable field is false, comparison_issue is "loss_recipe_mismatch", and dead_unit_delta/saturated_unit_delta/trajectory_effect_delta/reproducibility_3seed are left empty/absent rather than computed (before_classification/after_classification are still each side's own report and remain meaningful). Text output prints not comparable: loss_recipe_mismatch for these blocks instead of the usual deltas.

preflight command

Checks an observation dataset's instrumentation before running the real analysis, so a missing block_id/shuffle_seed is caught while the experiment can still be re-instrumented, not discovered after the fact:

quietset preflight observations.jsonl --for trajectory-audit
=== quietset preflight (for trajectory-audit) ===

input: 30 observation(s), 5 block(s)
  field coverage:
    block_id             30/30 (100%)
    seed                 24/30 (80%)
    shuffle_seed         18/30 (60%)
    ...

ready: true  (0 blocking issue(s), 2 warning(s))
warnings:
  - input: shuffle_seed coverage is 18/30 (60%)
  - input: block b3 has only 2 distinct seed value(s) (need >= 3 for reproducibility_3seed)

--for selects which downstream command's instrumentation requirements to check — currently only trajectory-audit (checking block_id, seed, shuffle_seed, model_id, layer_id, loss_recipe, trajectory_effect, update_cosine, dead_unit_count, saturated_unit_count coverage; block_id uniqueness via run_id; and distinct seed counts per block). Pass --after <path> to also check a later checkpoint's file — this unlocks three more checks: which blocks exist on only one side (blocks trajectory-audit would silently skip today, with no warning), which matched blocks have a loss_recipe mismatch and would be reported as not comparable, and which matched blocks have a contradictory run_id identity between the two sides (the same block_id string, but the two sides' run_ids share nothing in common — an accidental collision between two unrelated training runs, not a real before/after pair). Without --after, preflight runs the single-file checks only — useful precisely when checking instrumentation before a later checkpoint even exists yet.

The block_id-uniqueness check is a new, code-enforced version of a contract that was previously only a doc comment: block_id must be unique within one input dataset, and a producer combining independent training runs into one file must namespace it itself (e.g. "{run_id}:{block_id}"). preflight checks this via run_id — if a block_id group spans more than one distinct run_id, that's reported as a likely unnamespaced collision. This check is inert (reports nothing, not "verified unique") when run_id is absent from every observation — preflight's output distinguishes "no issue found" from "not checkable" via n_missing_run_id.

Blocking vs. warning, and exit codes

Every check lands in one of two buckets:

Meaning Exit code effect
Blocking (blocking_issues) trajectory-audit's output on this input cannot be trusted at all, not just degraded Non-zero by default
Warning (warnings) A specific metric is degraded, but the rest of the analysis is still meaningful Never affects exit code

Blocking: block_id present on 0% of observations (nothing can be grouped into blocks at all), a block_id spanning more than one run_id (a namespacing collision, so the block's own numbers are already meaningless), a block's loss_recipe internally mixed, zero blocks corresponding between --before/--after, a matched block's run_id identity contradicting itself across sides, or a matched block's loss_recipe mismatched across sides.

Warning: partial coverage on any field (including block_id — only total absence blocks), a block with fewer than 3 distinct seed values (reproducibility_3seed just doesn't compute for it — everything else does), some (not all) blocks present on only one side, or partial run_id/loss_recipe coverage within a block.

Contract: --before/--after are assumed to be two checkpoints of the same training run. A given block_id is expected to carry the same run_id on both sides — trajectory-audit has no support for comparing reproducibility across distinct runs by block_id alone. This is why a disjoint run_id set between --before and --after is blocking rather than a warning: it reads as an accidental block_id collision between two unrelated runs, not a legitimate cross-run comparison. If you need to compare across runs, block_id can't express that on its own — it would need an explicit shared key (a lineage/recipe/seed identifier) that doesn't exist in this codebase today; treat cross-run comparison as unsupported rather than relying on disagreeing run_ids to mean "different but comparable."

ready (true when blocking_issues is empty), blocking_issue_count, warning_count, blocking_issues, warnings, comparable_block_count, and incomparable_block_count (the latter two null without --after) are always in the --json output, so a CI script can check ready directly instead of parsing prose:

quietset preflight observations.jsonl --for trajectory-audit --json | jq -e '.ready'

Add --json for a single pretty-printed PreflightReport object instead of text.

Exit codes:

Exit code Meaning
0 No blocking issues (warnings may still be present)
1 Blocking issue(s) found (or --report-only was not passed)
non-zero, no report printed Usage error: empty/unparseable input, bad flags, etc. — the existing quietset error convention

Pass --report-only to always exit 0 and just review the report yourself, even with blocking issues present — the report (ready, blocking_issue_count, blocking_issues, everything) is byte-for-byte identical either way; the flag only changes what happens after it's printed. Seed shortages and one-sided blocks alone never block, matching the block-score/ trajectory-audit convention that a coverage gap is a warning, not a failure — only findings that make the eventual trajectory-audit run's output actively untrustworthy do.

Rust API

use quietset::{Observation, ScoreConfig, score_all};

let obs = vec![
    Observation { sample_id: "a".into(), label: Some("win".into()), score: Some(0.9), ..Default::default() },
    Observation { sample_id: "a".into(), label: Some("win".into()), score: Some(0.88), ..Default::default() },
];
let reports = score_all(obs, &ScoreConfig::default());
println!("{:?}", reports[0].decision);

Streaming API

use quietset::{Observation, ScoreConfig, StreamingScorer};

let mut scorer = StreamingScorer::new(ScoreConfig::default());
for obs in observations {
    if let Some(report) = scorer.push(obs) {
        println!("{:?}", report.decision);
    }
}
if let Some(report) = scorer.flush() { println!("{:?}", report.decision); }

Where these numbers come from

quietset is not an implementation of one paper. Most of its per-sample building blocks are standard, named statistics; stability_score and the keep/review/drop policy built on top of them are quietset's own design — useful, but not a theoretical guarantee. This table is a compact classification; for the full formula, assumptions, and failure modes behind each metric, see docs/metrics.md.

Established statistics (faithful implementations, full formulas in the sections linked):

Field Basis
label_agreement_lcb Wilson score interval lower bound — see Stability score
fleiss_kappa Fleiss' kappa, generalized to variable raters per subject — see reliability
krippendorff_alpha Krippendorff's alpha, nominal-labels variant — see reliability
label_entropy Normalized Shannon entropy over the labels observed for that sample — see Stability score
score_std / score_mad / score_iqr Population standard deviation / median-based MAD / linear-interpolation IQR — see Stability score

Model-based estimator:

Field Basis
latent_truth_* Dawid-Skene-style EM — per-evaluator confusion matrix + label posterior, fit with no gold_label needed. evaluator_effective_n and correlated_evaluator_warning are quietset's own diagnostics computed on top of the converged EM output, not part of the original Dawid-Skene method — see Decisions

Empirical diagnostics (measured directly against gold_label, not modeled):

Field Basis
stable_wrong_rate_among_keep Direct empirical rate — see stable-wrong-risk
stable-wrong-risk --breakdown Same rate, grouped by evaluator/model/budget — see stable-wrong-risk

quietset-specific heuristics (compose the above into an operational decision — not citable statistical methods on their own):

Field Basis
stability_score Weighted mean of the sub-scores above — see Stability score
confidence / adjusted_stability_score Evidence-count shrinkage toward neutral 0.5 — see Confidence and adjusted score
score_sign_agreement Domain-aware complement metric for signed, zero-centered scores — see Stability score
keep / drop thresholds (0.85 / 0.40) Operational defaults, not derived constants — see Decisions

calibrate/policy are conceptually close to selective-prediction / risk-coverage ideas (reject uncertain samples to review rather than forcing a keep-or-drop call on everything) — but they are not a conformal-style formal guarantee. A threshold is chosen empirically against one gold-labeled sample, so treat achieved_precision as measured, not proven; see the in-sample-optimism note and --heldout explanation in calibrate.

Compared to adjacent tools

Tool What it does How quietset differs
Cleanlab Python library that detects label errors using trained classifiers and confident learning. quietset needs no model training and makes no task-specific assumptions. It filters by cross-run stability rather than estimated label quality.
Label Studio Web-based annotation platform for labelling images, text, audio, and time series. quietset is a CLI/library primitive, not an annotation UI. It measures stability of labels already produced by other tools.
pandas / polars General-purpose data manipulation libraries. quietset provides a purpose-built stability schema — decisions, per-dimension sub-scores, confidence, instability diagnostics — that would otherwise require substantial custom code.
Great Expectations / Soda Data quality frameworks that validate data against rules (nulls, ranges, schema). Those tools check whether data conforms to a schema. quietset checks whether labels or scores are consistent across repeated evaluations.
scipy.stats / sklearn metrics Statistical functions such as Cohen's kappa and Fleiss' kappa. quietset wraps similar ideas into a composable pipeline primitive with JSONL I/O, per-sample reports, confidence adjustment, and configurable thresholds.
LLM evaluation frameworks (RAGAS, DeepEval) Frameworks that score LLM outputs against reference answers using model-based judges. quietset is judge-agnostic. It takes whatever scores or labels your judges produce and measures agreement across runs, budgets, models, or seeds.

Python bindings

crates/quietset-py provides Python bindings via pyo3 + maturin. Status: alpha / experimental — the core scoring API is wrapped but the interface may change. It is excluded from the Cargo workspace and from CI (cargo build/test --workspace never touches it); build and test it manually from within crates/quietset-py.

cd crates/quietset-py && maturin develop
import quietset
result = quietset.score_jsonl(
    '{"sample_id":"a","label":"win","score":0.9}\n'
    '{"sample_id":"a","label":"win","score":0.8}\n'
)
print(result)

The bindings currently expose a single function, score_jsonl, which scores a JSONL string with default settings and returns a JSONL string of results. The CLI is the stable interface with the full set of commands and options; use Python bindings for embedding basic scoring in existing Python pipelines where spawning a subprocess is impractical.

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0