{"site":"Upstream Zero — Commercial Evaluation Observatory","version":"0.1","firstLight":"2026-07-13","vocabulary":{"types":["claim","question","hypothesis","observation","experiment","finding","evidence","method","instrument","concept","revision","propagation","note","capability","engagement","deliverable","outcome"],"tiers":["Narrated","Observed","Replicated","Causally Supported","Cross Evaluator","Real World Corroborated"],"edgeRels":["supports","weakens","refutes","tests","derives-from","depends-on","supersedes","revises","made-with","part-of","follows","defines","cites","propagates","corroborated-by","evidenced-by","exercises","produces","delivered-by","measured-by","investigated-by"]},"counts":{"claim":3,"question":3,"hypothesis":2,"observation":0,"experiment":1,"finding":0,"evidence":0,"method":1,"instrument":0,"concept":6,"revision":0,"propagation":0,"note":1,"capability":2,"engagement":6,"deliverable":1,"outcome":0},"objects":[{"id":"C-0001","type":"claim","title":"Portions of commercial evaluation have become observable through AI evaluators' behavior","created":"2026-07-13","status":"active","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[],"tier":"Narrated","commercialRelevance":{"affectedBuyers":"Every organization whose vendors are screened by AI systems","affectedCategories":"All categories AI evaluators cover","potentialProductImpact":"Evaluation behavior that could never be studied can now be sampled and experimented on","currentConfidence":"Narrated. This is the founding observation, and it has not yet been demonstrated by our own published experiments."},"url":"/claims/C-0001","machineUrl":"/objects/C-0001"},{"id":"C-0002","type":"claim","title":"Evaluator-stated rationales are observations about the evaluator's narration, not evidence of mechanism","created":"2026-07-13","status":"active","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[],"tier":"Narrated","url":"/claims/C-0002","machineUrl":"/objects/C-0002"},{"id":"C-0003","type":"claim","title":"Organizations will increasingly maintain a machine representation alongside their human representation","created":"2026-07-13","status":"active","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[],"tier":"Narrated","commercialRelevance":{"affectedBuyers":"Organizations deciding how to present commercial capabilities to machine evaluators","affectedCategories":"All categories entering AI-mediated screening","potentialProductImpact":"Structured, verifiable commercial knowledge becomes an asset class distinct from marketing","currentConfidence":"Narrated — a prediction about the future, which no evidence tier above Narrated can currently support."},"url":"/claims/C-0003","machineUrl":"/objects/C-0003"},{"id":"Q-1","type":"question","title":"Do more faithful commercial representations lead to better selection outcomes?","created":"2026-07-13","status":"open","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"investigated-by","to":"H-2"}],"commercialRelevance":{"affectedBuyers":"Any organization selecting vendors through documents, demos, or AI-assisted screening","affectedCategories":"All considered-purchase B2B categories","potentialProductImpact":"If fidelity pays, investment shifts from persuasion volume to verifiable substance","currentConfidence":"This is an open question. We have not measured it."},"whatWouldCountAsAnAnswer":"Measured selection outcomes (buyer-reported fit, retention, post-purchase regret) compared across matched decisions made through representations of independently assessed fidelity.","url":"/questions/Q-1","machineUrl":"/objects/Q-1"},{"id":"Q-2","type":"question","title":"What is the relationship between AI evaluation and human buying-committee evaluation?","created":"2026-07-13","status":"open","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"investigated-by","to":"H-1"}],"commercialRelevance":{"affectedBuyers":"Buying committees whose members consult AI systems during evaluation","affectedCategories":"Categories where AI-assisted screening is becoming standard practice","potentialProductImpact":"Determines whether optimizing for AI evaluators matters at all — and how much","currentConfidence":"Unresolved. The bridge claim is the program's foundational assumption, held as a hypothesis."},"whatWouldCountAsAnAnswer":"Evidence discriminating between three distinct claims — AI evaluation resembles human evaluation, influences it, or is replacing it — each of which carries different implications for how far findings about AI evaluators generalize.","url":"/questions/Q-2","machineUrl":"/objects/Q-2"},{"id":"Q-3","type":"question","title":"How stable are AI evaluator recommendations across model versions, prompt phrasings, and repeated sampling?","created":"2026-07-13","status":"open","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[],"commercialRelevance":{"affectedBuyers":"Anyone relying on an AI evaluator's recommendation as if it were a stable fact","affectedCategories":"All categories surfaced in AI-assisted comparison and screening","potentialProductImpact":"If recommendations are noisy, single-shot \"AI visibility\" measurements are largely meaningless","currentConfidence":"Unmeasured by us. Instrument instability is a known risk (see FOUNDATIONAL_UNDERSTANDING, research risks)."},"whatWouldCountAsAnAnswer":"Published variance measurements: recommendation agreement rates across paraphrased prompts, temperature settings, sampling repeats, and model version changes, per evaluator class.","url":"/questions/Q-3","machineUrl":"/objects/Q-3"},{"id":"H-1","type":"hypothesis","title":"The bridge claim: AI evaluation influences, and increasingly mediates, human commercial evaluation","created":"2026-07-13","status":"open","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"derives-from","to":"Q-2"}],"predictions":["Buying decisions in AI-screened categories will show measurable dependence on evaluator recommendation behavior","Changes to a vendor's machine-legible representation will propagate to human shortlists via AI-assisted screening"],"refutationConditions":["Longitudinal evidence that AI evaluator outputs have no measurable effect on human shortlist composition or selection","Evidence that human committee evaluation and AI evaluation diverge so completely that findings about one predict nothing about the other"],"url":"/hypotheses/H-1","machineUrl":"/objects/H-1"},{"id":"H-2","type":"hypothesis","title":"More faithful commercial representations improve selection outcomes","created":"2026-07-13","status":"open","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"derives-from","to":"Q-1"}],"predictions":["Vendors whose representations survive independent fidelity checks will show better post-selection outcomes (fit, retention) than matched vendors whose representations do not","Evaluators given higher-fidelity representations will produce recommendations that buyers rate as better fits, measured after purchase"],"refutationConditions":["Measured selection outcomes that do not improve with representation fidelity","Evidence that persuasion volume, not verifiable substance, dominates selection outcomes even in evaluator-mediated channels"],"url":"/hypotheses/H-2","machineUrl":"/objects/H-2"},{"id":"EXP-0001","type":"experiment","title":"Client Zero baseline: propagation of this site's published objects into evaluator behavior","created":"2026-07-13","status":"draft — pre-registration pending founder approval","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"tests","to":"H-1"}],"predictions":["Within some measurable window after publication, evaluator outputs about Upstream Zero will begin to reflect published objects (by ID, claim wording, or tier vocabulary)","Corrections published as Revision objects will measurably change subsequent evaluator retrieval and narration about us"],"founderDecision":"FD-8","url":"/experiments/EXP-0001","machineUrl":"/objects/EXP-0001"},{"id":"M-1","type":"method","title":"Evidence tier definitions — the operational constitution","created":"2026-07-13","status":"under active development","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[],"founderDecision":"FD-1","url":"/methods/M-1","machineUrl":"/objects/M-1"},{"id":"client-zero","type":"concept","title":"Client Zero","created":"2026-07-13","status":"active","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"cites","to":"EXP-0001"}],"url":"/concepts/client-zero","machineUrl":"/objects/client-zero"},{"id":"commercial-evaluation-intelligence","type":"concept","title":"Commercial Evaluation Intelligence","created":"2026-07-13","status":"active","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[],"url":"/concepts/commercial-evaluation-intelligence","machineUrl":"/objects/commercial-evaluation-intelligence"},{"id":"commercial-evaluation","type":"concept","title":"Commercial evaluation","created":"2026-07-13","status":"active","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[],"url":"/concepts/commercial-evaluation","machineUrl":"/objects/commercial-evaluation"},{"id":"evidence-tier","type":"concept","title":"Evidence tier","created":"2026-07-13","status":"active","authors":["Upstream 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copy"],"founderDecision":"FD-6","url":"/engagements/ENG-2","machineUrl":"/objects/ENG-2"},{"id":"ENG-3","type":"engagement","title":"Evaluation Stability Measurement (provisional)","created":"2026-07-13","status":"provisional","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"exercises","to":"CAP-1"}],"serves":"Organizations making decisions based on single-shot AI evaluation results","requiresFromClient":"The evaluation contexts that matter to you (categories, prompts, evaluator classes)","nonPromises":["We do not promise stability — we measure it, whatever it turns out to be"],"founderDecision":"FD-6","url":"/engagements/ENG-3","machineUrl":"/objects/ENG-3"},{"id":"ENG-4","type":"engagement","title":"Ongoing Evaluation Monitoring (provisional)","created":"2026-07-13","status":"provisional","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"exercises","to":"CAP-1"}],"serves":"Organizations that need to know when evaluator behavior about them changes","requiresFromClient":"Baseline engagement (ENG-1 or ENG-3) completed first","nonPromises":["We do not promise favorable changes — we detect and report change, in either direction"],"founderDecision":"FD-6","url":"/engagements/ENG-4","machineUrl":"/objects/ENG-4"},{"id":"ENG-5","type":"engagement","title":"Machine Representation Advisory (provisional)","created":"2026-07-13","status":"provisional","authors":["Upstream Zero"],"edges":[{"rel":"exercises","to":"CAP-2"}],"serves":"Organizations building the structured, verifiable account of themselves that machine evaluators consume","requiresFromClient":"Willingness to publish only what can be substantiated","nonPromises":["We do not fabricate evidence, inflate claims, or optimize copy for persuasion","We do not promise evaluator behavior"],"founderDecision":"FD-6","url":"/engagements/ENG-5","machineUrl":"/objects/ENG-5"},{"id":"ENG-6","type":"engagement","title":"Research Partnership (provisional)","created":"2026-07-13","status":"provisional","authors":["Upstream 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