The same platform, four minor versions later

UNOFFICIAL/EXPERIMENTAL. This entry belongs to the AICR catalog overview. It retains AICR v0.18.0 from the same criteria as the v0.14.0 training entry, so the catalog now holds two retained versions of one platform and can say exactly what moved between them.

npm run aicr-training-v0180:verify

Why a second version rather than an upgrade

The brief also set a condition. A second version doubles the surface without adding a new shape, so it is only worth doing if it proves something new. It does, and the proof is below.

What was checked before the binary ran

This is the first AICR entry whose generating binary arrives with a verified provenance chain rather than a checksum alone.

The downloaded release asset matches the sha256 in the release's own aicr_checksums.txt, and that file's own hash is recorded so the check can be repeated against the same list. The tarball ships recipe-catalog.sigstore.json, and it is byte-identical to the copy this repository committed and verified offline with the signature lane. The binary reports build commit 1439f2fc, which is the commit named in the Fulcio certificate that the verified signature carries.

So the binary and the signature agree about which build produced them. The generation receipt also records what that does not cover: the signature attests the recipe catalog, not the binary, so the binary's provenance still rests partly on checksums served over HTTPS. Saying so is the difference between a provenance chain and a provenance impression.

The stricter resolver changed nothing here

v0.18.0 enforces stated-criteria coverage and fails fast when a recipe cannot satisfy its declared criteria. That was the one upstream change that could have altered what our criteria resolve to.

It resolved without complaint and produced the same fifteen components the v0.14.0 recipe declares. That is a real answer to a real question, and it is recorded in the receipt rather than assumed from a successful run.

What actually moved

npm run aicr-version-diff:verify

The version diff is computed from the committed bytes of both entries on every run, so it cannot drift from the entries it describes. The short version is that the platform did not change and the parts did. The component set is identical, the declared deployment order is identical, and both render seventeen Argo CD Applications. Nine components changed the chart version they pull, including the GPU Operator moving from 26.3.1 to 26.3.3, and one changed its versioning scheme entirely.

The scheduling change is the one that mattered to us

The distinct sync-wave count fell from sixteen to five while the number of Applications stayed the same. v0.14.0 gave every component its own wave, which is a strict sequence. v0.18.0 puts independent components in one wave, which is parallel deployment of everything that does not depend on anything else.

That broke two of our own checks, and both were wrong rather than upstream.

The digest-index compiler required the waves to be a contiguous unique range, which was a fair structural check when every component had its own wave and is simply false now. The ordering-parity lane compared the wave order against the recipe's deploymentOrder as a linearization, which a partial order cannot satisfy.

Both now check what the ordering was always meant to express. Every recipe carries the dependency edges its order was computed from, and the lane checks that each component's wave comes after the wave of everything it depends on. It checks deploymentOrder against the same edges, because a declared order that contradicts its own graph is worth catching. Seventeen edges hold in each entry, under both models.

An entry whose waves are all distinct is still held to the stronger claim that the rendered order equals the declared one exactly. An entry that groups them is not, and the ordering-parity record says which model each entry follows rather than flattening them into one rule.

One digest pins this entry too

The digest index pins the upstream source, the recipe criteria, and all seventeen rendered Applications under sha256:b9e5af994a0e1aeb2a055d43ccf88399c3d4faab880e1ae7ae03b06c14571575. It is compiled by the same compiler the other entries use.

What is proven and what is not

Proven: the generating binary's release asset matched its published checksum, it ships the signature bundle this repository verified offline, its build commit agrees with that signature, the criteria resolved under the stricter resolver to the same component set, every retained byte is pinned by one digest, and the dependency edges hold in the rendered waves.

Not proven, and stated rather than implied: this entry was never published, so it carries no public digest and no OCI transport receipts. It has no ConfigHub import, no variant, no promotion, and no delivery proof. The platform evidence record lists it with an empty ladder for exactly that reason. No GPU workload ran, no cluster was contacted, and one file had trailing spaces removed, which the receipt records as a normalization rather than passing off as upstream bytes.