Contract Reproducibility for Validation-Only Systems

This paper introduces contract reproducibility as a refutation-only, artifact-level criterion for validation-only systems. Unlike bitwise reproducibility, which compares binary outputs under identical builds and environments, contract reproducibility compares normative results extracted from evidence artifacts produced by validators claiming the same contract identity. The criterion explicitly rejects correctness, safety, compliance, trust, or system-level guarantees. Agreement carries no positive epistemic weight. Only divergence under fixed contract identity and canonical input refutes a conformance claim. The paper formalizes contract identity, canonical input identity, and normative result tuples, defines…