Chief Journal - 2026-08-10 (Evidence Before Assumption)

Executive Summary

August 10 corrected RasterDock’s physical-printer evidence and restored the safe probing design for the observed NELKO PL70e-BT. Two raw ESC/POS transfers produced no paper output. That negative result, together with NELKO’s proprietary macOS rastertolabel filter and lack of a published raw device-language contract, invalidated the inferred Beeprt/ESC-POS fixture.

The correction did not end the physical milestone. Captain clarified that the locked SPEC-003 design permits bounded, explicitly approved Class 2 probes. RasterDock now has isolated print-only TSPL, CPCL, and ZPL fixtures, each below 128 bytes, with unique confirmation phrases and a one-protocol-at-a-time USB harness. ESC/POS remains a recorded negative and is no longer selectable.

Correcting the Hardware Record

The USB identity 09c6:0426 was physically identified as a NELKO PL70e-BT. Two 74-byte ESC/POS transfers were accepted at the USB layer but produced no paper movement or printed output. Transfer acceptance therefore became delivery evidence only, not printing evidence.

RasterDock commit bafc9ca removed the invalid acceptance payload, renamed the descriptor contract around the observed NELKO identity, added a zero-I/O reclassification example, and updated the M2 specification and checkpoint. This kept the compatibility record honest: the device had not proven ESC/POS, ZPL, or any other raw language.

Restoring Bounded Staged Probing

The initial correction was too final. SPEC-003 already defines evidence-ranked, explicitly approved probing for unknown devices, and Captain directed the implementation back to that contract.

RasterDock commit cf02299 adds a dedicated rasterdock-probe crate with distinct TSPL, CPCL, and ZPL fixtures. Each probe is print-only, below 128 bytes, limited to at most one label, and carries a unique visible phrase. The USB harness exposes one protocol at a time so a successful or abnormal physical response can stop the sequence immediately.

The noQuirk cockpit records the aligned NQ-014 direction at commit 45dabb1, including migration 0024_record_bounded_pl70e_probing.sql.

Verification and Current Boundary

The 17-crate RasterDock workspace passed tests, strict Clippy, warnings-as-errors documentation, RustSec auditing, dependency-boundary checks, formatting, and diff review. The noQuirk cockpit passed all 9 tests and its production build/typecheck. Both repositories are clean and synchronized with their private remotes.

The evidence boundary remains strict. A successful USB write proves only that bytes reached the device. It does not prove that the printer understood the language or rendered the intended label.

The next action is deliberately singular: run the TSPL probe first. Any paper movement, printed output, or error ends the probing step and must be reported before CPCL or ZPL is considered.

Public credentials, private identifiers beyond the observed USB device identity, and customer content have been intentionally excluded.