Methodology change notice — GAP panel admission & benching; RunPod bench scheduled 2026-08-28

Notice date: 2026-08-20 (UTC; all dates in this notice are UTC) Class: methodology change (panel composition rule). Not a correction — no published value is restated. Instrument: gap_h100_spot (GAP-H100 spot; indicator class since notice 2026-08-14 §2) Effective: 2026-08-21 — the first print after this notice. Publish-before-effect (decision of record 2026-07-24 §2) is preserved: the notice is dated and published before any print it governs. History through 2026-08-20 stands as published. Rule pack: v1.1.0 (R-ADMIT-001; changelog 2026-08-20).

1. The admission rule

A GAP spot-panel leg must be, from the effective date:

1. A bookable or executable ask — a price a buyer can act on, not a brochure number. The basis of every registered leg is stated in the registry and on the provider register.
2. Fresh — a member leg whose price is unchanged for ≥ 14 consecutive days is BENCHED automatically. The threshold is proposed from the stored record (2026-06-12 → 2026-08-19, the reliable-label era): the executable-ask leg's longest unchanged run is 3 days; the posted leg (RunPod) has been unchanged for its entire stored life (first row 2026-05-10; 99 days on the 2026-08-19 provenance stamp). Fourteen days is twice the 7-day static threshold and 4.6× the live leg's historical maximum — a leg unchanged two weeks is a list price, not a market. An explicit future-dated bench in the registry (a scheduled bench) is itself a dated registry event and supersedes auto-bench until it binds: the leg remains a member, with its unchanged-days disclosed on every stamp, until the scheduled date arrives.
3. Qualified — a new leg passes a qualification window of 7 consecutive clean collection days before first inclusion. Admission on window completion is automatic; the admission date is a dated registry event. (The same shape as the OCPI 7-api-day qualification.)
4. Reliability-floored where the source exposes one — vast.ai offers enter only at reliability ≥ 0.95 (in force at ingest since methodology v3); sources with no exposed reliability signal carry that absence on their registry basis line.

Benched and qualifying legs keep being collected. Their rows are stored, shown on the provider register with the disposition and reason, and carried on the provenance stamp ("excluded from panel: …") — they never set the level and never count toward the minimum-observation rule (notice 2026-08-16). A panel reduced below the min-obs floor by benching withholds; it does not quietly re-admit a dead leg.

The registry is defined once and mirrored (scripts/velocity.py GAP_PANEL ↔ dashboard/lib/velocity.ts GAP_PANEL). From the effective date an unregistered provider's rows never enter the panel — admission is a dated registry event, never row arrival.

2. RunPod: bench scheduled for 2026-08-28

RunPod's posted, stock-gated list price has not changed in any stored cycle — ever (first row 2026-05-10; 99 days unchanged on the 2026-08-19 stamp; flagged static on every provenance stamp since the stamp existed). Stated plainly: auto-bench alone (§1.2) would bench RunPod at the effective date — on 2026-08-21 its unchanged-days count is already many times past the 14-day threshold. The founder instead schedules the bench for 2026-08-28 (ruling 2026-08-20) — the earliest date the replacement legs (§3) can complete their qualification windows — so the panel never thins below two members while the replacements qualify. The scheduled bench is an explicit future-dated registry event (benched_from: 2026-08-28, both runtimes) and supersedes auto-bench during the transition (§1.2); disclosure is continuous meanwhile — every print's provenance stamp carries RunPod's unchanged-days, exactly as it has since the stamp existed.

From 2026-08-28 collection continues untouched, the register and the stamp carry "runpod BENCHED", and the GAP level is computed without it. Published history is not revised. Reinstatement is a dated registry event requiring the leg to move again (a changed price resets the unchanged-days count the rule reads).

Consequence, stated plainly: no withheld streak is expected from this benching. RunPod remains a member until 2026-08-28 — the first date lambda and hyperstack (§3) are eligible for admission on completed qualification windows — so panel depth never decreases at the transition. The minimum-observation rule still governs each day on its own terms (a day fewer than two members contribute withholds — the rule working, not an outage). If qualification slips — a broken collection day resets a 7-consecutive-clean-day window — the scheduled bench date is amended by a further dated registry event before it binds; the bench never fires into a panel it would thin below two.

3. New qualifying legs

Registered QUALIFYING with collection from 2026-08-21 (first eligible after 7 consecutive clean collection days, i.e. 2026-08-28 at the earliest):

Thunder Compute is refused panel wiring (2026-08-20): its T&C (read of record data/governance/tos/thundercompute-terms-2026-08-20.txt; terms last updated 2025-05-21) bars systematic retrieval, automated collection, and commercial republication without written permission. It is not in the registry.

4. Deltas and downstream

The level is the panel; from the effective date the GAP like-for-like change also excludes non-member legs (the change measure matches the panel that prints the level). The GPI GPU-rental factor is unchanged (index-history continuity — it reads the full matched-pair basket, as it always has). The print's day-over-day delta remains composition-EXPOSED by construction; benching is a composition change and the narration gate carries it as such ("panel re-composition, not repricing").

5. Notice period, and the deviation it represents

One cycle (notice 2026-08-20 → effective 2026-08-21), against the specification's longer guidance, on the reasoning of notices 2026-08-14 §4 and 2026-08-16 §3: zero external subscribers, and no contract or ledger entry references the series. From the effective date the rule itself binds — the registry closes to unregistered rows, auto-bench is live for every leg without a scheduled event, and the qualification windows open. RunPod's own application is the scheduled event of §2: the founder weighs the disclosed static price (named, with its unchanged-days, on every stamp) against panel depth, and holds depth — the panel never thins below two while the replacement legs qualify, and the static condition stays disclosed on every print in the transition. If the deploying merge misses the 2026-08-21 cycle, the first governed print is 2026-08-22 — the effective date is a floor, never retroactive.

6. Record

• Rule: R-ADMIT-001, rule pack v1.1.0 (data/governance/rule_pack.json; changelog line 2026-08-20).
• Registry: scripts/velocity.py GAP_PANEL ↔ dashboard/lib/velocity.ts GAP_PANEL (parity-tested).
• Scheduled bench: founder ruling 2026-08-20 — RunPod benched_from: 2026-08-28 (rescheduled from 2026-08-21 to the earliest replacement-leg qualification date; panel depth never decreases; a further dated event amends the date if qualification slips).
• Evidence for the 14-day threshold: unchanged-run analysis of gpu_pricing H100 SXM benchmark rows 2026-06-12 → 2026-08-19 (vast.ai max run 3d; runpod run = entire span).
• Surfaces: provenance stamp ("excluded from panel: …"), /providers disposition badges and register roles, /api/print provenance (additive field excluded), specification page panel table.
• Auditor: nightly check panel_admission (from-effective-date, date-parameterised).