Process notice — check demand telemetry: the shape of what was asked, never the content
Notice date: 2026-08-25 (UTC)
Class: process disclosure (data collection on the /check surface). Not a methodology change to
any instrument — no print, level, series or assessment is touched by this notice.
Instrument: none. The check_events counter (migration 044) gains optional shape columns
(migration 045); no published series reads from them.
Effective: from the first deployment carrying this notice — and materially only after the
founder applies migration 045 via the audited runner. Until then the shaped write fails soft to
the legacy content-free row, so nothing new is recorded. Publish-before-effect (decision of
record 2026-07-24 §2) is satisfied: this disclosure ships in the same commit as the code and the
migration file, and precedes any shaped row existing.
1. What is recorded
On each check run at /check (or through the MCP check_quote tool), The Grid records only the
shape of what was asked:
| Field | Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| source | web · mcp |
| model class | the registry-normalised accelerator (H100, H200, B200, …) or empty |
| term bucket | spot · 6mo · 12mo · 24mo |
| coarse region | US · EU · APAC · unstated |
| read-state | n0 · thin · above-floor (against the published percentile floor) |
| price-present | true / false — whether a price was stated at all |
Every field is a closed vocabulary. Never recorded: the paste, any price, any free text, any off-registry model string, any IP address or identifier. An off-registry accelerator records as empty — the raw string is free text and never leaves the read.
2. Why
The register of what buyers ask to check — which classes, which terms, which regions, and whether the read could answer (n0 / thin / above-floor) — is the honest demand signal for what The Grid should build cover for next (DIRECTION.md: "gates are curricula" — every unanswerable check is a signal about what to extend). Recording the shape and refusing the content keeps the standing promise on the surface true: a check stores nothing you pasted unless you explicitly confirm storage.
3. The checks-run counter
A running count of checks renders near the check control only once 25 total checks have been run — below that floor nothing shows, and where the counter renders, the floor is stated beside it. The floor exists for the same reason the aggregate floors exist: a count of three is a disclosure about three visitors, not a statistic.
4. Where this is stated
- On /check, beside the check control: "we record what was asked for — model class, term bucket, coarse region, whether the read could answer — never what you pasted."
- This notice, permalinked at
/standards/notices/2026-08-25-check-demand-telemetry. - The column vocabularies are constrained in the database (migration 045 named CHECK
constraints) and defined once in the app layer (
dashboard/lib/check-core.ts telemetryShape).