Artifact 1 · the headline series
The Restoration Gap
Sector-level spreads over official CPI, in percentage points on 12-month changes. Nothing prints here until the method has survived its own gates: a pre-committed retrospective test, negative controls, and external review.
placeholder · headline module — This page becomes the release hub: the latest sector Gaps with their decomposition (pricing-concept vs basket effects), the reconciliation table against CPI-U, C-CPI-U, and BLS research series, the coverage numbers, and the correction log. Until then, the schedule below is the commitment.
Release schedule
| When | Release | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2026 | Methods pre-registration + retrospective | The full codebook, frozen before live collection; the 2008–09 checked-bag reconstruction tested against a pre-committed band (BLS's own PPI correction and the published fee-offset literature are the benchmarks); one historical re-bundling episode shown printing negative |
| Q1 2027 | First print | Air travel (2025→2026 events under a pre-registered archival-denominator convention, labeled as such) + streaming (exact link — posted national prices) + groceries null test + banking negative control; external discussant review precedes publication |
| H2 2027 | The holistic turn | Rental housing flagship (mandatory-fee stack on a year-deep listings panel, with a posted-vs-realized audit), wireless (the July 2026 T-Mobile forced migration, assigned to its pre-registered link year), lodging with the FTC-rule compression test |
| 2028 | Composite | The bottom-40%-weighted covered-sector composite Gap, after a second external review round; annual cadence locked to Consumer Expenditure releases thereafter |
Standing falsification commitments
- Groceries should print ≈ 0 — CPI already converts shrinkflation to per-unit prices, and we reconcile against BLS's own R-CPI-SC counterfactual.
- Banking should print negative — overdraft and NSF revenue fell by more than half since 2019.
- Lodging's gap should compress after the FTC's May 2025 all-in pricing rule. If it doesn't, that's evidence against our seam — and it gets published.
- Every number re-derivable by a third party from the archived menu snapshots and open code, under documented access rules.
placeholder — Release notifications: a plain email list will live here before the Phase 0 note. No tracking, no feed of takes — releases only.