`collect_metadata_record` returns a JSON-safe record carrying an image's
provenance metadata regions -- never its pixels -- and the existing
`evidence_from_metadata_record` + `identify_from_evidence` build the verdict
from it without opening the file. The contract is equality with
`identify(path, metadata only)`, verified over the tracked fixtures and over a
local corpus of 3,478 images (every file carrying a rare signal, plus a random
slice): zero differences.
Three placements defeated earlier drafts and each is now a rule with a test:
the `scan_head` buffer is the head CONCATENATED with late metadata, so a
structural walk must read the raw head instead; Samsung splits its evidence
between a post-EOI trailer and the coded scan; and PIL's info keys must be
emitted in the file path's candidate order, since the first token match wins.
Also fix a real detection gap found while establishing that equality: a label
the decoder can read but a raw byte scan cannot -- a compressed PNG `zTXt`
packet, or a WebP XMP chunk past the scan window -- was invisible to
`identify`. Eight corpus files carrying a China TC260 AIGC label or an IPTC
"Made with AI" tag were reported as no signal at all.
`scripts/detection_timing.py` and its report script measure the metadata path
per method; they write outside the repository and are read-only over a dataset.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
