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Victor KuznetsovandClaude Opus 4.8 633fc3aa52 Report failed writes instead of crashing, and reject directories at parse time 
The Tier E adversarial sweep (new, scripts/robustness_suite.py) drove the real CLI
over truncated, corrupt, zero-byte, absurdly-shaped and bomb inputs, unicode and
RTL paths, hostile output directories and concurrent runs. It found two crashes;
the /simplify review then reproduced a third and worse one.

1. A FAILED WRITE CRASHED ON THE SIZE REPORT. image_io.imwrite is contractually
   non-raising and returns False, but write_bgr_with_alpha discarded that bool and
   returned None, so no caller could tell a failed write from a successful one.
   Every write site then ran output.stat() to print the size, so a read-only
   destination died with a bare FileNotFoundError pointing at the stat rather than
   the write. The fix is deliberately NOT uniform: single-image commands exit via
   the new cli._write_output_or_exit; api._write_visible_result RAISES so a library
   caller gets an accurate error instead of a confusing FileNotFoundError from the
   downstream metadata strip; and the batch sites raise but never SystemExit,
   because the batch loop counts per-image exceptions and aborting would kill the
   whole run.

2. BATCH LOST DATA SILENTLY. Into a read-only output directory it wrote ZERO files
   for 2 inputs and exited 0 -- no traceback, no error, an empty output directory a
   wrapping service would read as a completed run. The robustness harness could not
   see this class at all, since it scored exit codes and traceback markers and this
   failure has neither; it now asserts on the artifacts written.

3. A DIRECTORY PASSED AS THE IMAGE crashed the metadata scanner with
   IsADirectoryError, because click.Path(exists=True) accepts directories. Fixed
   with dir_okay=False on all six source arguments, so argument parsing refuses it.

Also adds Tier B4 (scripts/resource_ceilings.py): peak RSS per fill backend from
1 MP to 25 MP, one fresh process per cell. migan 603->775 MB and lama 4679->4779 MB
are flat in input size, confirming the crop-around-the-mask design and both
documented figures; cv2 is the only backend that grows (74->440 MB, 5.9x). The
harness's own no-op check originally allocated a full-frame temp before reading
peak RSS and inflated the numbers with input size -- it now compares only the mask
box, and the conclusion survived re-measurement.

And scripts/real_examples_e2e.py, which drives every command over real corpus
examples and checks the outcome rather than the exit code: 6/6 provenance classes
identified, 10/10 metadata strips re-scan clean, all three fill backends write,
diffusion on MPS writes genuinely changed images. It records samsung as a real
partial (the faintest mark, 0.431 -> 0.404 against a 0.40 gate on the weakest of
its 3 corpus positives) and treats the gated pill's refusal to act as correct.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-20 22:45:02 -07:00

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# Module internals
> Relocated verbatim from `CLAUDE.md` on 2026-06-11 to keep the always-loaded
> context small. Long single-line entries were reformatted into paragraphs;
> no content was changed or summarized.
Full per-module detail: design decisions, tuned thresholds, calibration
history, incident records, and the regression-guard map. The compact module
list lives in `CLAUDE.md`; read the relevant section here before changing a
module.
## `noai/c2pa.py`
`noai/c2pa.py` — C2PA reading, **official c2pa-python `Reader` first, hand-rolled parser as fallback** (migrated 2026-06-18; the official lib is a core dep, MIT/Apache, spec-tracking). `read_manifest_store_json(path)` runs `Reader.try_create` with a default `Context` (NO trust enforcement — we report what is in the file, we do not gate on cert trust) and returns the **whole** manifest-store JSON (every manifest plus ingredient manifests); it is memoized per (path, mtime) (`lru_cache(maxsize=8)`) because one `identify`/`get_ai_metadata` call invokes the structured parser ~3x on the same file. `extract_c2pa_info(path)` builds its dict from that store JSON (`_info_from_store_json`: structured `claim_generator` from the active manifest's `claim_generator` / `claim_generator_info[].name`, `timestamp` from `signature_info.time`) and falls back to the legacy caBX parser (`_extract_c2pa_info_png`) when the reader is unavailable (broken/absent wheel, `reader_available()` False) or finds no parseable manifest (synthetic/partial test blobs, the inject round-trip's re-stitched chunk). **Both paths share `_populate_registry_fields(buf, info)`** — the issuer / AI-tool / action / source-type / SynthID / soft-binding registry byte-scan applied to the store JSON (reader path) or the raw caBX bytes (fallback) — so the return-dict shape is identical and the registry stays the single source of truth. Whole-store scanning is load-bearing: a ChatGPT *edit* of a Sora generation keeps `trainedAlgorithmicMedia` + issuer "OpenAI" on the **parent/ingredient** manifest, not the active "opened" one (the active manifest's `signature_info.issuer` is "OpenAI", `common_name` "Truepic Lens CLI in Sora", so the issuer field now reads "OpenAI, Truepic" — first-match-wins platform attribution still resolves OpenAI). `extract_c2pa_info` now also serves non-PNG containers (JPEG/AVIF/MP4) structurally via the reader; the consumers (`identify`, `synthid_source`, `get_ai_metadata`) already merge `info OR byte-scan`, so this strictly upgrades the non-PNG path with no double-counting. `synthid_watermark`/`synthid_vendors` is set when the manifest is signed by a SynthID-using vendor on AI content; `soft_binding`/`soft_binding_vendors` when a `c2pa.soft-binding` `alg` names a forensic-watermark vendor (`soft_binding_vendors_in(buffer)` is the shared byte-scan, used by both paths and the non-PNG binary path). `extract_c2pa_chunk` / `inject_c2pa_chunk` / `has_c2pa_metadata` stay the PNG caBX byte tools (raw-chunk extraction for `extractor.py`, test injection, fallback detection). PNG/caBX chunk reads are clamped to the remaining file size (`safe_length = min(length, remaining)`; skipped chunks use seek) so a malformed huge `length` cannot drive a multi-GB allocation (shared safety discipline matching `isobmff.scan_c2pa_region`). Regression-guarded by `tests/test_noai.py::TestC2PARealSamples::{test_extract_info_uses_reader_store,test_fallback_to_png_parser_when_reader_unavailable}`.
## `noai/constants.py`
`noai/constants.py` — PNG_SIGNATURE, C2PA_CHUNK_TYPE, C2PA_SIGNATURES, and `C2PA_AI_VENDORS` — the single `C2paAiVendor` registry of C2PA-signing vendors (issuer byte, resolved org name, the `identify` platform label, and a `synthid` flag), from which `C2PA_ISSUERS`, `SYNTHID_C2PA_ISSUERS` (issuers that pair SynthID with C2PA: Google, OpenAI), and `identify._ISSUER_PLATFORM` are all **derived** — plus `C2PA_SOFT_BINDINGS` (soft-binding `alg` prefix → forensic-watermark vendor: Adobe TrustMark, Digimarc, Imatag, Steg.AI, Microsoft, ...). Add a new C2PA vendor as one `C2PA_AI_VENDORS` entry (never edit the derived dicts), a new soft-binding to `C2PA_SOFT_BINDINGS`; not inline. A vendor that signs under multiple legal names needs one entry PER distinctive issuer byte string: e.g. ByteDance's Volcano Engine is registered both as latin `volcengine` AND the Chinese legal entity `北京火山引擎科技有限公司` (UTF-8; the latin needle misses the Chinese-named certs entirely) — both normalize to the same "ByteDance" needle/platform. ElevenLabs ("Eleven Labs Inc.", pure generative-AI) is registered as a generator. A vendor may also set **`asserts_ai=True`** — its presence asserts AI generation even without a `trainedAlgorithmicMedia` digital-source-type; the derived `C2PA_IDENTITY_AI_ORGS` frozenset feeds `identify`, which lifts the AI verdict for such an issuer. Set it ONLY for a pure-generator brand with a distinctive issuer/generator string: **Dreamina** (ByteDance's international Jimeng brand, signed as "Bytedance Pte. Ltd." with a `Dreamina/x.y` claim generator and NO source-type — the caBX / store-JSON byte-scan sees the `Dreamina` token across active + ingredient manifests, where the active one is often a plain `c2pa-tool` transcode; verified on the retained corpus 2026-07; normalizes to the shared "ByteDance" needle/platform). Do NOT set `asserts_ai` on common-word issuers (Adobe/Google/OpenAI/Microsoft) — they appear incidentally in unrelated XMP/trust-chain bytes, so they must stay source-type-gated. Deliberately EXCLUDED (mined-corpus candidates 2026-06-20, documented in the file): TikTok Inc. (a content-provenance / AI-labeling signer on uploads, not a generator) and PixelBin.io / "Fynd" (an image transform / CDN signer) — registering either as a generator would mis-label human uploads as AI; the `is_ai` verdict keys off the digitalSourceType, which is already honored.
## `metadata.py`
`metadata.py` — `scan_head(path, size=1MB)` is the shared input for every C2PA/AIGC/IPTC byte scan: first `size` bytes plus the payloads of any provenance metadata found beyond that window — for ISOBMFF, the late provenance boxes from `isobmff.scan_c2pa_region` (catches a manifest after a large `mdat`); for **PNG**, the late `tEXt`/`iTXt`/`zTXt`/`eXIf`/`iCCP` chunks from `_png_late_metadata` (catches an XMP/EXIF packet appended after a large `IDAT`, e.g. a TC260 AIGC label at ~2.7 MB). Behavior-neutral (`f.read(size)`) for non-ISOBMFF inputs and for any file that fits within `size`. Use it instead of `open().read(1MB)` for any new marker scan.
**Memoized per (path, size, mtime)** (added 2026-06-09, `_scan_head_cached` lru_cache, `maxsize=8`): one `identify`/`get_ai_metadata` call fans out to ~8 byte-scan detectors that each re-read the same file head, so the cache turns those into a single read; the mtime key invalidates on change, a stat failure falls back to an uncached read. `synthid_source(path)` returns the vendor name(s) if the C2PA manifest implies a SynthID pixel watermark, else None. Format-agnostic: PNG via the caBX parser, JPEG/WebP/AVIF/HEIF/JXL via a binary scan (C2PA marker + SynthID issuer + AI-source marker). `get_ai_metadata` surfaces the verdict, and `metadata --check` prints it as a callout. Both `get_ai_metadata` and `has_ai_metadata` guard the PIL open with `except Exception` (HEIC/unknown formats raise non-OSError) and fall through to the binary scan. `xai_signature(path)` detects xAI/Grok's EXIF-only scheme (`ImageDescription` = `Signature: <base64>` + UUID `Artist`); it feeds `has_ai_metadata`, `get_ai_metadata` (key `xai_signature`), and `identify`. `iptc_ai_system(path)` detects the IPTC Photo Metadata 2025.1 AI-disclosure XMP properties (`IPTC_AI_FIELD_MARKERS` = `AISystemUsed`/`AISystemVersionUsed`/`AIPromptInformation`/`AIPromptWriterName`) and returns the `AISystemUsed` generator name (or `"fields present"`). `remove_ai_metadata` routes **ISOBMFF video** (`.mp4`/`.mov`/`.m4v`) through the same `isobmff.strip_c2pa_boxes` as AVIF/HEIF (MP4 is ISOBMFF), and `_scrub_ai_exif` removes the xAI signature + AI-generator EXIF tags on JPEG output. `strip_c2pa_boxes` is **fail-safe** on a malformed box: it returns the original bytes unchanged with a logged warning instead of truncating the tail to EOF (detection-only `scan_c2pa_region` still stops at a malformed box). `_png_late_metadata` clamps each late-chunk read to the remaining file size (`safe_length = min(length, remaining)`) so a malformed `length` cannot drive a multi-GB allocation, AND advances the cursor by `safe_length` (not the raw `length`) so an inflated length cannot jump past EOF and abort the scan, silently skipping a genuine AI-label chunk after it.
## `identify.py`
`identify.py` — the OpenAI rollout caveat is keyed on `_vendor_of(synthid) == "OpenAI"` (not a raw substring over the issuer + verdict blob). `identify(path)` aggregates every locally-readable signal (C2PA issuer→platform, C2PA soft-binding forensic-watermark vendor, **C2PA cloud-manifest reference** via `metadata.c2pa_cloud_manifest` — signal `c2pa_cloud`, **medium**, provenance-only (does NOT set `is_ai`, excluded from `ai_from_metadata` + clash vendors): a C2PA 2.4 Durable-Content-Credentials case where the embedded manifest is stripped but an XMP `dcterms:provenance` pointer to the vendor's cloud manifest store (`_C2PA_MANIFEST_REPOSITORIES`, today `cai-manifests.adobe.com` → "Adobe Content Authenticity") survives, so the credentials stay recoverable server-side; only emitted when no embedded manifest already attributed the file — surfaced on 2 corpus PNGs 2026-06-10 that read fully `unknown` before, IPTC "Made with AI" + IPTC 2025.1 `AISystemUsed`, embedded SD/ComfyUI params, SynthID proxy, xAI/Grok EXIF signature via `metadata.xai_signature`, the China TC260 AIGC label via `metadata.aigc_label`, the HuggingFace `hf-job-id` job marker via `metadata.huggingface_job`, the Samsung Galaxy AI editing marker via `metadata.samsung_genai`, the visible marks — Gemini sparkle plus the ByteDance Doubao 豆包AI生成 / Jimeng 即梦AI / Samsung Galaxy AI "Contenuti generati dall'AI" text marks via the `watermark_registry` — open invisible watermark, Adobe TrustMark via `trustmark_detector`) into one `ProvenanceReport`. `is_ai_generated` is True or None (never asserted False — stripped metadata is not proof of clean origin). The `hf_job`, visible-mark, and Samsung `samsung_genai` signals are **medium** confidence: each lifts an otherwise-Unknown verdict to a tentative AI (`hf_only` / `visible_only` / `samsung_only`, parallel branches; `visible_only` fires on any `visible_*` signal) but is excluded from the high-confidence `ai_from_metadata` set, so none overrides a hard metadata signal.
**AI-generated vs AI-enhanced** (`ProvenanceReport.ai_source_kind`, roadmap item): the C2PA digital-source-type is split into `"generated"` (trainedAlgorithmicMedia, fully synthetic) vs `"enhanced"` (compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia, a real photo with an AI-composited region) — the two byte strings are unambiguous (`compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia` capitalizes the inner "Trained", so a lowercase `trainedAlgorithmicMedia` match is standalone full generation; full generation wins when both appear). `ai_source_kind` is set only when the AI verdict actually came from the C2PA source type (a non-C2PA AI signal — IPTC/AIGC/local gen/xAI — leaves it None). It lets a caller branch a full-frame scrub (`generated`) from a region-targeted clean that preserves the real photo (`enhanced`; see `noai/tiling.feather_region_composite`). The CLI verdict line reads "AI-generated (fully synthetic)" vs "AI-enhanced (real content with an AI-composited region)".
**Visible-mark detection** (`check_visible`, signals `visible_sparkle` / `visible_doubao` / `visible_jimeng` / `visible_samsung`): the Gemini sparkle keeps its own file-level path (`_visible_sparkle` → `gemini_engine.detect_sparkle_confidence`, promoted only at confidence ≥ `_SPARKLE_THRESHOLD`, which is the SHARED `watermark_registry.GEMINI_SPARKLE_TRUST_CONF` (0.5) — imported, not a private copy, so the provenance detect threshold and the removal `detect_marks` / `_gemini_detect` arbitration gate can never drift (the detect-vs-remove desync from roadmap P0#7; regression-guarded by `tests/test_identify.py::TestSparkleDetectRemoveAlignment`, which composites the real demo sparkle at borderline opacities and asserts identify and `detect_marks` AGREE on either side of the line). Lowering the gate to recover faint sub-0.5 sparkles was evaluated 2026-06-20 and REJECTED: a real Doubao text mark scores ~0.40-0.42 as a gemini match with a HIGHER core-ring brightness margin than a genuine faint sparkle, so neither confidence nor the brightness gate separates them in the [0.35, 0.5) band — lowering trades a rare miss for false-positive removals on clean images. Corpus-tuned to separate Gemini sparkles ≥0.56 from non-sparkle ≤0.49), while Doubao/Jimeng/Samsung reuse the registry detectors (`_visible_text_marks` → `watermark_registry`, iterating `_VISIBLE_MARK_PLATFORM`), each gated by its own engine NCC threshold via `MarkDetection.detected` (Doubao 0.4, Jimeng 0.45, Samsung 0.4). Doubao/Jimeng are normally also caught by the TC260 AIGC metadata label and Samsung by its C2PA + `genAIType` marker, so the visible path is their stripped-metadata fallback. Visible marks set `platform` only when no harder signal already did, and (like the sparkle) are excluded from integrity-clash vendor claims. The cv2 dependency lives in the engines, not here.
**`import identify` is deliberately light** (~26 MB; ~36 MB with cv2 loaded by a visible-mark run, ~106 MB for a full `check_visible` run): it imports the `noai.c2pa`/`noai.constants` submodules, and `noai/__init__` is lazy (see "Test and lint"), so torch/diffusers are NOT pulled at import even in a full `gpu`/`detect` install — fits a 512 MB host. `noai.c2pa` does eagerly import the **c2pa-python** binary (Rust + cryptography, ~+5 MB RSS, no torch) for the primary `Reader` path — light enough to stay on the dependency-light host; a broken/absent wheel degrades to the byte-scan parser (`reader_available()` False). The heavy paths are opt-in: `check_invisible=True` needs the `detect`/`trustmark` extras (each pulls **torch**; TrustMark also **downloads weights**), so on a core-only deploy leave `check_invisible` off (it is a no-op there anyway). Before the lazy `__init__`, the mere presence of torch in the env inflated `import identify` to ~420 MB.
**C2PA platform attribution is device-token-first, issuer-scan fallback** (`_device_platform` scans manifest bytes for `_DEVICE_C2PA_PLATFORM` tokens, then `_attribute_platform`/`_ISSUER_PLATFORM`).
**Why, verified on real signed files 2026-05-26:** the old issuer-only byte-scan matched ANY issuer substring anywhere, so multi-entity manifests mis-attributed -- Leica→"Truepic" (a signing authority in the trust chain), Nikon→"Adobe Firefly" (XMP-toolkit "Adobe" + the sample's "Adobe_MAX" name), Pixel→"Google (Gemini)" ("Google LLC" cert org), Truepic→"Google". A distinctive device token wins instead.
**Token distinctiveness is load-bearing:** bare `b"Truepic"` mis-fires (it appears in unrelated trust chains -- it mis-attributed the OpenAI `chatgpt-1.png` fixture), so the token is the specific `b"Truepic_Lens"` from the Lens SDK claim generator; likewise `b"Pixel Camera"` (cert CN) not bare `b"Pixel"`. `_DEVICE_C2PA_PLATFORM` lists ONLY tokens **verified against a real C2PA file**: Leica (`lc_c2pa`/`Leica Camera`), Nikon (`NIKON`), Pixel (`Pixel Camera` -- from a real Pixel 10 Pro file attached to c2pa-rs issue #1609/#1554), Sony (`sony.sig`/`sony.cert` -- Sony's own C2PA assertion namespace, verified on a real Sony PXW-Z300 file; NOT bare "Sony" which is a common EXIF Make), Truepic (`Truepic_Lens`). Canon/Bria have **no public direct-download C2PA sample** (checked exhaustively: GitHub issue/PR attachments, contentcredentials gallery, HF datasets -- all upload-to-verify or token-gated; Canon's only public file was a self-signed hobbyist CR3, not factory), so they stay unmapped until a real file is captured (same fixture discipline as Grok/Doubao). The Sony sample is video (MP4) -- our ISOBMFF C2PA path detects it; Sony Alpha stills likely share the `sony.*` namespace but are not separately verified.
**Samsung Galaxy + ASUS Gallery live in a separate `_SIGNER_C2PA_PLATFORM` (scanned after `_device_platform`, before the issuer fallback), NOT in `_DEVICE_C2PA_PLATFORM`** — verified on real signed files 2026-05-29. Reason: a Galaxy phone stamps BOTH its device cert AND a `trainedAlgorithmicMedia`/genAIType AI marker on a Generative-Edit image, so treating it as a "genuine camera capture" would false-fire integrity-clash rule 2 on every Galaxy AI edit. The signer tokens (`b"Samsung Galaxy"` cert org — distinct from the EXIF `SM-xxxx` model string on ordinary Samsung photos; `b"com.asus.gallery"` claim generator) only resolve the platform label; the AI verdict still comes from the source-type / genAIType. ASUS Gallery is a C2PA-signed edit with no AI marker, so it attributes the platform without asserting `is_ai`.
**Samsung's `genAIType` (in the proprietary `PhotoEditor_Re_Edit_Data` JSON) is an undocumented Galaxy-AI editing marker** (`metadata.samsung_genai`, gated on the `PhotoEditor_Re_Edit_Data` container; non-zero value = AI tool used, values {1,5} observed; Galaxy AI appends it as a trailer AFTER the JPEG EOI, so `samsung_genai` reads the file TAIL when the 512 KB quick-scan head misses it — else a multi-MB photo's trailer past the window went undetected while removal, which reads the whole file, would still strip it; removal truncates the post-EOI Samsung trailer via `metadata._strip_samsung_trailer`, pixels bit-identical): medium-confidence because the field has no public spec (verified 2026-05-29: absent from C2PA spec + Samsung docs), but it co-occurred with `trainedAlgorithmicMedia` in 3/3 verified files that record a source-type and was the SOLE AI marker on a Galaxy S24 file that omits the source type. Camera C2PA marks capture authenticity, not AI (Pixel carries `computationalCapture`, not `trainedAlgorithmicMedia`), so these never set `is_ai` -- that stays driven by digital-source-type. `c2pa.cbor_text_after` (now public) is best-effort for the `generator` detail string only and can be None when the manifest keys it `claim_generator_info` (Pixel).
**Issuer→generator mapping is `is_ai`-gated** (`_attribute_platform(issuers, is_ai=c2pa_is_ai)`): a specific AI-generator platform is named only when the digital-source-type is `trainedAlgorithmicMedia`; on a non-AI source an issuer substring is treated as incidental (an "Adobe XMP" toolkit string in an *unmapped* Canon/Sony capture would otherwise mislabel it "Adobe Firefly"), so it degrades to the neutral "C2PA signer: X" label. **The one exception is an identity-AI issuer** (`c2pa_is_ai = c2pa_source_kind is not None or c2pa_identity_ai`, where `c2pa_identity_ai` is any resolved issuer org in `C2PA_IDENTITY_AI_ORGS`): a vendor flagged `asserts_ai` (today only Dreamina) sets `c2pa_is_ai` True on its own, so its platform resolves even though the manifest carries no `trainedAlgorithmicMedia`. This is safe precisely because the flag is restricted to distinctive brand strings, not the incidental-mention-prone common words. Real Firefly/OpenAI/Google output carries the AI source-type, so it is unaffected (verified: chatgpt-1.png→OpenAI, firefly-1.png→Adobe Firefly still attribute). `_attribute_platform` defaults `is_ai=True` so the mapping stays unit-testable in isolation. Add capture-camera tokens to `_DEVICE_C2PA_PLATFORM`, editing-app/AI-device signer tokens to `_SIGNER_C2PA_PLATFORM`, generator/issuer platforms to the `C2PA_AI_VENDORS` registry in `constants.py` (which derives `_ISSUER_PLATFORM`), not inline. For non-PNG containers (JPEG/WebP/AVIF/HEIF/JXL) the caBX parser returns nothing, so issuer (`_issuers_in`) and generator (`_ai_tools_in`, reusing `C2PA_AI_TOOLS`) are recovered by binary-scanning the first MB. EXIF `Software` / `Make` / `Artist` / `ImageDescription`, XMP `CreatorTool`, and PNG `tEXt` chunks (`Software`/`Source`/`Title`/`Description` — NovelAI stamps its generator there, not EXIF) are read by `metadata.exif_generator` (PIL+piexif for any format PIL opens incl. AVIF, plus a container-agnostic XMP raw-byte scan that also covers HEIF/JXL), matched against `AI_GENERATOR_TOKENS` so ordinary editors (plain "Adobe Photoshop") and real-camera `Make` ("Apple"/"Canon") are not flagged. Tokens mined from the retained corpus 2026-06-22: `novelai`, `reve.com` (full token, not bare `reve`), `aphrodite ai` — all no-C2PA generator stamps that previously read as no-signal (and under the P0#5 no-signal skip would have skipped the scrub).
**Ideogram tags its output with EXIF `Make="Ideogram AI"`** (verified on a real download 2026-05-24) — that's why `Make` is read.
**Integrity-clash detection** (`_integrity_clashes`, surfaced as `ProvenanceReport.integrity_clashes`, printed in red by `identify` and serialized to `--json`): contradictions between independent generator stamps are a laundering/spoofing tell. Two rules: (1) two or more distinct AI-origin vendors named by **independent** signals (e.g. C2PA OpenAI + EXIF `Make="Ideogram AI"`), and (2) a camera-capture C2PA device (`_DEVICE_C2PA_PLATFORM`) coexisting with an AI-generation marker **from a source INDEPENDENT of the camera's own manifest**.
**Rule 2's independence gate (added 2026-06-11):** a device that both captures and runs on-device generative AI (Google Pixel Magic Editor / Pixel Studio) records the capture AND the AI edit in ONE C2PA manifest — so the AI vendor is named only from that same manifest (`c2pa` issuer + `synthid` proxy, both `c2pa_manifest` source) — a legitimate edit chain, NOT a clash. Rule 2 therefore fires only when some `ai_vendor_claims` family has a source `!= "c2pa_manifest"` (EXIF/XMP generator, IPTC, TC260 AIGC, a second manifest naming AI on a camera capture — the real laundering tell). This killed a false-positive class on the corpus: 2 real Pixel generative-edit PNGs (`computationalCapture` + `trainedAlgorithmicMedia` + "Applied imperceptible SynthID watermark" in one Google manifest) read as camera-vs-AI clashes before the gate. Pure cameras (Leica/Sony/Nikon/Truepic) that do NOT generate AI still clash on any within-manifest AI marker only if it is independent — they never legitimately carry one, so the gate is behavior-neutral for them while fixing Pixel (regression-guarded by `test_identify.py::TestIntegrityClashesHelper::{test_pixel_generative_edit_same_manifest_no_clash,test_camera_plus_independent_ai_marker_still_clashes}` + `TestIntegrityClashEndToEnd::test_pixel_generative_edit_no_clash`).
**Independence is source-grouped (`_CLASH_SOURCE`, added 2026-06-02):** the C2PA issuer attribution (`c2pa`) and the SynthID proxy (`synthid`) are NOT independent — the proxy is inferred from the *same* manifest — so they share one source and two vendors named within a single manifest do not clash. This killed a false-positive class found on the spaces corpus: legitimate multi-actor manifests where a product wraps another vendor's engine (Microsoft Designer on OpenAI → `OpenAI, Microsoft`; Microsoft on Google → `Microsoft, Google LLC, Google C2PA Core Generator Library`) or an edit chain re-signs (Adobe over a Gemini original → Adobe c2pa + Google synthid) — 19 such files across the 2026-06-01/02 batches read as clashes before the fix. Rule 1 still fires when a manifest vendor disagrees with a genuinely independent stamp (EXIF/XMP generator, IPTC `AISystemUsed`, AIGC, xAI); each non-`c2pa`/`synthid` family is its own source (`test_identify.py::TestIntegrityClashes::{test_multi_actor_manifest_no_clash,test_manifest_vendor_vs_independent_signal_clashes}`). Vendor normalization is `_vendor_of` over `_AI_VENDOR_TOKENS` (so a C2PA "Google (Gemini)" issuer and a SynthID-Google proxy agree, while different vendors clash). `_AI_VENDOR_TOKENS` covers ByteDance (all brands: bytedance/doubao/jimeng/dreamina/volcengine), Canva, ElevenLabs, and Black Forest Labs in addition to the OpenAI/Google/Adobe/... set — without them a transplanted ByteDance/Canva/BFL C2PA manifest next to an independent conflicting stamp was silently missed. **The generic `China AIGC (TC260)` label names no SPECIFIC vendor** (any Chinese generator applies it), so it cannot vendor-conflict in the spoofing sense: when a Chinese TC260-applying vendor (`_TC260_VENDORS`, today `{ByteDance}`) is co-attributed, Rule 1 attributes the label to that vendor (a legit Doubao image carries BOTH a ByteDance C2PA manifest and its own TC260 label and must not clash); against a NON-TC260 vendor (OpenAI etc.) the label stays generic and still clashes as a laundering tell (`test_bytedance_c2pa_plus_own_aigc_no_clash`, `test_foreign_vendor_plus_aigc_still_clashes`, `test_bytedance_c2pa_plus_foreign_generator_clashes`). Corpus-validated: 0 new clashes on 5000 ByteDance/AIGC/Canva/FLUX carriers.
**High-precision by design:** only hard generator stamps feed it (C2PA-issuer when source is AI, SynthID, EXIF/XMP generator, IPTC `AISystemUsed`, xAI, AIGC); the fuzzy visible sparkle and the open invisible watermark are **excluded** (both are low-precision/positive-only signals; the open watermark was also historically a by-product of our own SDXL removal pass, until `watermark_remover` was fixed to load the SDXL pipelines with `add_watermarker=False` — it stays excluded as a fuzzy signal regardless). The c2pa vendor is classified from the issuer attribution / generator, NOT the resolved `platform` (a camera label like "Google Pixel" would mis-normalize to "Google"). All real single-origin fixtures (chatgpt/firefly/doubao/grok/mj) verified to produce **zero** clashes (false-positive guard in `test_identify.py::TestRealSamplesHaveNoClash`).
**`ai_from_metadata` field + `has_invisible_target` helper (P0#5, 2026-06-22):** the high-confidence union (everything that sets `confidence == "high"`: C2PA AI-issuer / SynthID proxy, IPTC, AIGC, local gen params, EXIF/xAI, open DWT-DCT / TrustMark — the medium-confidence `hf_only`/`visible_only`/`samsung_only` are excluded) is now surfaced as the public `ProvenanceReport.ai_from_metadata` boolean, so callers gate on intent rather than on the `confidence` string. `has_invisible_target(path)` wraps `identify(path, check_visible=False, check_invisible=True)` and returns that field — it is the decision gate for the diffusion scrub (the CLI `invisible`/`all`/`batch` no-signal skip, `cli._no_invisible_signal_exit`): a visible-only or no-signal image has it False, so regeneration (which would only degrade a clean image) does not run. It fails SAFE — any detector exception returns True so the removal still runs (leaving a watermark on a paid removal is worse than over-regenerating). It does NOT prove a pixel SynthID is absent (SynthID is detectable only via its metadata proxy, gone once stripped), so a False means "no locally-detectable target", never "clean". Guarded by `test_identify.py::{TestIdentifyRealSamples::test_has_invisible_target_*,TestHasInvisibleTargetFailSafe}`.
## `watermark_registry.py`
`watermark_registry.py` — **single catalog of known visible watermarks**, the unified "find known marks in their usual places, recognize, remove" entry.
**Localize -> fill by policy (replaced reverse-alpha):** each mark is localized to a binary full-frame footprint mask (a `Localization`), and one shared, swappable fill inpaints that mask via `fill(image, mask, backend=...)` (delegates to `region_eraser.erase`). This replaced the old reverse-alpha removal (invert a captured alpha map, `original = (wm - a*logo)/(1-a)`, plus a thin residual inpaint) for ALL marks — gemini, doubao, jimeng, samsung, and jimeng_pill. **Why it changed:** reverse-alpha depended on a fixed captured alpha map at a fixed position, so it broke whenever a vendor moved or re-rendered its mark; and it was not color-lossless even with the right map (it amplifies 8-bit quantization and JPEG-chroma error by `1/(1-a)`), which showed up as "the color just changed, not removed" reports. Localize -> fill has a benign failure mode: a slightly-off localization just inpaints a small region near-losslessly instead of leaving a color-shifted smear. The captured alpha maps are still used to DETECT the marks and to shape the mask (gemini's footprint), but NOT for pixel recovery. Fill backends: `cv2` (classical inpaint, no deps, the floor), `migan` (MI-GAN ONNX, light, the memory-tight pick where LaMa will not fit), `lama` (big-LaMa ONNX, best quality, heavier, auto-preferred when a learned backend is available); `auto` = LaMa > MI-GAN > cv2, best available. Each `KnownMark` ties a key to {usual `location`, `in_auto` flag, a `_detect` callable → uniform `MarkDetection`, a `_mask` callable → full-frame footprint mask}; `KnownMark.remove(image, *, backend="auto", provenance=False, force=False)`. Entries today: `gemini` (bottom-right sparkle), `doubao` (bottom-right "豆包AI生成"), `jimeng` (bottom-right "★ 即梦AI"), `samsung` (bottom-**LEFT** "✦ Contenuti generati dall'AI", Samsung Galaxy AI, Italian locale), and the capture-less `jimeng_pill` (top-left "AI生成"). `detect_marks(image, *, provenance=frozenset())` scans all (strict, for the identify verdict); `remove_auto_marks(image, *, sensitivity="auto", provenance=frozenset(), backend="auto")` removes every detected mark in one pass. **Sensitivity (`auto`/`strict`/`assume_ai`)** decides how hard a borderline mark is trusted: the visual detectors are pixel-based (no metadata needed) and the recall gain comes from relaxing the false-positive gate, not from metadata. `resolve_trust` turns the policy + evidence into the per-mark trust level the engines consume as `provenance = level != "strict"` — `strict` never relaxes; `auto` relaxes only on same-product evidence (metadata provenance for that vendor, or a confidently strict-detected sibling of the same `_PRODUCT_OF` — Doubao and Jimeng are both bottom-right ByteDance but distinct products, so they do NOT cross-relax); `assume_ai` relaxes every mark (the caller asserts AI, e.g. a metadata-stripped screenshot). **Three levels, not two: `strict` / `assumed` / `confirmed`.** Relaxing bypasses the engine's false-positive gate outright, and that bypass is contracted to mean the vendor is CONFIRMED (`GeminiEngine.detect_watermark`'s `trust_provenance`: "external metadata already proves this is a Google generation"). An `assume_ai` caller asserts the image is AI, which says nothing about WHICH vendor, so a mark relaxed on assumption alone must also clear `_ASSUMED_CONF_FLOOR` (`assumed_floor_ok`; gemini 0.50) — see "Assumed-trust confidence floor" below. **Perception / decision / action are separated three ways** (the removal path only; `identify` keeps calling `KnownMark.detect` directly, so its verdict is untouched): `_build_candidates(image)` is PERCEPTION — it runs each detector at both trust levels and packages raw verdicts + the pill's flatness feature into `Candidate`s, no policy; `decide(candidates, Context(sensitivity, provenance)) -> [Decision]` is the pure DECISION arbiter — all keep/drop policy (`resolve_trust` cross-mark corroboration + the assumed-trust floor + the pill gate) in one image-free, unit-testable function (`tests/test_watermark_registry.py::TestArbiter`); then `remove_auto_marks` does the ACTION, localizing -> filling each winner. The Gemini FP gate deliberately stays inside `gemini_engine` (not the arbiter) because `identify` reads that same gated confidence — pulling it out would drift the provenance verdict. Behavior was byte-identical to the pre-arbiter two-pass when the arbiter landed; `assume_ai` has since gained the assumed-trust confidence floor (see below), which deliberately changes its verdict on weak gate-bypassed matches.
**Head-to-head validation (v0.12.1 reverse-alpha vs the current localize -> fill):** run over the full labelled visible-mark set, with the cv2 / MI-GAN / LaMa fills each compared against the old reverse-alpha. **doubao and jimeng are identical** across every backend -- 100% coverage and 100% clearance either way. **gemini** strict coverage is a few points below reverse-alpha's (the deliberate false-positive tightening), but the metadata-stripped faint ones are now mostly recovered by the DEFAULT white-core rescue in the FP gate (`gemini_engine`: a bright near-WHITE core distinguishes a real faint sparkle from a colored bright corner -- ~14/20 recovered at ~1.25% clean false-fire; a learned classifier on the same features measured worse, 2026-07 tier-1), the residual under `assume_ai`; clearance is equal (~98% both), and neither version touches pixels outside the mark box (outside-box PSNR ~99). **Clearance is fill-independent** -- cv2, MI-GAN and LaMa all strip the mark's shape equally, so the re-detect metric does not separate them; the difference is purely the *visual fill quality* on the recovered region, and it is background-dependent. reverse-alpha recovered textured and especially regular/structured backgrounds (a lattice, a grid) more cleanly than any inpaint; **LaMa closes most of that gap** (the best learned backend), **MI-GAN can ghost or hallucinate structure**, and **cv2 smears** (the last-resort floor). This is why `auto` resolves `LaMa > MI-GAN > cv2` (`preferred_inpaint_backend`) and warns once on the cv2 fallback; on flat backgrounds every backend is clean.
**`assume_ai` removed (2026-07-19).** It relaxed EVERY mark's false-positive gate on the caller's bare assertion that an image is AI. That assertion says nothing about WHICH vendor or WHERE the mark is, which is exactly what a gate bypass is contracted to require -- before it carried a confidence floor it filled a phantom sparkle on 59.8% of genuine camera photos, and even with the floor it was a statistical gamble rather than an instruction. It also had no place in the product's model: detector finds a mark -> remove it; detector finds nothing -> leave the image alone; the USER sees a mark and says so -> act on that.
Removing it collapsed the trust ladder from three levels to two (`strict` / `confirmed`) and took `_ASSUMED_CONF_FLOOR`, `assumed_floor_ok` and the `assumed` level with it. `_keep_pill` lost its `sensitivity` parameter (its assume-arm is gone; the metadata arm and its flatness guard are unchanged). Verified on the 240-image unbiased recall sample: doubao 92%/99%, gemini 96%/80%, jimeng 71%/71%, pill 50%/60% -- identical before and after, so nothing on the default path moved.
**The replacement advice is PER MARK, because the forced paths are not equally reliable** (measured 2026-07-19):
| path | reliability |
|---|---|
| `erase --region x,y,w,h` | sound by construction -- the user supplies the coordinates |
| `--mark <text-mark> --no-detect` | reasonable: the forced mask is the real glyph blob, non-empty on 13/13 missed doubao marks |
| `--mark gemini --no-detect` | **NOT recommended** -- falls back to a fixed default sparkle slot, which covered the true sparkle on only **31% of 97** sparkles the strict gate missed (median offset 63px up-and-left). The other 69% fill a clean corner AND report a removal that did not happen. |
`cli._no_visible_mark_exit` therefore recommends `erase --region` first and a named text mark second, and never suggests forcing gemini. It previously recommended `--sensitivity assume-ai`, i.e. the product's own hint contradicted its model.
**Migration is LOUD, not silent.** `Sensitivity` is a `Literal` and unenforced at runtime, so a 0.15 caller passing `sensitivity="assume_ai"` would otherwise get `auto` behaviour in silence -- a quiet semantic change on exactly the release where they need telling. `validate_sensitivity` (called by `api.remove_visible` and by `Context.__post_init__`) raises a `ValueError` naming the replacement. Regression: `tests/test_watermark_registry.py::TestNoBlanketRelaxation`.
**Continuous top-hat detection front-end (`detect_frontend` / `tophat_response`, 2026-07-18).** `extract_mask` thresholds the white top-hat into a 0/255 glyph blob and correlates a binary silhouette against it. That is fine for a mark stamped bold and opaque, and destructive for a faint one: a thin translucent overlay shatters into specks under the threshold, and no template can match a blob that is not there (千问 measured 0.170 mean NCC, **0%** over its gate, against doubao's 0.723 / 82% -- same pipeline, each with its own template). The `tophat` front-end never binarizes: the saturation and absolute-luma gates become WEIGHTS instead of hard cuts, so a faint stroke contributes in proportion to its strength, and the response is max-normalized, which makes the score contrast-invariant.
Doubao is switched to it; jimeng and samsung stay `binary` until measured, because a front-end change must be measured per mark before it ships. Corpus effect on the 240-image unbiased recall sample:
| mark | recall before | recall after | precision before | precision after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| doubao | 89% | **92%** | 99% | **99%** |
| jimeng / gemini / pill | unchanged | unchanged | unchanged | unchanged |
**The gate is FRONT-END SPECIFIC and must be re-calibrated, not ported.** The continuous response scores higher overall (mean 0.809 vs 0.723 on the same 90 positives), so the binary-era 0.40 left the provenance-relaxed gate (x0.7) far too low: at 0.40 the arm ran 96% recall / 91% precision (8 false fires), at 0.50 it runs 92% / 99% (1 false fire). 0.50 was chosen because it beats the binary front-end on recall at IDENTICAL precision -- a front-end that only trades one for the other would not have been worth shipping. A first pass at 0.40 also silently depressed the PILL (recall 50% -> 33%), because `_keep_pill` suppresses the pill whenever doubao fires; a coupling worth remembering when tuning any bottom-right mark.
**The removal MASK must ride the same front-end, and how it does so was fixed twice.** `tophat` detection does not binarize, but `extract_mask` (which bounds the fill) still does, so a mark faint enough to be found only by the continuous response produced an EMPTY binary blob: `localize` returned `mask=None`, `remove()` was a silent no-op, and `identify` reported `visible_doubao` while `visible` said "no visible mark" on the same file (corpus-measured 2026-07-20: 57 of 60 sampled still-detected Doubao marks untouched, ~8% of its detections). The FIRST fallback (2026-07-19) thresholded the continuous response and took the bounding box of everything above the level -- but the level was `0.5` compared against the max-normalized **uint8 0..255** response, so it selected every non-zero pixel and filled ~120% of the corner box on textured frames (a padded whole-ROI box). It passed parity (a mask that fills everything is trivially detector-clean) and its regression test (a FLAT fixture, where the response is non-zero only on the glyph, so every threshold yields the same box). The SECOND fallback (2026-07-20) uses the detector's OWN best-match box instead: `_tophat_score` was split into **`_tophat_best(image, loc) -> (score, box)`**, the single method whose score gates detection and whose argmax box bounds the mask -- so the two cannot drift by construction, which is how the mismatch arose in the first place. Measured over 14 real faint-path frames (cv2 fill, detector re-run after): the match box fills a **58.7%**-median corner box vs the threshold's **120.9%**, both 100% detector-clean. The largest-connected-component alternative was tighter (10.5%) but removed the mark on only 21% of frames, so it does not cover it and was rejected. Regression: `tests/test_text_mark_faint_mask.py`, whose fixture now carries texture (the flatness of the old one is exactly why it could not see the threshold bug -- mutating the constant to 99.0 left it green). **Any future front-end change must move both the detection and the mask path, or re-check this.**
**What this does NOT solve: vendor ATTRIBUTION for the shared-suffix marks.** With the continuous front-end 千问 becomes separable from clean corners (AUC 0.92) but NOT from Doubao (**AUC 0.41-0.59, i.e. a coin flip**), because "千问AI生成" and "豆包AI生成" share the `AI生成` tail -- three of five glyphs, same face, same corner. So the front-end removes the *detection* blocker and exposes an *attribution* one. Since removal is identical for either (localize the glyph blob -> fill), the natural next design is a GENERIC "CJK AI-generation text mark" detector covering 千问/百度/星绘/小云雀/TRAE and any future GB 45438-2025-compliant vendor in one template, with per-vendor attribution treated as optional metadata rather than a detection requirement -- the standard mandates that every compliant string contain (人工智能|AI) and (生成|合成), so the shared tail is guaranteed. That needs its own precision-labelling round before it ships.
**Why 千问 / 星绘 are NOT registered (measured 2026-07-18).** Adding a text mark is documented as "a `TextMarkConfig` + a thin subclass + one registry row", and that is true only when the mark is stamped like Doubao's. It does not hold for a FAINT mark, and 千问 is the counter-example. Measured on 14 hand-verified corpus positives, same pipeline, each mark scored with its OWN template:
| mark | n | mean NCC | median | above the 0.40 gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| doubao | 40 | 0.723 | 0.835 | **82%** |
| qwen | 14 | 0.170 | 0.179 | **0%** |
Three candidate explanations were ruled out in order, each by measurement:
1. **Not the synthetic render.** A template cut from an ACTUAL Qwen mark scores the same as the font-rendered one (real-vs-real 0.307 vs synthetic 0.308), and real masks do not match EACH OTHER.
2. **Not the morphology kernel.** `MORPH_OPEN`/`MORPH_CLOSE` use fixed 5px kernels regardless of mark size (~9% of a 57px-tall box, ~2.7% of a 188px one). Scaling them with the box height gained +0.014 mean and moved nothing across the gate.
3. **Not the appearance thresholds.** Sweeping `tophat_delta` / `logo_min_luma` / kernel size peaked at mean 0.35 with 4/14 over the gate.
The blocker is SEGMENTATION on a faint mark. Doubao is stamped bold and opaque so the white top-hat returns a clean glyph blob; the Qwen mark is a thin translucent overlay that shatters into specks, and no template can match a blob that is not there. **So the registry's cheap-to-add promise is conditional on mark contrast, and that condition should be checked before promising a new mark.** Adding 千问 needs a detection front-end that does not binarize the glyph first -- grayscale/edge correlation on the raw top-hat, or a learned patch classifier -- not a new silhouette. 星绘 additionally has only ONE confirmed corpus example, so even a working front-end could not calibrate its threshold yet. The synthetic renderer and the full evidence chain are kept in `scripts/render_vendor_silhouettes.py`; researched vendor specs are in `docs/watermarking-landscape.md`.
**RECALL, measured at last (unbiased random sample, 2026-07-18).** Every earlier round sampled where detectors FIRED, so recall was structurally unmeasurable. This round draws 240 images at RANDOM within each provenance class (160 TC260, 80 Google-C2PA) and labels them EXHAUSTIVELY -- both corners shown at native scale, so a missed mark is visible as a miss rather than absent from the data. Build it with `scripts/visible_recall_sample.py`; labels live in the gitignored research dir.
| mark | present | recall | 95% CI | precision | 95% CI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| doubao | 90 | **89%** | 81-94% | **99%** | 93-100% |
| gemini | 46 | **96%** | 85-99% | **80%** | 68-88% |
| jimeng | 14 | 71% | 45-88% | 71% | 45-88% |
| jimeng_pill | 6 | 50% | 19-81% | 60% | 23-88% |
Effect of the `scale_basis` fix on the same sample (strict verdicts recorded before it): **doubao recall 71% -> 89%**, gemini 91% -> 96%, jimeng 64% -> 71%. Part of the doubao gain is the provenance relaxation rather than the basis alone, since the after-numbers run the full `auto` path.
**Three corrections this forced to earlier numbers:**
* **Gemini precision is 80% on an unbiased sample, not the 41% the addition-sampled harness reports.** The 41% is precision restricted to relaxation ADDITIONS, which are by construction the marginal cases; production sees mostly strict fires, which are near-perfect. Quote 80% for the product and 41% only when discussing the relaxation arm.
* Doubao is in excellent shape (89/99) and is no longer the problem it looked like before the basis fix.
* Landscape is improved but NOT solved: doubao recall by aspect is portrait 92% / square 92% / **landscape 79%**, so a residual geometry gap remains beyond the basis.
**Where the remaining loss actually is:** jimeng and the pill, both at small n with intervals too wide to tune against (a 14-positive and a 6-positive sample), plus **uncovered vendors at 6% of all sampled images** (千问/百度/星绘/抖音-class marks that no registered detector can ever fire on). Adding those vendors is now a larger win than any further tuning of the covered four, and `docs/watermarking-landscape.md` carries their researched specs.
**Per-mark geometry scaling (`scale_basis` / `scale_base`, 2026-07-18) -- the largest single recall defect found so far.** Every tuned fraction in `TextMarkConfig` was calibrated on PORTRAIT captures, where the width and the short side coincide, so the scaling basis was never exercised until landscape inputs were measured. Corpus-measured on 2572 unique TC260 carriers, BEFORE the fix:
| aspect ratio | detected | missed | miss rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| tall portrait <0.70 | 323 | 212 | 40% |
| portrait 0.70-0.95 | 607 | 533 | 47% |
| square ~1.0 | 190 | 272 | 59% |
| landscape 1.15-1.6 | 0 | 143 | **100%** |
| wide >1.6 | 0 | 292 | **100%** |
**Not one landscape image in the corpus ever produced a detection** -- 435 of them, zero. A width-scaled box is inflated by the aspect ratio on a wide image, so the glyph never lands inside it and the blob never gets scored: of the 1452 no-detection TC260 images the median doubao NCC was **0.057**, with 49% at ~zero. This is a LOCALIZATION failure, not a threshold one -- only 2.7% of those images sat in the band a threshold change could reach, which is why a day of threshold tuning could never have found it. Re-running the previously-undetected set with a short-side basis recovers **56% of landscape** (12% square, 4% portrait; 20% overall).
**The basis is PER MARK because the vendors genuinely differ.** The same switch took jimeng's labelled landscape positives from 13/13 to **0/13**: the Jimeng wordmark tracks the WIDTH while the Doubao strip tracks the short side, even though both are ByteDance and share a corner. So doubao is `short`, jimeng is `width`, and samsung stays `width` because there is no corpus evidence either way (1 addition corpus-wide) and an unmeasured change is not an improvement. China's GB 45438-2025 clause 5.2(e) mandates glyph height >= 5% of "the shortest side", which is why short-side is the natural prior -- but jimeng's measured behaviour overrides the prior. Regression: `tests/test_text_mark_engine.py::TestScaleBasis`.
**How this was missed for so long:** precision was measured repeatedly and recall never was. The eval harness now reports a `missed` column for exactly this reason, and it is what caught the jimeng regression the short-side switch introduced.
**Competitive detection among same-corner marks (`rivals` / `_rival_margin_ok`, 2026-07-18).** Detection was purely ABSOLUTE -- every engine scored its own template against its own threshold, so nothing ever asked the discriminative question "does this blob match the NEIGHBOUR's mark better than mine?". Doubao "豆包AI生成" and Jimeng "★ 即梦AI" both sit bottom-right in near-white CJK and survive the top-hat binarization as very similar blobs, so no absolute gate can separate them. Measured on hand-labelled examples, scoring BOTH templates against the SAME glyph blob (n=40 jimeng / 75 doubao / 20 other-vendor labels / 89 clean):
| feature | separability (0.5 = useless, 1.0 = perfect) |
|---|---|
| absolute `ncc_jimeng` | 0.96 |
| `ncc_jimeng` MINUS `ncc_doubao` | **0.99** |
At a 0.10 margin: real Jimeng wordmarks pass **100%**, Doubao strips 8%, other vendors' AI labels (千问/百度/星绘/抖音) 55%, no-mark corners 12%. Corpus effect (`scripts/visible_eval.py`, 741 labelled images): **jimeng precision 38% -> 63%, genuine detections unchanged at 40, false fires 65 -> 23.** Because real marks pass at 100% this is a pure precision gain, unlike raising a threshold -- so the earlier 0.85 relaxation patch was REVERTED to 0.70 and the recall it had sacrificed came back. **The gate is deliberately asymmetric:** doubao declares no rival, because the symmetric gate cost it 7 genuine detections to prevent 5 false ones (1.4:1 against) while jimeng gained 25pp for free -- doubao's absolute detector is already 86% precise and has nothing to buy. A rival's config is looked up lazily by asset name (`_rival_config`) so its template is scored at ITS own geometry; scoring it at the host mark's geometry would compare a correctly-sized template against a mis-sized one and hand the margin a free win. Regression: `tests/test_text_mark_engine.py::TestRivalMargin`.
**Evaluation harness (`scripts/visible_eval.py` + `scripts/visible_groundtruth.py`, 2026-07-18).** Run before AND after any detector change; `--save NAME` snapshots, `--vs NAME` diffs. Ground truth is 741 blind-labelled corpus images (779 cells across two rounds, two-sided control each). Three properties of the harness are load-bearing and were each added after the naive version produced a wrong number:
* **Adjudication scope.** A crop centred on one mark only lets the labeller rule on marks visible IN THAT CROP. Scoring jimeng against a pill-round image (top-left crop) books real bottom-right detections as false fires -- ~61% of pills carry a wordmark. Each image records which marks its crop could rule on; bottom-right marks co-adjudicate each other.
* **Provenance must come from METADATA, never from the labels.** A relaxation arm only fires when provenance names the vendor, so label-derived provenance hands the detector the answer: it scored gemini at 99% instead of the true 41%.
* **Recall is NOT reported.** The labelled set was sampled where detectors fired, so images every detector missed are absent by construction; a recall computed here would divide by a denominator that excludes exactly the failures recall exists to expose. The `missed` column catches a change LOSING marks it used to find, nothing more. True recall needs a random corpus sample labelled exhaustively -- not yet done.
Baseline at the time of writing (sensitivity `auto`, provenance from metadata): gemini 41% (321 fires), doubao 86% (77), jimeng 63% (63), jimeng_pill 64% (83), samsung unmeasurable (1 addition corpus-wide).
**Per-mark provenance NCC relaxation + the corroboration gate (2026-07-18).** Two defects, both on the DEFAULT `auto` path (no flag, driven by TC260 metadata), found by blind hand-labelling the ADDITIONS (accepted with provenance, rejected without) over 4417 unique TC260 carriers. Two-sided control: labeller sensitivity 100% (doubao) / 96% (jimeng), specificity 100% / 100% — the controls are what make the low numbers trustworthy, and the "clean" stratum is structural (another vendor's C2PA image, where a ByteDance mark cannot exist) rather than detector-defined, so it is not circular.
(1) **One shared `_PROVENANCE_NCC_FACTOR = 0.7` meant two different things per mark:**
| mark | band | precision | 95% CI | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| doubao | whole arm | 76% | 61-87% | 42 |
| | [0.280,0.340) | 58% | 36-77% | 19 |
| | [0.340,0.400) | 91% | 73-98% | 23 |
| jimeng | whole arm | 17% | 10-27% | 82 |
| | [0.315,0.383) | 12% | 6-22% | 68 |
| | [0.383,0.450) | 43% | 21-67% | 14 |
The factor is now a per-mark `TextMarkConfig.provenance_ncc_factor`. Doubao stays 0.70 — both bands return more true marks than false fills, so tightening would cost 11 genuine recoveries to prevent 8. Jimeng moves to 0.85 (gate 0.3825), dropping the 12% band: −8 genuine recoveries, −60 false fills (7.5:1), arm precision 17% → 43%. **Why jimeng fails is a detector problem, not a threshold one:** of its 68 false additions, 33 were DOUBAO marks and 17 were other vendors' AI labels (千问 / 百度 / 星绘 / 抖音) — relaxed, the silhouette keys on "some text in the bottom-right corner", not on "★ 即梦AI". Damage was scored separately because doubao and jimeng share a corner: 45 of the 68 fill a corner nothing else would touch, the other 23 are harmless (doubao fires strictly there and fills the same box anyway). A better silhouette, not a lower factor, is the real fix.
(2) **A weak detector must not corroborate a sibling (`_CANNOT_CORROBORATE`).** `resolve_trust` grants `confirmed` on a strict-detected sibling of the same `_PRODUCT_OF`, and `confirmed` bypasses the sibling's FP gate outright. The pill (~7% documented raw false-fire; 5.5% on 578 vendor negatives) maps to product "jimeng", so it could hand that bypass to the wordmark — a closed loop: pill false-fires on clean non-ByteDance content → jimeng relaxes 0.45 → 0.3825 and false-fires → `_keep_pill` sees "jimeng" in keys and takes the WORDMARK arm, removing the pill **unrestricted**, skipping the flatness guard written to stop exactly that smear. 3 of 578 negatives ran the full loop, one with `footprint_flat=0`. The fix costs nothing: negatives 3 → 0, TC260 carriers unchanged (jimeng 398 → 398, pill 117 → 117). `_keep_pill` already encoded this distrust for the pill's ACTION; the gap was that its TESTIMONY was ungated.
**Pill arms, re-measured on the same corpus** (149 blind-labelled TC260-arm fires, 35 wordmark, 33 unconfirmed): wordmark **94%** (CI 81-98%, confirming the original claim), TC260-metadata-only **21%** raw (CI 16-29%, consistent with the original ~27%) — **29%** (CI 20-40%) among the flat footprints the guard PASSES vs 14% among those it blocks. The guard works directionally but weakly: the shipped arm still runs at ~2.4 false fills per genuine one. Whether an arm that inaccurate belongs on the default path is a product call, not a tuning one.
**Samsung's relaxation is UNMEASURED and not measurable here:** the corpus holds 14 `samsung_genai` carriers and 3 visible Samsung detections total. Any precision estimate would carry a Wilson interval spanning most of [0,1]. Likely structural — detection is calibrated to the Italian locale string only.
**Provenance prior:** when local metadata already confirms the vendor, the mark's detection trust gate is relaxed (a confirmed vendor means the mark is present with high prior, so a mark the conservative detector would demote as a content false positive is trusted). `detect_marks` / `remove_auto_marks` take a `provenance` frozenset and `KnownMark.remove` a `provenance` flag. Mapping: a Google/Gemini C2PA issuer relaxes gemini (skips its false-positive gate and lowers the trust threshold from 0.5 to 0.35); a China-AIGC (TC260) label relaxes doubao/jimeng; `samsung_genai` relaxes samsung. Corpus finding: on Google-C2PA images, Gemini sparkle recall rose from ~46% (plain detector) to ~90% with the provenance prior (recovering marks the vendor moved or re-rendered). That gain is why the bypass exists, and it is conditional on the metadata actually naming the vendor — a caller merely ASSUMING the image is AI does not get it unconditionally (see the assumed-trust confidence floor above). The localizer is cheap CPU (cv2/numpy), so a memory-tight caller runs it anywhere; the heavy MI-GAN/LaMa fill is opt-in and chosen by the caller.
**Cross-engine confidences aren't directly comparable**, so the gemini adapter applies the corpus-validated 0.5 sparkle threshold (`_GEMINI_AUTO_MIN_CONF`) for its `detected` flag (lowered to 0.35 under the Google/Gemini provenance prior) — otherwise the gemini engine's loose internal threshold weakly fires (~0.36) on the Doubao text and hijacks `auto`. The shape-keyed Doubao/Jimeng/Samsung NCC detectors don't cross-fire (jimeng scores ~0.22 on the Doubao strip, well under its 0.45 threshold; Samsung is bottom-left so it shares no corner with the others, and scored 0.0 on Doubao/Jimeng captures and they 0.0 on a real Samsung photo), so `auto` picks the right one. `cli.cmd_visible` is registry-driven: `--mark auto` → `remove_auto_marks` (removes every detected mark), `--mark <key>` → that mark; `--mark` choices come from `mark_keys()`.
**`cli._remove_visible_auto` is the shared visible-removal helper used by `cmd_all`/`cmd_batch` too** (they no longer hardcode `GeminiEngine`), so `all`/`batch` remove Doubao/Jimeng/Samsung text marks, not just the Gemini sparkle (regression-guarded by `test_all_visible_step_uses_registry`). The three text-mark adapters were consolidated 2026-06-09: a single `_text_mark(key, label, location)` builds the registry row from one parameterized `_text_mark_detect`/`_text_mark_remove` pair (the remove adapter localizes the glyph footprint and hands it to the shared `fill` only when detected/forced, else skipped); the gemini adapters stay bespoke. Add a new visible mark = one `_text_mark(...)` row + its `TextMarkConfig` (with a captured alpha map for the detection silhouette); do not re-add per-mark `if` branches or copy-paste adapters.
**Alpha-on-save policy (issue #30):** `image_io.write_bgr_with_alpha` (it lives in `image_io`, not `cli` — moved so the CLI and the library `api` share ONE implementation) rejoins the input's alpha plane **unchanged** — it must NOT zero alpha in the watermark bbox. The fill reconstructs real pixels there, so zeroing alpha punched a transparent hole that renders as a solid **white box** on any non-transparent viewer (Gemini app exports are opaque RGBA, so every user hit it; regression-guarded by `test_visible_keeps_alpha_opaque_in_watermark_region`). The registry `remove()` still returns its region, but the CLI no longer uses it to clear alpha. **It returns `imwrite`'s success flag and callers must check it** (2026-07-20): `imwrite` is contractually non-raising, so that bool is the only signal the file was not created. The wrapper previously returned `None` and swallowed it, so every CLI write site ran `output.stat()` to report the size and a read-only destination died with a bare `FileNotFoundError` traceback pointing at the stat instead of the write. The CLI now writes through the shared `cli._write_output_or_exit`. Regression: `tests/test_cli_robustness.py::TestFailedWriteIsReported`.
## `gemini_engine.py`
`gemini_engine.py` — visible Gemini-sparkle remover/detector (cv2/numpy, no GPU). `detect_sparkle_confidence(path)` is the file-level entry point used by `identify.py`. The public entry points normalize a grayscale (2D) or RGBA (4-channel) input to BGR up front so a non-BGR image does not crash the cv2 pipeline.
**Detection localization (issue #36):** `detect_watermark`'s global multi-scale NCC search applies a size weight (`(scale/96)**0.5`) that suppresses tiny-patch false positives but can let a larger, mediocre match (e.g. a bright collar in a portrait) outrank a small, near-perfect sparkle in the corner — so a faint sparkle on a busy background scored below threshold and read as clean (the regression osachub reported from widening the search window 256px->512px between v0.7.2 and v0.8.8). `_corner_promote` adds a bottom-right-corner raw-NCC pass on top of the global search: a match with raw NCC >= `_CORNER_PROMOTE_NCC` 0.85 that beats the global pick overrides it (it only ever replaces a lower-fidelity pick, so it cannot weaken an existing detection), rescuing the buried sparkle without reverting the wider window. The corner side is **relative-clamped** (`_CORNER_PROMOTE_FRAC` 0.20 of the short side, clamped to `[_CORNER_PROMOTE_MIN` 96, `_CORNER_PROMOTE_MAX` 384`]`): a fixed 256px is a true corner on a large image but covers ~70% of a small portrait, where a real photo raw-matches the star at ~0.81 (relative tightening drops that worst case to ~0.69, while the upper clamp stops the corner ballooning on huge images where a real photo reached ~0.83 at 512px). The 0.85 gate sits midway between the worst real-photo corner match (~0.78 across native + downscaled negatives) and a genuine faint sparkle (~0.93), so promotion adds true detections with zero corpus false positives (Gemini's sparkle sits ~60-160px from the corner at fixed margins, covered by the [96, 384] band at every measured size). Regression-guarded by `test_gemini_engine.py::TestCornerPromotion`.
**Top-K fusion selection (osachub follow-up 2026-06-12):** `_corner_promote`'s 0.85 raw-NCC gate still missed a class the 256->512 widening exposed — a genuine MID-scale sparkle whose raw NCC sits *below* 0.85 but is buried by a LARGER, low-fidelity decoy that wins the size weight. The reporter's image (a scale-48 sparkle on light bedding) measured spatial 0.775 / grad 0.960 / fusion 0.676 at the true sparkle, but the size-weighted argmax instead locked onto a decoy at spatial 0.628 / grad 0.036 (fusion 0.325) — so `identify` read `unknown` on v0.8-0.11 where v0.7.2 (256px window) had caught it at 0.676. Fix: `detect_watermark` now keeps the **top-`_SELECT_TOPK` (3)** size-weighted candidates (NMS-deduped by location) plus the corner-promote candidate, scores EACH by the full fusion (spatial+gradient+variance) via the extracted `_grad_var_scores` helper, and selects the highest — the gradient term (the discriminator a contrast-invariant spatial NCC lacks) lifts the true sparkle over the decoy. Critically, selection ranks by the SIZE-WEIGHTED score, NOT raw NCC: a raw-NCC argmax (tried first) re-admitted the exact tiny-patch (scale 16-18) false positives the size weight exists to suppress — it flagged 14/65 doubao + 4/11 jimeng visible-corpus images (non-Gemini content) as Gemini sparkles. Top-K keeps tiny-patch suppression intact: a coincidental 16px match never ranks in the size-weighted top-K, so widening selection added **zero** flips on the doubao/jimeng corpora and left the 495-image Gemini set unchanged (479 detected, both before and after) while recovering the reporter's image. Regression-guarded by `test_gemini_engine.py::TestCornerPromotion::test_low_gradient_decoy_loses_to_high_gradient_corner_sparkle` (mirrors the real spatial/grad signature via a monkeypatched scan) and `test_size_weighted_search_alone_traps_on_the_decoy`.
**Square-image residual misses are NOT fixable by lowering the detector threshold (measured + REJECTED 2026-06-11):** osachub (#36 follow-up) reported the corner-promote still misses Gemini sparkles on Google **square (1:1)** outputs. Reproduced on the spaces corpus: of 330 square Google-C2PA images, 140 score below the identify 0.5 threshold, and visual review confirmed a real class -- faint white sparkles on dark/textured/colored backgrounds (raw NCC 0.46-0.73, below the 0.85 promote gate) landing at fusion conf 0.41-0.47. A margin-gated promote (promote when raw NCC >= 0.50 AND `_core_ring_margin` >= 40) rescued 32/33 confirmed misses at an apparent 0 FP, but that 0 was a **measurement artifact** -- the negative set was the margin<40 misses, which a margin>=40 gate excludes by construction. On an honest 518-image non-Google pool the same gate fired on **~174 (≈33%)**, visually content (screenshots, Chinese "AI生成" Doubao/Jimeng text marks, logos, bright textures), not sparkles. Adding an achromatic-core constraint (`chroma <= 15`) did not separate them either (kept 15/33 POS, 41 NEG still firing). Root cause is the documented contrast-invariant-NCC wall: a faint sparkle on a busy background is indistinguishable from a bright/ornate content corner at the (shape-NCC, brightness-margin, core-chroma) feature level.
**Conclusion: keep the 0.85 corner gate; do NOT add a margin/chroma-gated lower promote.**
The cost (mislabel ~8-33% of non-Gemini content as Gemini) outweighs the benefit -- the visible sparkle is a medium-confidence stripped-metadata fallback, and intact Gemini is caught by C2PA in `identify` regardless. Remaining square misses are an accepted known limitation; a real fix would need a sparkle-specific discriminator (template match on a background-subtracted image, or a hard fixed-margin position prior), which is open research, not a threshold tweak.
**Removal is localize -> fill** (`footprint_mask` → `watermark_registry.fill`): `footprint_mask` returns the sparkle footprint = the captured alpha (computed `alpha = max(R,G,B)/255` from the bundled sparkle-on-black captures `assets/gemini_bg_{96,48}.png`, capture max ~130 for the ~51%-opaque overlay) thresholded LOW so the faint halo is included, then dilated by a sparkle-relative margin. That binary mask is inpainted by the shared fill (cv2 / MI-GAN / big-LaMa). The captured alpha maps are used only to detect and to shape the mask, not for pixel recovery. This replaced the old reverse-alpha removal path; because the fill only reconstructs the masked footprint from its surroundings (rather than dividing by `1-a`), the whole reverse-alpha removal tail — the over-subtraction guard (`_reverse_alpha_oversubtracts`, the dark-background black-pit fix), the under-subtraction alpha-gain estimate (`_estimate_alpha_gain`), and the self-verify repair — is GONE, along with the near-white `1/(1-a)` ill-conditioning and the "color changed, not removed" failure mode those guards patched around. A slightly-off localization now just fills a small region near-losslessly instead of leaving a color-shifted smear.
**False-positive gate (added 2026-06-03):** `detect_watermark`'s shape-only NCC (`spatial*0.5 + gradient*0.3 + var*0.2`) fires on ornate/flat content (text strips, banners, hatching) that coincidentally matches the diamond shape — a real Gemini sparkle is a bright WHITE overlay, so its core sits above the local background, but the NCC is contrast-invariant and cannot see that. The fusion now **demotes** (caps confidence to 0.30) any low-confidence (`< _SPARKLE_FP_CONF` 0.65) match that shows NEITHER real-sparkle signature: a bright core (`_core_ring_margin >= _SPARKLE_FP_MARGIN` 5) OR a crisp star silhouette (`gradient_score >= _SPARKLE_FP_GRAD` 0.55). I.e. demote when `low_margin OR low_grad`. Real sparkles escape via high confidence (white-bg sparkles score ≥0.79 despite a low margin — the NCC shape match is strong), high margin (dark/mid backgrounds, incl. the #36 faint-corner case, lift well clear), OR high gradient (a real sparkle is grad ~0.97–1.0). **The gradient condition (added 2026-06-26) closes the bright-background FP class** the margin check alone missed: a snow+sky photo and a white-background product render both scored ~0.51 at `identify`, because a bright background gives the match a HIGH core-ring margin (it genuinely IS brighter than its surroundings), so the brightness gate read it as a real overlay — but a smooth luminance blob that shape-NCC-matches the rough diamond has low gradient fidelity (the two FPs measured grad 0.105 and 0.463 vs ≥0.8 for real sparkles), so the gradient floor demotes them. The OR is **strictly a superset** of the old margin-only demotion (it only ADDS demotions on bright backgrounds, where a real sparkle keeps grad ~0.97), so it cannot regress a dark/mid sparkle (kept by margin) or a white-bg one (kept by confidence ≥ 0.65). The gate is **monotonic** (only ever removes detections, never adds), so it cannot regress the verified-negative corpus (already 0 FPs); the 2026-06-26 corpus re-sweep flipped only OpenAI/ChatGPT content (no Gemini sparkle exists there) and already-`cleaned/` outputs, all sub-0.5 (below the `identify` threshold), so no provenance verdict changed. The original gate demoted 16/495 flagged sparkles on the validation corpus (13 carried no AI metadata = content FPs; the 3 AI-meta were visually FPs / a near-invisible white-on-white sparkle whose AI verdict is held by metadata anyway). `_core_ring_margin` uses the `_core_and_bg` helper (core 75th-pct brightness vs background-ring median). This gate is detection-side and unchanged by the localize -> fill refactor; the provenance prior skips it when a Google/Gemini C2PA issuer confirms the vendor. Regression-guarded by `test_gemini_engine.py::TestSparkleFalsePositiveGate` (incl. `test_bright_background_low_gradient_match_demoted`).
**The reverse-alpha removal tail is retired.** The self-verify repair (`_verify_and_repair`), the offset+scale alignment search, and the near-white `1/(1-a)` ill-conditioning survivors were all artifacts of solving the sparkle by inverting the alpha map. Under localize -> fill the footprint is reconstructed from its surroundings by the shared fill, so those failure classes and their guards no longer exist. The lesson from that era still holds and generalizes: a re-detect-confidence audit metric is gameable by reshaping the residual, so judge a visible removal by physical inspection of the footprint, not the detector alone.
**The bg assets are rebuilt from OUR OWN controlled captures** (`data/gemini_capture/captures/`, committed) by `scripts/visible_alpha_solve.py gemini`, which locates the 96px sparkle on the black capture and crops it to the two logo sizes; our capture matched the previously third-party-sourced `gemini_bg_96.png` to **NCC 0.9998**, validating the asset and making it reproducible. Gemini's multi-size fixed-slot model is genuinely different from the Doubao/Jimeng text-strip engines (so it stays a separate engine, not part of the shared-base refactor).
## `_text_mark_engine.py`
`_text_mark_engine.py` — **shared base for the three text-mark engines (Doubao/Jimeng/Samsung), extracted 2026-06-09** (they were ~90% byte-identical clones). `TextMarkEngine(config: TextMarkConfig)` owns the `locate → extract_mask → detect` detection pipeline plus the removal that localizes the glyph blob to a footprint mask and hands it to the shared `watermark_registry.fill` (+ the asset-keyed `load_alpha_template`/`glyph_silhouette`/`template_match_score` caches). Detection still matches the glyph silhouette (NCC against the captured template); the removal MASK is TEMPLATE-FREE — it is the bounding box of the top-hat glyph blob from `extract_mask`, filled solid + dilated, so a re-rendered or differently-placed mark is still masked. This dropped the fixed alpha-template placement; the captured alpha maps are now used only for the detection silhouette, not for removal. Each engine module is a thin subclass supplying only its `TextMarkConfig` (the tuned constants, the bundled asset, and the bounded structural deltas — `corner` br/bl, `margin_floor` 4/2, `morph_open_size` 5/3, `min_gw` 8/16) plus the test-facing module shims (`_alpha_template`/`_glyph_silhouette`/`_template_match_score` + the constants). Gemini stays a SEPARATE engine (its multi-size fixed-slot sparkle model is genuinely different). Add a new text mark = a new `TextMarkConfig` + a thin subclass + one registry `_text_mark(...)` row. The engine bullets below describe each mark's calibration history; the LOGIC lives here. **Small-image detection guard (`_MIN_DETECT_SHORT_SIDE` 200, added 2026-06-26):** `detect` returns not-detected when the image short side is below 200px. Below that the glyph template degrades to the `min_gw` floor (~8px) and `TM_CCOEFF_NORMED` on a few pixels is noise, so an unrelated small geometric shape can spuriously correlate with the CJK silhouette — a 48×48 app-icon chevron scored Doubao 0.41 / Jimeng 0.47 (both above their thresholds), a pure small-size artifact (the same icon upscaled collapses to ~0.06–0.10 NCC at ≥256px). A real AI-generation label is stamped on a full-resolution render (the captured samples are 1086–2048px wide, the smallest positive test image is 1086px), so the floor sits far below any genuine mark while killing the icon/thumbnail band (≤96px); `identify` falls back to "unknown" (the safe default) and removal, gated on detection, is suppressed too. Regression-guarded by `test_{doubao,jimeng,samsung}_engine.py::TestDetect::test_small_image_guarded_from_false_positive`.
**Removal is localize -> fill.** The engine localizes the glyph blob (`extract_mask` over the located box) into a solid, dilated footprint mask and hands it to the shared `watermark_registry.fill` (cv2 / MI-GAN / big-LaMa). The template-free mask (bounding box of the glyph blob, not the fixed alpha template) means a re-rendered or moved mark is still covered, and the fill reconstructs the box from its surroundings. On corpus images doubao and jimeng localize + remove at ~100% with clean footprints (the filled region blends into its surroundings within a few LAB levels, no color shift, no dark pit); clean images with no vendor signature had 0% false removal.
**The reverse-alpha removal machinery is retired.** The old per-glyph reverse-alpha blend (`_apply_reverse_alpha`), the fixed/aligned alpha-map helpers, the over-subtraction guard (`_reverse_alpha_oversubtracts` → `_inpaint_footprint`, the dark-pit fix on dark/mid-tone backgrounds), and the always-align placement search are all gone — the fill reconstructs the footprint from its surroundings rather than inverting the captured alpha, so the dark-pit and color-shift failure modes those guards patched around no longer arise. `extract_mask` still returns a box-sized (`(loc.h, loc.w)`) mask rather than a full frame, which keeps the memory-tight `identify` detect path cheap.
## `doubao_engine.py`
`doubao_engine.py` — **a thin `_text_mark_engine.TextMarkEngine` subclass (config only) since 2026-06-09.** visible Doubao "豆包AI生成" detector + localizer (cv2/numpy, no GPU). `DoubaoEngine.locate` anchors a bottom-right box by **geometry** (mark scales with image WIDTH), `extract_mask` pulls the light, low-chroma glyphs (the detection candidate) using a per-pixel channel-spread proxy `sat = roi.max(axis=2) - roi.min(axis=2)` (no HSV conversion). `detect` is **shape-consistent**: it matches the bundled glyph silhouette (`assets/doubao_alpha.png`) against the candidate via zero-mean normalized correlation (`_template_match_score`, cv2 `TM_CCOEFF_NORMED`), gated at `DETECT_NCC_THRESHOLD` 0.4 over a small `DETECT_MIN_COVERAGE` floor. Keying on glyph SHAPE (not coverage heuristics) fixed #23 (corpus FP 7/1243).
**Removal is localize -> fill:** the glyph blob is localized to a solid, dilated footprint mask (`extract_mask` over the located box) and the shared `watermark_registry.fill` inpaints it. On corpus images this removes at ~100% with clean footprints (the filled region blends into its surroundings within a few LAB levels, no color shift, no dark pit).
**The detection template (`assets/doubao_alpha.png`) is rebuilt by `scripts/visible_alpha_solve.py`** (the careful gray-self solve: cubic background fit, mean over channels, full halo, unblurred), same recipe as Jimeng — the captures are committed in `data/doubao_capture/captures/`. It is used only as the detection silhouette, not for pixel recovery.
**The locate box (`WM_*`) is generous (0.22 wide, margins 0.004) and reaches close to the corner** so a re-rasterized, corner-ward-shifted mark still falls inside the localized box; regression-guarded by `test_recovers_shifted_mark_on_texture` (composes the mark shifted on a known texture). **`extract_mask` guards a degenerate ROI (`bh < 16 or bw < 16` -> empty mask, skips cv2)** — an extremely wide/short image (e.g. 2048x1, `test_wide_short_does_not_raise`) once fed cv2's GaussianBlur a ~1-px-tall ROI and **faulted natively on Windows py3.12**; real images always clear the guard (the `WM_*` box floors are `max(16, …)` height / `max(40, …)` width), so it only short-circuits slivers. The registry gates removal on `detect`. The shipped third-party `_refs/zhengsuanfa_doubao_alpha_120x20.png` is NOT a usable template (verified 2026-05-29). Arbitrary-region inpainting is `region_eraser`/`erase`. **Lesson from the reverse-alpha era (still holds): a detector-only removal test is insufficient; assert visual residual (the textured-shift test).**
## `jimeng_engine.py`
`jimeng_engine.py` — **a thin `TextMarkEngine` subclass (config only) since 2026-06-09.** visible Jimeng / Dreamina "★ 即梦AI" detector + localizer (cv2/numpy, no GPU), built 2026-05-30 from issue #13's solid captures (@powersee). Shares the base with `doubao_engine`: `locate` anchors a bottom-right box by **geometry** (scales with WIDTH), `extract_mask` pulls the light low-chroma glyphs (white top-hat + grayish + min-luma), `detect` matches the bundled "即梦AI" glyph silhouette (`assets/jimeng_alpha.png`) via `TM_CCOEFF_NORMED` over a coverage floor. Threshold `DETECT_NCC_THRESHOLD` **0.45** cleanly separates real Jimeng marks (>=0.81) from the Doubao strip (0.21) and other AI output (0.0), so the two ByteDance marks don't cross-fire in `--mark auto`.
**The detection template (`assets/jimeng_alpha.png`) is rebuilt by `scripts/visible_alpha_solve.py` from the GRAY capture** (`data/jimeng_capture/captures/`, the solid captures committed): `a = (I - B)/(255 - B)`, B a per-capture **cubic** background fit over the non-glyph pixels, **averaged over channels, full halo extent (down to a~0.02), unblurred**. Gray (bg ~132) is the deliberate choice over black: it is the best proxy for real content (the mark sits on bright photo areas, not on black). The captured template is used only as the detection silhouette, not for pixel recovery. Solver geometry at `_ALPHA_NATIVE_WIDTH` 2048: `_ALPHA_WIDTH_FRAC` 0.202, `_ALPHA_HEIGHT_FRAC` 0.058, margins ~0.029.
**Removal is localize -> fill:** the glyph blob is localized to a solid, dilated footprint mask and the shared `watermark_registry.fill` inpaints it; the `WM_*` locate box is generous so a re-rasterized, corner-ward-shifted mark stays inside the localized box (the same widen that fixed Doubao). On corpus images this removes at ~100% with clean footprints (blends within a few LAB levels, no color shift). The registry gates removal on `detect`.
**No committed real sample** (only the solid calibration captures are committed) — `tests/test_jimeng_engine.py` synthesizes a mark from the bundled template, and `test_recovers_shifted_mark_on_texture` guards the localize-on-shift path that the Doubao defect exposed. Jimeng images are independently caught by the China TC260 AIGC label in `metadata`/`identify`, so this engine is the visible-mark *removal* path, not a new `identify` signal.
## `samsung_engine.py`
`samsung_engine.py` — **a thin `TextMarkEngine` subclass (config only) since 2026-06-09.** visible Samsung Galaxy AI "✦ Contenuti generati dall'AI" detector + localizer (cv2/numpy, no GPU), built 2026-06-05 from issue #37's flat captures (@f-liva). Shares the base but anchored **bottom-LEFT** (Doubao/Jimeng are bottom-right): `locate` anchors a bottom-left box by **geometry** (scales with WIDTH), `extract_mask` pulls the light low-chroma glyphs (white top-hat + grayish + min-luma — `LOGO_MIN_LUMA` is lowered to **110** because the mark is faint, peak alpha ~0.38, so on a mid/dark background its glyph luma is lower than Jimeng's), `detect` matches the bundled glyph silhouette (`assets/samsung_alpha.png`) via `TM_CCOEFF_NORMED` over a coverage floor. Threshold `DETECT_NCC_THRESHOLD` **0.40** (real marks ~0.79 on a real photo, ~0.57/0.71 on the black/gray captures; 0.0 on Doubao/Jimeng captures, and Doubao/Jimeng score 0.0 on a real Samsung photo — no cross-fire, also because the corner differs).
**The detection template (`assets/samsung_alpha.png`) is solved by `scripts/visible_alpha_solve.py samsung` from the GRAY capture** (`data/samsung_capture/captures/`, the flat black/gray/white captures committed; the solver gained a `corner="bl"` mode + left-margin logging for this), same careful recipe as Jimeng (cubic background, mean-channel, full halo, unblurred). Geometry emitted at `_ALPHA_NATIVE_WIDTH` **1086** (the flat-edit capture width): `_ALPHA_WIDTH_FRAC` 0.3195, `_ALPHA_HEIGHT_FRAC` 0.0378, `_ALPHA_MARGIN_LEFT_FRAC` 0.0110, `_ALPHA_MARGIN_BOTTOM_FRAC` 0.0064. Used only as the detection silhouette, not for pixel recovery.
**Removal is localize -> fill:** the glyph blob is localized to a solid, dilated footprint mask and the shared `watermark_registry.fill` inpaints it. Verified on a real 2958-wide @f-liva photo: re-detect 0.79→0.00, no readable text or outline on the recovered wooden table — checked **visually**, not just by the detector. The registry gates removal on `detect`.
**Detection is locale-specific** (the string differs per language); this build detects only the Italian "Contenuti generati dall'AI" variant, so non-Italian Samsung locales are not detected — and, because detection gates removal, not removed — even though the fill mask itself is locale-independent. Other locales need their own detection silhouette — the locale string font-rendered and calibrated on real positives (the pill's `scripts/render_pill_silhouette.py` pattern), NOT an app capture (the solid/gray/white capture workflow retired with reverse-alpha). This is a pre-existing limit, unchanged by the localize -> fill refactor.
**No committed real sample** (only the flat calibration captures are committed) — `tests/test_samsung_engine.py` synthesizes a mark from the bundled template (bottom-left geometry), with `test_recovers_shifted_mark_on_texture` guarding the localize-on-shift path. Samsung Galaxy AI edits are independently caught by C2PA + the `genAIType` marker in `metadata`/`identify`, so this engine is the visible-mark *removal* path; it also feeds `identify` as the medium-confidence `visible_samsung` signal via the registry (the stripped-metadata fallback).
## `region_eraser.py`
`region_eraser.py` — universal region eraser (`erase` CLI) AND the shared fill backend behind `watermark_registry.fill` for the visible localize -> fill removal. `erase(image, boxes=|mask=, backend=)` accepts grayscale (2D) and RGBA (4-channel) inputs on **all** backends (each splits off any alpha plane and re-attaches it unchanged, and promotes grayscale to BGR): `boxes_to_mask` → one of three backends.
- `cv2` (default, no deps): `cv2.inpaint`.
- `migan` (extra `migan`, `andraniksargsyan/migan` ONNX, MIT, ~28 MB): `erase_migan`. Like `erase_lama`, it crops a padded region around the mask (`pad = max(256, 2*bbox)`), feeds only that crop to the ONNX model, and pastes only masked pixels back — but since MI-GAN accepts arbitrary dims (unlike LaMa's fixed 512² square) the crop is fed at NATIVE resolution (no resize). This **bounds the ONNX working set by the mark size, not the image**: feeding the whole frame made peak RAM scale with the upload (~0.6 GB at 4 MP up to ~2.4 GB at 25 MP, measured 2026-07); cropping holds it roughly constant (~0.6-0.9 GB), so a memory-tight host (a 1-2 GB web worker) can run MI-GAN on a 25 MP upload. The crop does not degrade the fill — a small mark only needs local context, and on real marks the cropped fill is on par with / sometimes cleaner than the full-frame fill (a tighter view gives the GAN less room to hallucinate large background structure; verified by eye on real Gemini/Doubao marks + a ground-truth reconstruction sweep). **Mask polarity is INVERTED** vs this package's 255-erase convention — the shipped ONNX wants 0=hole / 255=known, so `erase_migan` feeds `(crop_mask<=127)*255`; feeding 255=hole regenerates the whole frame into stripes (corpus-validated 2026-07, cost hours to find). ~0.19 s. This is the **preferred default fill** for the visible localize -> fill path.
- `lama` (extra `lama`, `Carve/LaMa-ONNX` Apache-2.0, ~200 MB): `erase_lama` crops a padded region around the mask, runs at LaMa's fixed 512² input, pastes only masked pixels back. Best quality but ~4.7 GB peak — explicit opt-in only, NOT auto-selected.
Lazy `_get_{lama,migan}_session` singletons; `{lama,migan}_available()` guard the optional imports (both == onnxruntime present). Note both extras install the same onnxruntime, so the two `*_available()` checks are identical — the fill's `auto` backend therefore resolves to MI-GAN whenever onnxruntime is present, else cv2, and big-LaMa is reachable only by an explicit `lama` backend (`--backend lama` on `erase`, or the shared fill's `backend="lama"`).
**LaMa-ONNX costs ~3.5-4 GB peak RAM and ~5-6 s/call on CPU** (FFC working set, not arena — `enable_cpu_mem_arena=False` does not help), so it does NOT fit a minimal droplet; the cv2 backend (tens of MB, ~30 ms) does. LaMa quality at low RAM = serverless/GPU, mirroring how raiw.cc offloads SDXL to fal.
## `invisible_watermark.py`
`invisible_watermark.py` — `detect_invisible_watermark(path)` decodes the OPEN DWT-DCT watermarks (public decoder, no key) embedded by Stable Diffusion / SDXL / FLUX via the `imwatermark` library. Known fixed patterns (verified against upstream source) live in `_BITS_48` (SDXL 48-bit, FLUX.2 48-bit) and `_SD1_STRING` ("StableDiffusionV1", SD 1.x/2.x). Optional dep (extra `detect`); returns None when absent. The `detect` extra pulls **torch** transitively (invisible-watermark declares torch a hard dep, and `WatermarkDecoder` eagerly imports `rivaGan` -> `torch` at import time), so detection needs torch present even though dwtDct runs CPU-only on cv2/numpy/pywavelets — no GPU and no separate `gpu` extra required.
**Unlike SynthID this is locally detectable**, but the watermark is fragile (does not survive JPEG re-encode/resize — verified gone after JPEG q90), so it confirms origin only on pristine files. Add new known patterns here. The file carries a top-of-module pyright pragma because imwatermark/cv2 ship no type stubs.
## `trustmark_detector.py`
`trustmark_detector.py` — `detect_trustmark(path)` decodes the OPEN, keyless **Adobe TrustMark** watermark (the soft binding behind Adobe Durable Content Credentials, `alg` `com.adobe.trustmark.P`) via the optional `trustmark` package (extra `trustmark`; pulls torch, downloads model weights on first use). Mirrors `invisible_watermark.py` (lazy singleton guarded by a double-checked `threading.Lock` so concurrent callers do not double-download the weights, top-of-module pyright pragma, returns None when absent). It detects *provenance*, not AI origin as such (TrustMark also marks human-authored content), so `identify` lists it as a watermark without setting `is_ai_generated`. Other soft-binding vendors (Digimarc/Imatag/Steg.AI/...) have no public decoder — they are only *named* via the `C2PA_SOFT_BINDINGS` scan, not decoded.
**False-positive gate (added 2026-05-29):** TrustMark's `wm_present` is a BCH error-correction validity flag that spuriously validates on a content-correlated fraction of un-watermarked images — AI-generated textures trip it far more than camera photos (verified 2026-05-29 on real files: it fires on Gemini/OpenAI/Doubao output that *cannot* carry Adobe's watermark, with a random-bytes decoded secret, while signal-free camera photos did not trip it). A genuine TrustMark is a *durable* soft binding engineered to survive re-encoding, so `detect_trustmark` re-decodes after a mild JPEG round-trip (`_survives_reencode`, `_REENCODE_QUALITY` 95) and requires the same schema both times; every observed false positive collapsed (none survived even q95), so the gate is the durability property the watermark guarantees. The second decode runs only on the rare initial hit, so the cost is negligible. Do NOT remove the gate to "catch more" — a lone TrustMark hit without it is almost always content noise.
## `noai/watermark_remover.py`
`noai/watermark_remover.py` — the `WatermarkRemover` class has three diffusion pipelines, selected by the explicit `pipeline` ctor arg (NOT inferred from `model_id`). `sdxl`/`controlnet` share the SDXL base (`DEFAULT_MODEL_ID`); `qwen` is its own base (`QWEN_MODEL_ID`).
**`sdxl`** (renamed from `default` 2026-06-09; `default` kept as a back-compat alias via `normalize_profile`) runs plain SDXL img2img (`_run_img2img`); it is the lighter opt-down alternative (no ControlNet weights).
**`qwen`** (`_run_qwen`, `_load_qwen_pipeline`) runs `QwenImageImg2ImgPipeline` on `Qwen/Qwen-Image` (20B MMDiT, Apache-2.0 code AND weights). The scrub still comes from the img2img `strength`; Qwen's value is **text preservation** (incl. CJK and small text). **Metric-measured nuance (2026-06-19, `scripts/fidelity_metrics.py`, do NOT trust the eyeball here — it misled). Compare ONLY at each pipeline's oracle-confirmed scrub floor (outputs where SynthID is removed in BOTH — an equal-strength compare is invalid where it leaves one un-scrubbed; Qwen at 0.15 does not clear Gemini): Qwen wins TEXT (lower OCR CER across EN/RU/ZH, perfect Chinese) but controlnet wins FACES (higher Laplacian-variance retention and lower LPIPS — Qwen smooths faces MORE; ArcFace identity favors controlnet 0.546 vs 0.331 at the Gemini floors).** So Qwen is the better text-preserving remover, NOT a universal fidelity win — controlnet's canny edge map holds face skin detail better. Specifics: bf16 on CUDA (fp16 risks overflow on the 20B MMDiT — see the dtype branch in `__init__`); loads `QWEN_MODEL_ID` unless `--model` is overridden; the call shape lives in the pure module helper `_build_qwen_kwargs` (unit-tested without torch in `tests/test_platform.py::TestQwenKwargs`), which uses Qwen's `true_cfg_scale` (NOT SDXL's `guidance_scale` — the CLI `--guidance-scale` maps onto it; ~4.0 is typical, the SDXL default 7.5 is high for Qwen) and an explicit `negative_prompt` (`_QWEN_PROMPT`/`_QWEN_NEGATIVE`). It is CUDA/cloud-class (the 20B does not fit MPS), so `_run_qwen` has NO MPS->CPU fallback — an error propagates. `_load_qwen_pipeline` raises a clear ImportError if the installed diffusers lacks `QwenImageImg2ImgPipeline`. **CERTIFIED oracle floors (Modal A100-80GB, 2026-06-20): OpenAI 0.10 (seed-robust — clean on seeds 0-4), Gemini 0.25 (seed 0 verified on 2 images; the Gemini oracle rate-limits volume seed-repeat, so PIN a seed in prod). The Gemini floor (0.25) is HIGHER than the certified controlnet Gemini floor (0.15); `resolve_strength(..., pipeline="qwen")` carries the Qwen ladder (`_QWEN_VENDOR_STRENGTH`), so `--pipeline qwen` gets the 0.25 Gemini floor automatically -- the old manual `--strength 0.25` workaround is retired. `_build_qwen_kwargs` passes an explicit `height`/`width` from the input (floored to /16 via the pure `_qwen_target_size`); WITHOUT it the img2img pipeline defaults to a 1024x1024 SQUARE and silently squishes non-square inputs (the abba 2816x1536 case came back 1024x1024, distorting the scene and garbling text — fixed 2026-06-20, tested in `TestQwenKwargs`).** Fidelity vs controlnet was measured at the certified floors (`scripts/fidelity_metrics.py`), NOT eyeballed. **`qwen` is a MANUAL opt-in only — there is NO auto-router (one was prototyped and DROPPED, see below).** It wins ONE niche: clean body text on a plain background, NO faces (openai_1/2 CER 0.241 vs 0.385). controlnet wins FACES and **display/decorative text in a scene** (abba poster: controlnet CER 0.114 vs qwen 0.379 — canny holds letter shapes; qwen re-renders and garbles them). **`--pipeline auto` + a faces+text mixed dual-pass were built and DROPPED (2026-06-20):** on the canonical faces+text case (abba) controlnet wins EVERY metric incl. text, so grafting qwen text would only hurt; and "text→qwen" is undecidable cheaply (it is body-vs-display text that matters). The router/detector/mixed modules were removed; the geometry fix + the Qwen strength ladder were kept (they make the manual `--pipeline qwen` correct). **Do NOT retry "add a Qwen ControlNet to close the face gap" — it was built, measured, and CLOSED 2026-06-20:** a DiffSynth blockwise-canny Qwen ControlNet did not restore face skin texture (lapvar flat 0.40, canny carries edges not skin grain) and no permissively-licensed Qwen tile/detail/skin ControlNet exists anywhere (all conditioning is geometry). Faces stay on controlnet; the next improvement lead is Z-Image-Turbo (Apache-2.0, unmeasured floor). Full record + the deep-research sweep in `docs/qwen-improvement-research.md`.
**`controlnet`** (**the DEFAULT pipeline since 2026-06-09** for `invisible`/`all`/`batch` and both engine ctors; `_run_controlnet`, `_load_controlnet_pipeline`) runs `StableDiffusionXLControlNetImg2ImgPipeline` with the SDXL-native canny ControlNet `xinsir/controlnet-canny-sdxl-1.0` (`watermark_profiles.CONTROLNET_CANNY_MODEL`): the control image is `cv2.Canny(gray, 100, 200)` stacked to 3 channels (`_CANNY_LOW`/`_CANNY_HIGH`, prompt `_CONTROLNET_PROMPT` / `_CONTROLNET_NEGATIVE`).
**Removal comes from the img2img regeneration (`strength`); the ControlNet only PRESERVES text and face STRUCTURE via the edge map.**
No original pixels are copied or frozen, BUT **validation 2026-06-04 disproved the old "so SynthID does not survive" claim: SynthID CAN survive controlnet on photoreal/high-detail content.**
At the shared low removal strength the canny edge-conditioning keeps the regeneration so close to the original that the pixel perturbation that destroys SynthID does not happen (oracle-confirmed: an OpenAI bracelet photo + a 9-face grid read **SynthID-detected** after controlnet at strength 0.10/0.15, but **SynthID-not-detected** after the `default` pipeline at the SAME strength + resolution -- only the pipeline differed).
**But the reverse also holds: a flat-graphic logo/poster SURVIVED `default` while clearing controlnet** -- removal at the low strength is content×pipeline dependent and neither pipeline is universally safe; the real lever is a higher strength. See the controlnet Known-limitations bullet for the full table + root cause. Canny holds face STRUCTURE but NOT identity (the regenerated face drifts in likeness -- canny carries edges, not identity). The drifted cleaned face is the LEAST-AI state we can reach without re-introducing SynthID; the library does NOT ship a face-restore extra. Every restore approach we evaluated (GFPGAN-on-cleaned, PhotoMaker-V2 txt2img, InstantID txt2img, InstantID img2img-on-cleaned at three parameter sweeps, 2026-06-04 - 2026-06-08 Modal cert sweeps) regenerated the face from an ArcFace embedding via SDXL diffusion -- which makes the output face look MORE AI-generated, not less. Empirical conclusion in `docs/synthid-robust-identity-research-2026-06-08.md` "Empirical follow-up". For production face preservation, ship the cleaned image as-is. `controlnet_conditioning_scale` (ctor arg, default 1.0) is the structure-preservation knob. Same dtype rule as `default` (fp32 on cpu/mps, fp16 only on cuda/xpu; the fp16-fixed SDXL VAE `_SDXL_FP16_VAE_ID` is swapped in on fp16 GPUs -- issue #29) and the same MPS->CPU fallback (reload on cpu/fp32, drop a non-cpu generator, retry once).
**Tiled diffusion (`tile`/`tile_size`/`tile_overlap` ctor-path args, CLI `--tile`, issue #10):** for large inputs that OOM at native resolution, `remove_watermark` can process the diffusion pass in overlapping sliding-window tiles instead of one forward pass — the lossless alternative to a `--max-resolution` downscale. The single-image generation closure was refactored into `_generate_one(img)` (dispatches controlnet/img2img, generator shared so the seed advances deterministically across tiles), and `_generate()` routes it through `noai.tiling.run_tiled` when `tile` is set AND `max(init_image.size) > tile_size` (a sub-tile image runs one pass unchanged). The ControlNet canny edge map is rebuilt per tile inside `_generate_one`, so structure preservation is tile-local. See `noai/tiling.py` below and the tiled-diffusion subsection in `docs/known-limitations.md` for the geometry, the partition-of-unity blend, and the quality caveat.
## `noai/tiling.py`
Pure sliding-window tiling for the diffusion path (no torch import; numpy/PIL only). `plan_tiles(w, h, tile_size, overlap)` returns a row-major grid of uniform-size `Tile` boxes — every tile is exactly `tile_size` (the SDXL training size), with the last tile on each axis pulled back flush to the far edge (`_axis_positions` clamps a pathological `overlap >= tile` to `tile - 1` so the step stays >= 1). `feather_weights(w, h, overlap)` is a separable linear taper (1 in the interior, ramping toward each edge) floored at `_WEIGHT_EPS` so it is **strictly positive everywhere** — that makes the normalized `accum / weight_sum` blend a partition of unity, so identical/unchanged tiles reconstruct the input exactly (the seam-free guarantee). `run_tiled(generate_tile, image, tile_size, overlap, set_progress)` is the orchestration loop: crop each planned tile, call `generate_tile` (one diffusion pass on a single PIL tile — injected, so this stays decoupled from the pipeline), resize a latent-grid-rounded result back to the exact tile size, and feather-accumulate. All three are unit-tested without the model (`tests/test_tiling.py`: axis math, grid coverage, taper shape/symmetry/positivity, identity reconstruction, per-tile call count, and the resize-back path). New blend tuning belongs in these pure helpers, not inlined into the runner.
`feather_region_composite(base, regenerated, box, *, feather)` is the pure region-targeted compositor for **AI-enhanced composites** (roadmap P1#8; `identify` `ai_source_kind == "enhanced"`, digitalSourceType `compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia`). It blends `regenerated` over `base` inside `box = (x, y, w, h)` with a separable linear taper of `feather` px at the box edges (the taper anchors to ~0 at the boundary, so unlike `feather_weights` it is NOT floored — the result equals `base` EXACTLY outside the box), preserving dtype and supporting HxW or HxWxC. It backs `WatermarkRemover.remove_watermark(region=..., region_feather=...)`: the remover regenerates the frame (or tiles), then composites only the AI box back over the original input, so the real photo outside the box stays pixel-exact and only the AI region is scrubbed. The box is caller-supplied (a C2PA composite manifest carries no reliable machine-readable region); the no-model lossless region path remains `region_eraser.erase`. Unit-tested in `tests/test_tiling.py::TestFeatherRegionComposite` (outside-box exactness, interior == regenerated, hard-paste at feather 0, monotonic seam ramp, dtype/grayscale/clamp/empty-box/shape-mismatch).
## `auto_config.py` (REMOVED 2026-06-09)
**`auto_config.py` + the content-detection layer were REMOVED 2026-06-09.**
History: `auto_config.plan()` was a content-adaptive planner that detected faces/text/edges (bundled OpenCV YuNet + PP-OCRv3 DBNet models) to route the pipeline and toggle the adaptive polish. Once `controlnet` became the default-and-only auto pipeline (it no longer downgrades a structure-less image to `sdxl`) and the adaptive polish was confirmed to **self-gate by detail level** (`humanizer.adaptive_polish` no-ops when the cleaned image already meets the input's Laplacian variance, so it does real work only on over-smoothed photo/face texture and ~nothing on text/flat), the detection no longer changed any behavior — it only annotated a `reason` string. So the whole layer was deleted: `auto_config.py`, `tests/test_auto_config.py`, and the two detection assets (`assets/face_detection_yunet_2023mar.onnx`, `assets/text_detection_ppocrv3_2023may.onnx`, ~2.6 MB).
**`--auto` is now a DEPRECATED no-op** (`cli._resolve_auto_polish`): controlnet is already the default pipeline AND the adaptive polish is ON by default, so `--auto` has nothing left to do — it only prints a deprecation warning and passes `adaptive_polish` through unchanged (an explicit `--no-adaptive-polish` still wins). (Originally it re-enabled the polish; once the polish default flipped to ON the same day, the parameter-source branch became dead and was dropped.) The **adaptive polish itself lives on** in `humanizer.adaptive_polish` (CLI `--adaptive-polish/--no-adaptive-polish`, **ON by default since 2026-06-09** — it self-gates to a no-op where there is no detail deficit, so default-on is safe; uses the full-res original as the detail reference) — see the `humanizer` test note. `batch` resolves the polish once before the loop (one warning) and caches the invisible engine per pipeline (`ctx.obj["_inv_engines"]`).
## Content `--pipeline auto` router + faces+text mixed dual-pass — PROTOTYPED and DROPPED (2026-06-20)
A `--pipeline auto` content router (`pipeline_router.py` + `content_detect.py`: Haar faces + MSER text → route text→qwen / faces→controlnet / both→mixed) and a faces+text **mixed dual-pass** (`mixed_pipeline.py`: scrub the whole frame on BOTH pipelines, then graft the qwen text regions onto the controlnet base via `tiling.feather_region_composite`) were built, run on Modal (the abba poster: faces + display text), measured, and **removed**. Why it failed:
- On the canonical faces+text image **controlnet wins EVERY metric, including text** (CER 0.114 vs qwen 0.379; ID 0.64 vs 0.36; lapvar 0.71 vs 0.59) — canny holds the existing letter shapes, qwen re-renders display/decorative text and garbles it. So grafting qwen text onto the controlnet base only HURTS.
- qwen beats controlnet on text ONLY for clean body text on a plain background with no faces (openai_1/2) — a niche where there are no faces to route around anyway, so `--pipeline qwen` alone covers it. The faces+clean-body-text intersection is near-empty.
- "text→qwen" is not cheaply decidable: it is body-vs-display text that matters, which face/text detectors can't tell apart. MSER also over-fired (47% of the busy poster, incl. faces).
KEPT from that work (independently valid for the manual `--pipeline qwen`): the qwen **geometry fix** (`_qwen_target_size` + `_build_qwen_kwargs` height/width — qwen squished non-square inputs to 1024² without it) and the **pipeline-aware `resolve_strength`** Qwen ladder (Gemini 0.25). Also kept: the `fidelity_metrics.py` one-to-one face matcher. The throwaway Modal eval scripts were removed after the run (findings recorded here and in `docs/qwen-improvement-research.md`).
## `upscaler.py`
`upscaler.py` — optional Real-ESRGAN pre-diffusion super-resolution for small inputs (spandrel boundary, top-of-file pyright pragma). `is_available()` gates on spandrel+torch (via `importlib.util.find_spec`); `upscale(bgr, device=None)` loads a lazily-built spandrel `ImageModelDescriptor` singleton (double-checked lock) and upscales by the model's native factor (x2), with a non-CPU→CPU device fallback mirroring the diffusion engine's MPS→CPU retry. Weights (`RealESRGAN_x2plus.pth`, BSD-3-Clause) download on first use to the `torch.hub` checkpoints cache; never bundled. Used only when UPscaling to the `min_resolution` floor (a `max_resolution` downscale always uses Lanczos). The wiring is `InvisibleEngine._esrgan_upscale(pil, target)` — Real-ESRGAN at native factor, then a Lanczos resize to the exact target, falling back to a plain Lanczos resize if the extra is absent or the model errors (so an optional upscaler can never break removal). The default `--upscaler` is `lanczos` (cv2, no deps).
**ESRGAN is a generic photo/texture GAN with no face/glyph prior**, so it best fits photo/texture content and can degrade faces (glassy/asymmetric eyes -- the diffusion pass regenerates faces so the full-pipeline final recovers) and thin/small text (the GAN invents wrong strokes, and low-strength diffusion will not fix it). Verified 2026-06-04: isolated upscale lap-var ~5x Lanczos on faces+textures but glassy eyes; end-to-end `invisible` final lap-var 1634 vs Lanczos 663 with natural faces (diffusion cleaned the artifact). Kept a **manual opt-in knob** (the auto plan never selects it) with `lanczos` the default; not content-gated by design (use Lanczos for text-heavy inputs). spandrel is MIT and pulls no basicsr. Unit-tested without the model: `tests/test_upscaler.py` (availability guard + the not-installed RuntimeError) and `tests/test_invisible_engine.py::TestEsrganUpscale` (the three `_esrgan_upscale` branches via a monkeypatched `upscaler`).
## `image_io.py`
`image_io.py` — Unicode-safe cv2 IO (issue #17). `imread(path, flags=None)` / `imwrite(path, img)` wrap `np.fromfile`+`cv2.imdecode` / `cv2.imencode`+`tofile` so non-ASCII paths work on Windows -- bare `cv2.imread`/`cv2.imwrite` use the platform ANSI code-page API there and fail (empty decode + `can't open/read file`) on Chinese/Cyrillic/accented filenames. `imread` keeps `cv2.imread` semantics (defaults to `IMREAD_COLOR`, returns `None` on missing/empty/undecodable).
**Every cv2 file read/write in the package routes through here; do not call `cv2.imread`/`cv2.imwrite` directly.**
`imwrite` returns `False` on an unwritable path (`OSError` caught) instead of raising, matching `cv2.imwrite` semantics. macOS/Linux already accept UTF-8 paths, so it is behavior-neutral there (the bug only reproduces on Windows).
**`to_bgr(image)` (added 2026-06-09)** is the shared channel normalizer: promotes 2D grayscale / (h,w,1) / 4-channel BGRA to 3-channel BGR (a 3-channel input is returned unchanged, no copy). Use it instead of inlining the `cvtColor(GRAY2BGR/BGRA2BGR)` branch — the gemini engine and the `TextMarkEngine` base both route through it so a grayscale/BGRA input (a real Gemini-app export is opaque RGBA) does not crash the `axis=2` channel reductions. cv2/numpy are imported lazily inside the functions, so the module is cheap to import in a bare env.
## CLI commands (`cli.py`)
Full per-command behavior for the skip/exit branches summarized in `CLAUDE.md`'s "How to run". The CLI distinguishes three exit codes: success (0), hard error (1), and a "nothing to do" code (2, `EXIT_NO_VISIBLE_MARK` / `EXIT_NO_INVISIBLE_SIGNAL`) so a wrapping service (raiw.cc) can surface guidance instead of treating an unchanged image as done (the production "it didn't work" / score-0 trap).
**Every single-image command's `source` argument declares `dir_okay=False`** (2026-07-20). `click.Path(exists=True)` accepts a directory unless told otherwise, so `identify <dir>` sailed past argument parsing and raised `IsADirectoryError` out of `metadata.scan_head`'s `open()` — a traceback, not a usage error. Refusing it at the argument layer is the right place: every command gets it, and none needs its own check. (`batch`'s `directory` argument was already correct with `file_okay=False`.) Found by the Tier E adversarial sweep; regression: `tests/test_cli_robustness.py::TestDirectoryInputIsRejected`.
### `all`
Full pipeline (visible + invisible + metadata). Same diffusion knobs as `invisible`, plus the visible-pass `--backend auto|cv2|migan|lama` (default `auto`) that picks the fill for the localize -> fill visible removal. **When the `[gpu]` extra is absent, step 2 (invisible/SynthID) is skipped** — `all` still writes an output (visible mark + metadata stripped) but prints a prominent end-of-run banner ("the invisible (SynthID) watermark was NOT removed") AND exits **non-zero** (1), so a skipped SynthID pass is not mistaken for a clean result (the recurring #14/#47 trap, where the old quiet inline warning was missed). `invisible` already hard-errors without the extra; only `all` continued, hence the loud end-banner. Regression-guarded by `tests/test_cli.py::TestAllCommand::test_all_loud_warning_and_nonzero_exit_when_gpu_missing`. **No-signal skip (P0#5):** step 2 also runs the same `has_invisible_target` gate (see `invisible` below) — when no invisible watermark is detectable and `--force` is not set, step 2 is skipped and the pixels are left intact, but unlike the GPU-missing skip this is a **SUCCESS (exit 0)**: the visible pass + metadata strip still ran and a file is written (the message says so without claiming the image is clean). Distinct exit semantics by design: GPU-missing = couldn't do the work (non-zero); no-signal = nothing to do (zero). Regression-guarded by `test_all_skips_invisible_on_no_signal_but_succeeds`. **Test trap:** any `all` test that exercises the full pipeline MUST `patch("remove_ai_watermarks.invisible_engine.is_available", return_value=True)` — CI installs core+dev only (no `[gpu]`), so an unpatched `all` test takes the skip branch and now hits the non-zero exit. This passed locally (gpu present → `is_available()` True) but red-failed every matrix cell on the v0.11.0 commit (`test_all_basic`/`test_all_visible_step_uses_registry` asserted exit 0); both now patch `is_available` True.
### `invisible`
Diffusion SynthID removal. The `--tile/--no-tile` knob is the *lossless* alternative to a `--max-resolution` downscale for large inputs that OOM on MPS/GPU: it engages only when the long side exceeds `--tile-size` (default 1024); tiles are feather-blended over `--tile-overlap` px (default 128); pair with `--max-resolution 0`. `--adaptive-polish` is a detail-targeted polish that self-gates to a no-op where there is no deficit. `--auto` is deprecated and now a no-op that only warns (the polish it used to enable is ON by default). **No-signal skip (P0#5, roadmap):** before the diffusion runs, the command checks `identify.has_invisible_target(source)` (the `ProvenanceReport.ai_from_metadata` union: C2PA AI-issuer / SynthID proxy, IPTC, AIGC, local gen params, EXIF/xAI, open DWT-DCT / TrustMark — visible marks do NOT count, they are a separate pass). When nothing is locally detectable it does NOT regenerate (that would only degrade a clean image — the dominant paid score-0 cause on no-watermark uploads): it writes NO output, prints guidance that does NOT claim the image is clean (a pixel SynthID is undetectable once its metadata proxy is gone), and exits **`EXIT_NO_INVISIBLE_SIGNAL` (2)** — same value/role as the visible `EXIT_NO_VISIBLE_MARK`. `--force/--no-force` (**default skip = ON**) runs the scrub regardless. The check fails SAFE (a detector exception → run, since leaving a watermark on a paid removal is worse than over-regenerating). Helpers `cli._no_invisible_signal_exit` + `identify.has_invisible_target`; regression-guarded by `tests/test_cli.py::TestInvisibleCommand::{test_invisible_no_signal_skips_and_exits_two,test_invisible_force_runs_scrub_on_no_signal,test_invisible_runs_without_force_when_signal_present}` and `tests/test_identify.py::TestHasInvisibleTargetFailSafe`. **Test trap:** any `invisible`/`all`/`batch` test that exercises the diffusion path on a signal-LESS fixture (e.g. the synthetic `sample_png`) MUST pass `--force`, or the new gate skips step 2 (so `mock_engine.remove_watermark` is never called / `invisible` exits 2).
### `visible`
Known-visible-mark removal by **localize -> fill**: each detected mark is localized to a binary full-frame footprint mask, then one shared, swappable fill inpaints that mask. `--backend auto|cv2|migan|lama` (default `auto`) picks the fill: `cv2` (classical inpaint, no deps, the floor), `migan` (MI-GAN ONNX, the memory-tight pick where LaMa will not fit), `lama` (big-LaMa ONNX, best quality, heavier, auto-preferred when a learned backend is available); `auto` = LaMa > MI-GAN > cv2, best available (LaMa is auto-preferred when a learned backend is present; a memory-tight deploy pins migan). `--sensitivity auto|strict|assume-ai` (default `auto`) controls how hard a borderline mark is trusted (see the registry section: the visual detectors are metadata-independent; `auto` relaxes a mark only on same-product evidence, `assume-ai` relaxes every mark on the caller's AI assertion, subject to the assumed-trust confidence floor where the vendor is unconfirmed — the only path to higher recall on a metadata-stripped screenshot). `--backend` and `--sensitivity` are shared across `visible`/`all`/`batch`. Detection keys on each mark's own shape, and under `auto` the trust gate is relaxed when local metadata confirms the vendor (a Google/Gemini C2PA issuer relaxes gemini, a China-AIGC label relaxes doubao/jimeng, `samsung_genai` relaxes samsung), so a moved or re-rendered mark is still caught. `--mark auto` (default) removes EVERY detected mark in one pass (`registry.remove_auto_marks`, not the single strongest -- a Jimeng-basic image carries both the top-left pill and the bottom-right wordmark) from: the Gemini sparkle, the Doubao "豆包AI生成" text strip, the Jimeng "★ 即梦AI" wordmark, the Samsung Galaxy AI "✦ Contenuti generati dall'AI" strip (bottom-LEFT, Italian-locale detection), and the capture-less Jimeng "AI生成" pill (top-left, `pill_engine`). The pill's weak edge-NCC detector is gated in `remove_auto_marks` via `_keep_pill` (32k real-upload corpus validation 2026-07): never on Doubao, and two confirmation arms since metadata confirms the platform, not pill presence. (1) The bottom-right wordmark fired — ~94% precise and survives metadata-STRIPPED uploads (screenshots / re-saves) — removes the pill unrestricted. (2) TC260 metadata confirms Jimeng (`"jimeng" in provenance`, from `cli._visible_provenance`) OR the caller asserts AI (`sensitivity == "assume_ai"`), no wordmark — **re-measured 2026-07-18 on 149 blind-labelled pill fires: 21% precise raw (CI 16-29%), 29% (CI 20-40%) among the flat footprints the guard actually PASSES, 14% among those it blocks** — its false fires are textured ceilings/walls that the fill visibly SMEARS — removes the pill ONLY when the top-left footprint is flat enough for an invisible fill (`pill_engine.footprint_is_flat`, median-Sobel ≤ `_FLAT_TEXTURE_MAX`; the flatness guard holds even under `assume_ai`). No confirmation → never removed. `--mark gemini|doubao|jimeng|samsung|jimeng_pill` forces one (choices come from the registry). Corpus validation: doubao and jimeng localize + remove at ~100% with clean footprints (the filled region blends into its surroundings within a few LAB levels, no color shift, no dark pit); clean images with no vendor signature had 0% false removal. For arbitrary logos/objects use `erase`. **When `--mark auto` finds no known mark (the common case — ~74% of real uploads carry no registered visible mark), the command does NOT silently re-serve the input as a finished result.** It runs a cheap metadata-only `identify`, prints actionable guidance (if the image carries an invisible/metadata mark, e.g. an OpenAI/Gemini C2PA image, it points to `all`; otherwise it does NOT imply the image is clean -- it warns that an invisible pixel watermark like SynthID cannot be detected once the metadata proxy is gone and routes to both `all` and `erase --region`), writes NO output file, and exits **`EXIT_NO_VISIBLE_MARK` (2)** — distinct from success (0) and a hard error (1) so a wrapping service (raiw.cc) can surface the message instead of treating the unchanged image as done (the production "it didn't work" / score-0 trap). Same handling for an explicit `--mark <name>` that is not detected. Helper `cli._no_visible_mark_exit`; regression-guarded by `tests/test_cli.py::TestVisibleCommand::test_visible_auto_no_mark_exits_two_with_eraser_hint` and `test_visible_auto_no_mark_routes_to_all_when_metadata`. `--no-detect` still forces the gemini fallback and proceeds (exit 0).
### `batch`
Process every supported image in a directory (output defaults to `<directory>_clean/`, set with `-o`). `--mode visible|invisible|metadata|all` (default `visible`); the invisible/all path reuses the **full `invisible` knob set** (`--strength`/`--steps`/`--guidance-scale`/`--pipeline`/`--controlnet-scale`/`--model`/`--device`/`--max-resolution`/`--min-resolution`/`--upscaler`/`--seed`/`--hf-token`/`--humanize`/`--unsharp`/`--adaptive-polish`/`--tile`/`--tile-size`/`--tile-overlap`/`--force`), plus `--backend` for the visible localize -> fill pass. `--adaptive-polish` is ON by default; `--auto` is deprecated and a no-op that only warns. **No-signal skip (P0#5):** in invisible/all mode each image runs the same `has_invisible_target` gate — a signal-less image is skipped (no diffusion); in `invisible` mode the input is copied through to the output dir so it stays complete, in `all` mode the visible-removed result is kept and metadata is still stripped. `--force` scrubs every image regardless. One engine cached per pipeline; the polish is resolved once before the loop. **Exit code (`batch` used to always exit 0, hiding failures):** `cmd_batch` raises `SystemExit(1)` when any image errored, OR when a `--mode invisible`/`all` image carried an invisible signal but the GPU extra was absent so its SynthID scrub was skipped — mirroring single `all`, it emits a loud "the invisible watermark was NOT removed on N image(s)" warning and (invisible mode) copies the input through so the output dir stays complete, rather than silently dropping the signal-bearing files that most needed processing. `_process_batch_image` returns that skipped-scrub flag; the loop tallies it. Regression-guarded by `tests/test_cli.py::TestBatchCommand::{test_batch_errors_exit_nonzero, test_batch_invisible_gpu_missing_writes_output_and_exits_nonzero}`.
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