The cleared band

The report’s cleared-band table answers it directly: at each budget, how many PRs were cleared, how many defects slipped through (the miss rate), and the cleared band’s defect density versus merging blind — density_lift.

• density_lift < 1 — clearing carries information; cleared PRs are safer than average
• density_lift = 1 — the clearance is worthless; you’re merging blind

This is the trust product’s headline metric, the way capture@budget is the routing product’s. It’s also the number that decides whether an auto-merge claim would be honest at a given budget — and at tight budgets, today, it wouldn’t be. We say so.

 flag  cleared  missed  miss rate  vs base
  10%    4,500    ~58       86%      0.96x
  20%    4,000    ~43       64%      0.80x
  30%    3,500    ~29       43%      0.61x

# reading: at a 30% budget the cleared band
# carries 0.61× the blind-merge defect density.
# honest, not yet publishable — n is small.