Q-Metrics is a derived metrics layer built on Q-Ledger. Its purpose is to make discoverability, continuity, and drift around governance entrypoints measurable in a form that remains comparable from one snapshot to another.
Warning: non-normative, descriptive. These metrics describe an observed state. They do not constitute proof of compliance, attestation, or certification.
Why Q-Metrics exists
Publishing governance files is not enough. The operational question is whether those artifacts are actually discovered, consulted, and maintained with continuity over time. Q-Metrics condenses those signals without pretending to be stronger than observation itself.
Entrypoints
Minimum indicator families
- Entrypoint compliance: proportion of expected entrypoints observed as consulted.
- Escape rate: proportion of observations leaving the expected entrypoint surface.
- Sequence fidelity: continuity of chained snapshots and absence of archive breaks.
How to read the metrics
A higher compliance rate suggests effective discoverability. A higher escape rate may indicate exploration outside the expected entrypoints, indexing instability, or routing drift. A lower sequence fidelity signals a continuity or archive problem that should be investigated before any stronger interpretation is made.
Limits
- Q-Metrics inherits the limits of Q-Ledger: edge visibility, caching, restrictions, and sampling bias.
- A signal is not a proof. It must be read inside its regime and time window.
- This layer does not replace a stronger attestation mechanism when such a mechanism is required.
For the doctrinal distinction between a descriptive metrics layer and actual representation governance, see GEO metrics do not govern representation.
Governance role
Q-Metrics gives the ecosystem a public measurement layer without pretending to replace audit, canon, or proof. Its role is to make discoverability and continuity legible enough to support later interpretation.
How Q-Metrics should be interpreted
Q-Metrics should be read comparatively and longitudinally. A single value says little by itself. What matters is the relation between the baseline, later windows, and the declared machine-first path.