Intelligence methodology

Reality vs attention

Every scored entity gets two percentiles, each computed within its form-factor cohort (humanoids against humanoids, robotaxis against robotaxis):

• Reality is the percentile of a verified-deployment index: how much this entity actually operates in the field, confirmed against primary sources.
• Attention is the percentile of a media index: press volume and video reach.

Percentiles are cohort-relative by design. An 80th-percentile Reality means this entity has more verified operating footprint than 80 percent of its form-factor peers, not that it scored 80 on an absolute scale. Cohorts smaller than five do not receive a percentile at all.

The Hype Gap

The Hype Gap is the Attention percentile minus the Reality percentile. A positive gap means an entity draws more attention than its verified footprint supports; a negative gap means it operates more than it is talked about. We rank the gap within the cohort, so a record can carry a claim like 12th widest Hype Gap among humanoids. The gap is the headline because it is the one number a competitor with a charting library still cannot reproduce: it requires the verified axis, and only the ledger has that.

What Reality measures

The Reality index is built from verified deployments only. Its inputs, in rough order of weight:

• Deployment volume - count of verified deployments, on a diminishing-returns curve so a thousandth site adds less than the tenth.
• Operational status - operational and scaled deployments weigh far more than announced ones; an announcement is not an operation.
• Geographic spread - distinct countries with verified sites.
• Longevity and recency - deployments that have persisted, and new verified activity in the trailing window.

What Attention measures

Attention is a pure reach signal. Its inputs:

• Press volume and recency - approved press articles and how recent they are.
• Video reach - view counts on approved video, log-scaled.
• Third-party sightings - independent, non-manufacturer observations.

Attention is never added to Reality. It is reported beside it, so a reader can see the two at once and draw the only conclusion that matters: whether the coverage is earned.

Supporting dimensions

Beneath the two headline axes, the entity page reports additional dimensions, each scored 0 to 100 with its own confidence:

• Safety - incident record adjusted for deployment scale, with credit for disclosed remediation.
• Financial health - capital raised, round recency and momentum, and disclosed financial state.
• Hiring - open-role volume, month-over-month velocity, and the maturity signal in the role mix.
• IP and regulatory - active patent estate, filing recency, regulatory clearances, and litigation posture.

These inform the record but do not lift Reality. Any composite retained for ranking convenience is recomputed without the media dimension, so attention can never raise a reality-weighted rank.

Data floors and honest absence

A dimension only publishes when its data clears a floor. Below that floor the record shows Insufficient data, grayed and excluded from every percentile and ranking. It is never rendered as a low score. Scoring a data gap as a weakness would penalize the honest record that simply has not been covered yet, which is the opposite of what a verified registry is for.

Each dimension carries a confidence value from 0 to 1 reflecting how complete its inputs are. Confidence below 0.3 is treated as insufficient. A cohort with fewer than five placed members produces no percentile, because a percentile over four peers is not a percentile.

Provenance tiers

Every dimension is sourced from a distinct part of the registry, and each part carries its own verification posture:

• Reality - the verified deployment ledger. Primary-sourced; the strongest tier.
• Attention - approved press and video records. Reach, not merit; reported as such.
• Safety - the append-only incident ledger and status events.
• Financial - funding rounds and disclosed financial-state records.
• IP and regulatory - patent, litigation, and regulatory-filing records.

Where a record is company-claimed rather than independently verified, it is labeled that way in the data, and the distinction is preserved into the score. See how DEPLOY verifies.

Update cadence

Dimension scores recompute nightly from the current registry state, and each recomputation appends to a per-dimension history so movement over six months is itself a signal. Reality and Attention percentiles are cohort-relative, so a record can move because it changed or because its peers did. That is intentional: a percentile is a statement about the field.

What changed, and why

The intelligence layer previously led with a single blended score that included the media dimension, so press coverage mechanically raised the number the registry exists to discount. That has been removed. Every entity now leads with the Reality and Attention percentiles and the Hype Gap between them. The registry's grammar is verified versus claimed; the intelligence layer is now that grammar, drawn.