About this article

• Audience: Operators and integrators evaluating production readiness
• Goal: Understand what soak grading measures and where to find formal criteria
• Type: Concept

Summary

Ghost Protocol grades shadow deployments using automated soak gates, visual verification harnesses, and MQTT contract checks. Public docs describe the process; detailed grading rubrics and session results stay in operator-controlled repositories.

What grading covers

Area	What passes look like
MQTT contract	Stable ~10 Hz telemetry, valid detection schema
Encoder / H.265	Recent chunks without prolonged stall streaks
Thermal	Die temperature within soak gate thresholds
Storage	WARNING or better before long runs; prune if CRITICAL
Visual gates	Optional harness checks for playback-ready clips

How to run grading workflows

1. Complete first operator tasks
2. Use the shadow orchestrator for reproducible soak batches (soaks guide)
3. Interpret failures via common issues

Next steps

• Soak grading best practices
• Automation rates
• Release status

Operator depth

Full grading criteria, historical soak tables, and harness JSON live in private operator handoff (not published).