Claims

A claim is a statement about one value in an output file that SciProof can check mechanically, for example “the accuracy is at least 0.9”. It is recorded in the manifest when you capture, and verify checks it every time, on the recorded output and, with --rerun, on the output of the rerun.

sciproof capture --name baseline \
  --input params.json --input train.py --output-numeric metrics.json \
  --claim metrics.json '$.accuracy >= 0.9' \
  --claim metrics.json '$.loss ~= 0.25 atol=0.01' \
  -- python train.py
sciproof verify baseline.sciproof.json

  [PASS] claim metrics.json: $.accuracy >= 0.9: holds: $.accuracy is 0.92, claim is >= 0.9

Syntax

--claim OUTPUT 'LOCATION OP VALUE'

• OUTPUT is a .json or .csv file that you also declared with --output or --output-numeric.
• LOCATION is the one that appears in difference reports: $.key[0].name for JSON, r3c1 (row, column; row 0 is the first line) for CSV. Keys that contain dots, spaces or brackets cannot be addressed.
• OP is one of ==, !=, <, <=, >, >=, ~=.
• VALUE is a JSON number, a string in double quotes, true, false or null. The ordering operators and ~= need a number.
• ~= means “approximately”: |found - value| <= max(rtol * max(|found|, |value|), atol), with rtol= and atol= after the value (both default to 0, which is exact).

Rules

• == and != treat a number as a number (1 equals 1.0), and compare booleans, strings and null exactly and by type: true is not 1.
• A value that is not a number never satisfies <, <=, >, >= or ~=; NaN satisfies none of ==, <, <=, >, >=, ~= (and != x holds).
• A location that is not in the file means the claim does not hold.

What verify does with them

Situation	Result
The output still has its recorded hash and the claim holds	PASS
… and the claim does not hold	FAIL
The output no longer matches the recorded hash, or is missing	INCONCLUSIVE (the output check itself already FAILs): a claim about a modified file says nothing about the evidence
With --rerun: the rerun’s output satisfies the claim / does not	PASS / FAIL, as a separate check called rerun claim ...
With --rerun: the rerun did not produce the file	INCONCLUSIVE

If a claim does not hold when you capture, SciProof still records it and prints a warning; verification then keeps reporting it. The JSON evidence of each check has the output, location, op, value and the found value.

What a claim does not show

A claim that holds shows only that this value satisfies this comparison. It does not show that the comparison is the right criterion, that the number means what its name suggests, or that the experiment is sound. Every report that checks claims says so under “not checked”. SciProof does not extract or interpret claims from papers.

Claims are part of the manifest (schema 1.1), so sciproof diff lists claims that were added or removed between two runs, and sign covers them.