Comparison

Overview

Need to understand what changed between two evaluations? Use Comparison.

Comparison produces structured evidence comparing baseline Replay behavior against candidate Simulation behavior. It helps customer systems record whether a candidate policy setup materially changes runtime outcomes.

When To Use It

Use Comparison when:

• A valid replay_reference is available.
• Candidate policy setup is available.
• Customer systems need structured evidence for review, approval, release, experiment, rollback, or audit workflows.
• Customer correlation metadata should be returned unchanged for customer-owned traceability where supported.

Customer correlation metadata is customer-owned traceability context, such as case, experiment, corpus, review, or release identifiers.

What You Provide

Provide:

• replay_reference
• candidate_policy_setup

You may also provide optional customer_correlation_metadata, such as:

• experiment_id
• corpus_id
• customer_case_id
• Customer-defined trace or release identifiers

FoxCommand returns supported customer correlation metadata unchanged and does not interpret it as lifecycle state.

What FoxCommand Returns

A successful Comparison response may include:

• Runtime response API version
• status
• schema_version, currently comparison.v1
• comparison_id
• replay_reference
• baseline_replay
• candidate_simulation
• comparison_result
• customer_correlation_metadata
• Bounded errors

The comparison_id identifies deterministic Comparison evidence where current runtime behavior supports it.

What To Do Next

Store comparison_id, schema_version, comparison_result, replay_reference, and customer correlation metadata.

Preserve the relationship between Comparison evidence and customer-owned governance, policy, corpus, experiment, case, review, approval, release, or rollback records.

Use Governance RCA when a material difference needs bounded attribution.

Deterministic Evidence

Successful Comparison responses include a deterministic comparison_id.

Customer correlation metadata does not determine the comparison identifier. The identifier is based on deterministic runtime comparison material, candidate policy setup, baseline outcome, simulated outcome, and comparison result.

Runtime Source of Truth

Use FoxCommand runtime documentation and the OpenAPI specification for exact request bodies, response bodies, authentication requirements, errors, and operational limits.

Comparison is not batch execution, experiment management, corpus storage, aggregate reporting, dashboarding, CI/CD integration, promotion workflow, or rollback orchestration.

Next Steps

Use Governance RCA when a material difference needs bounded attribution.