Prospective interpretation of instrument quality flags

12 October 2026. The native GLIMPSE inspection illustrates a concrete failure mode: a blanket all-zero quality rule rejected a counterpart aligned with all 21 supported visit medians because of PSF-photometry adjustment flags. The failed frozen test remains unchanged; positional agreement still cannot prove physical emitter identity or a protostar.

For future registrations, interpret each instrument’s flag definitions first. Distinguish fatal/unreliable extraction, corrections that increase uncertainty, context/diagnostic flags, missing information and unresolved meanings. Publish that mapping, native columns/units and exact bit numbering before readout. Do not reuse a similarly named field’s semantics across surveys. An all-zero subset may be intentionally conservative, but its rejection is not automatically a false detection or physical non-detection. Retain native values and reasons.

If an observed flag has benign or diagnostic semantics, report that fact without changing a frozen primary count. Exemptions, masks or sensitivity tests that would admit rejected cases need a separate prospectively justified protocol; do not tune them to yield a preferred result. Catalogue inclusion, flags, projected association and physical class remain separate evidence statements.

GLIMPSE native flag definitions explicitly identify PSF adjustments that can enlarge photometric uncertainty without compromising source reliability. The source-bound result keeps that interpretation, the positive geometry and the failed 0/3 criterion together. This lesson authorizes no new fit, acquisition or relaxed old rule.