{
  "version": "signal-is-rare-v1",
  "title": "The Signal Is Rare",
  "published": "2026-08-25",
  "canonical": "https://justlay.me/research/the-signal-is-rare",
  "cohort_separation_rule": "These are separate cohorts and may overlap. Do NOT sum them into a single message total. Attribute every figure to its own cohort.",
  "cohorts": [
    {
      "cohort_id": "signal_29",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "histories": 29,
      "messages": 4600611,
      "accounts": 20
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "histories": 44,
      "messages": 2994932,
      "accounts": null
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "turning_point_v1",
      "evidence_base": "synthetic",
      "histories": 40,
      "messages": null,
      "accounts": null
    }
  ],
  "findings": [
    {
      "cohort_id": "signal_29",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "no_detectable_emotional_signal",
      "value": "97.4",
      "unit": "percent of messages",
      "claim_status": "published",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "signal_29",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "affection_to_explicit_repair_ratio",
      "value": "10.7",
      "unit": "ratio to 1",
      "claim_status": "published approximate",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "signal_29",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "uploader_message_share",
      "value": "53",
      "unit": "percent",
      "claim_status": "published descriptive",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "signal_29",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "reply_latency_direction",
      "value": "9 vs 13",
      "unit": "threads by direction",
      "claim_status": "withheld",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "median_thread_length",
      "value": "1570",
      "unit": "messages",
      "claim_status": "published descriptive",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "largest_thread_length",
      "value": "163636",
      "unit": "messages",
      "claim_status": "published descriptive",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "escalation_rate",
      "value": "195.3",
      "unit": "per 1000 messages",
      "claim_status": "published median and IQR",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026",
      "lower_bound": 52.6,
      "upper_bound": 226.2
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "repair_attempt_rate",
      "value": "5.43",
      "unit": "per 1000 messages",
      "claim_status": "published median and IQR",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026",
      "lower_bound": 3.8,
      "upper_bound": 7.64
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "apology_attempt_rate",
      "value": "4.31",
      "unit": "per 1000 messages",
      "claim_status": "published median and IQR",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026",
      "lower_bound": 0.91,
      "upper_bound": 4.59
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "repair_more_common_histories",
      "value": "5",
      "unit": "histories",
      "claim_status": "published count",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "pursuit_skewed_histories",
      "value": "28",
      "unit": "histories",
      "claim_status": "published count",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "withdrawal_skewed_histories",
      "value": "10",
      "unit": "histories",
      "claim_status": "published count",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "conflict_44",
      "evidence_base": "observed",
      "measure": "balanced_histories",
      "value": "6",
      "unit": "histories",
      "claim_status": "published count",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/research/relationship-texting-benchmarks-2026"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "turning_point_v1",
      "evidence_base": "synthetic",
      "measure": "steady_thread_false_positive_rate",
      "value": "0",
      "unit": "percent",
      "claim_status": "synthetic benchmark",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/grey-mirror/turning-point-accuracy-benchmark"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "turning_point_v1",
      "evidence_base": "synthetic",
      "measure": "planted_change_detection_rate",
      "value": "100",
      "unit": "percent",
      "claim_status": "synthetic benchmark",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/grey-mirror/turning-point-accuracy-benchmark"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "turning_point_v1",
      "evidence_base": "synthetic",
      "measure": "planted_change_direction_accuracy",
      "value": "100",
      "unit": "percent",
      "claim_status": "synthetic benchmark",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/grey-mirror/turning-point-accuracy-benchmark"
    },
    {
      "cohort_id": "turning_point_v1",
      "evidence_base": "synthetic",
      "measure": "median_localization_error",
      "value": "0",
      "unit": "days",
      "claim_status": "synthetic benchmark",
      "source_url": "https://justlay.me/grey-mirror/turning-point-accuracy-benchmark"
    }
  ],
  "provenance_funnel": {
    "rule": "The analytics rollup is an OPERATIONAL UNIVERSE, not a research cohort. Only the published cohort supports findings.",
    "operational_universe": {
      "conversations": 347,
      "messages": 20794571,
      "accounts": 88
    },
    "eligible": {
      "conversations": 126,
      "minimum_messages": 500,
      "minimum_span_days": 30
    },
    "published_signal_cohort": {
      "histories": 29,
      "messages": 4600611,
      "accounts": 20
    },
    "storage_manifest": {
      "records": 661,
      "unique_hashes": 470,
      "repeated_hashes": 191,
      "caution": "The 191 repeated hashes are duplicate FILE records. They are not 191 duplicate relationships and not 191 excluded participants."
    },
    "excluded_from_findings": [
      "run_rows",
      "responder_rows"
    ],
    "source": "https://justlay.me/research/signal-is-rare/data-export-audit.csv"
  },
  "evidence_retrieval_benchmark": {
    "evidence_base": "one full-fidelity engineering artifact",
    "messages": 163636,
    "metric_outputs": 30,
    "gold_metric_families": 11,
    "evidence_ids": 40,
    "messages_per_second": 328.6,
    "recall_at_k": {
      "1": 0.2364,
      "3": 0.5879,
      "5": 0.8788,
      "8": 0.8788,
      "16": 0.8788,
      "32": 1.0
    },
    "full_coverage_rate_at_k": {
      "1": 0.0,
      "3": 0.0,
      "5": 0.7273,
      "8": 0.7273,
      "16": 0.7273,
      "32": 1.0
    },
    "hit_rate": "1.0 at every k tested",
    "claim_boundary": "Evidence retrieval only. This is NOT classifier accuracy and NOT real-relationship validity. n=1 artifact, so it is an engineering benchmark, not a statistical result.",
    "source": "https://justlay.me/research/signal-is-rare/evidence-retrieval-benchmark.csv"
  }
}