EMEP Evidence Tag Classification Map

Map every EMEP research area to its evidence tag: Established research, Research hypothesis, Engineering assumption, Experimental result, or Future goal.

EMEP documentation uses evidence tags to distinguish proven claims from predictions, assumptions, and targets. This page maps every research area to its tag and shows the hierarchical evidence tree.

Evidence Tag Definitions

Tag	Meaning	Use in EMEP
Established research	Peer-reviewed, replicated finding	Cite with authors and year; safe to depend on
Research hypothesis	Predicted but not yet validated	Mark clearly; design experiments to test
Engineering assumption	Pragmatic choice without formal proof	Document rationale; revisit if contradicted
Experimental result	Finding from an EMEP experiment	Tag with EXP-TBD-### ID; provisional until replicated
Future goal	Target state, not yet implemented	Use for roadmap and planning only

Research Area to Evidence Tag Mapping

Research Area	Evidence Tag	Justification
Model Soups (averaging weights)	Established research	Wortsman et al. 2022; replicated in multiple follow-ups
Task Arithmetic (task vectors)	Established research	Ilharco et al. 2022; widely adopted in merging literature
TIES-Merging	Established research	Yadav et al. 2023; validated on multi-task benchmarks
DARE	Established research	Yu et al. 2023; independent replication confirmed
SLERP for model weights	Research hypothesis	Shoemake 1985 is established for rotations; application to high-dimensional weight vectors is hypothesized
Evolutionary Model Merge	Established research	Akiba et al. 2024; demonstrated on diverse model families
LoRA for task vector production	Established research	Hu et al. 2021; standard practice in PEFT
QLoRA for resource-constrained fine-tuning	Established research	Dettmers et al. 2023; replicated at scale
NSGA-II for merge optimization	Engineering assumption	Deb et al. 2002 is established; applicability to model merging search space is assumed
NSGA-III for many-objective merging	Research hypothesis	Deb & Jain 2014 is established; benefit for 5+ merge objectives is predicted
CMA-ES for merge hyperparameters	Research hypothesis	Hansen 2001 is established; continuous merge ratio optimization is untested in EMEP
Catastrophic forgetting in merged LLMs	Research hypothesis	McCloskey & Cohen 1989 is established for small networks; LLM-scale merge forgetting is under study
EWC for merge-time protection	Research hypothesis	Kirkpatrick et al. 2017 is established for sequential learning; merge application is speculative
Benchmark contamination detection	Established research	Sainz et al. 2023; methods are validated but not exhaustive
Hidden Test Set isolation prevents overfitting	Engineering assumption	Logical consequence of ML best practice; not formally proven for evolutionary merging
ed25519 signing for model provenance	Engineering assumption	Cryptographic primitive is established; supply chain application in ML is emerging
Safetensors security advantage over pickle	Established research	Format specification and security analysis are published
Offline-first enterprise mode	Future goal	Design target for Phase 7; not yet implemented or validated
Pareto front diversity guarantees	Research hypothesis	NSGA-II/III provide diversity mechanisms; guarantee for model merge space is unproven
Semantic versioning for models	Engineering assumption	Standard practice in software; formalized for ML artifacts in EMEP

Evidence Tree

Tagging Rules

1. Every claim in specification pages must carry exactly one tag
2. Untagged claims are flagged in documentation review
3. Hypotheses must link to an experiment ID that will test them
4. Assumptions must name the condition under which they would be revisited
5. Results must include the EXP-TBD-### identifier and replication status

Next Steps

See Component Mapping for how these research areas justify specific EMEP components, or References for the full paper annotations.