Continue implementation of genuine IDKMesh discoverability, SEO, and traffic improvement after merging the read-only GitHub Traffic collector in PR #1003.
The public site has technical SEO checks and an intent portfolio, but the external-reference axis under issue #780 has no reproducible classification record. Public search surfaces apparent summaries and syndications of the project’s own posts; a search hit alone does not prove editorial independence, a direct backlink, an actual click, or a verified research reproduction.
Add a strict offline JSON ledger under
evidence/search-visibility/authority-references.json, a deterministic
report, scripts/authority_reference_ledger.py, and nine focused tests.
Map each observation to one of ten canonical topic URLs. Distinguish authored,
syndicated, externally unknown, and purported independent references; require
explicit owner-reviewed and direct-link-checked status before including it
in the claimed independent bucket.
This is owner attestation, not proof of independence; the initial ledger is empty. No synthetic backlinks, downloaded private data, scraping, outreach, publication, change of integration authority, or rank prediction is introduced. Source URL validation excludes owned site/GitHub paths and unsupported private endpoint formats; the report groups by intent cluster and distinct source host without manufacturing an authority score.
A local isolated standard-library test run passed all nine tests against synthetic examples and verified report generation with a ten-cluster fixture. The full PR Gate remains the final check against repository data. The new tests also check that the committed report matches the ledger and canonical portfolio.
Issue #780 tracks earning and recording genuine third-party references, not just the ledger foundation. Search Console activation in #807 and independent adoption/reproduction evidence remain separate owner/external dependencies.
Reviewers can reproduce the difference between genuine cited work, project-authored distribution, and uncertain external mentions. No popularity signal can become evidence of correctness or confer publication/merge authority.
Provenance: AI-assisted implementation and synthetic fixture testing. No independent human classification of real-world backlinks is claimed.