Architecting Against Drift: The Technical Architecture of a Distributed Reproducibility Validation System

Abstract

Computational research depends on the ability to independently reproduce results, yet modern workflows are fragile: they drift across environments, depend on undocumented assumptions, and often fail silently. ValiChord provides a decentralised, agent‑centric infrastructure for independent reproducibility validation. Validators re‑execute workflows in diverse environments, generate cryptographically signed attestations, and contribute structured detector evidence that captures environment drift, dependency skew, execution variability, and workflow fragility. A commit–reveal protocol preserves validator independence, while Harmony Records synthesise divergent outcomes without collapsing them into binary judgements. ValiChord validates computation, not data provenance, and is explicit about this boundary: it strengthens the computational layer of scientific integrity without claiming to detect data fabrication. The system is built on Holochain, not blockchain, ensuring tamper‑evident provenance without global ledgers, tokens, or consensus mechanisms. Reference implementation and detector suite: https://github.com/topeuph-ai/ValiChord