2026-10-02: The Lead That Stayed a Lead
An unknown phone joined during curfew and Columbo called it unknown.
The address was private. There is no manufacturer to print. The firewall had already read a user-agent: Apple, iOS, and a desktop type that disagrees with iOS. No DHCP name. No Bonjour name. The scan asked the firewall for names and for the chip vendor, then left that user-agent sitting unread in the rest of the host record. That was the miss. The card the haus prints still said unknown.
The guess is not a name
Section titled “The guess is not a name”A user-agent is not the device speaking. This haus has already named the wrong box from a weaker clue. One store visit enrolled a laptop as Albert’s game console. That scar is the laptop that became a Steam Deck.
DHCP and Bonjour remain the only words Columbo will write down. A vendor string still comes from the network chip. The naming tick prints a user-agent only when those three are empty and the current name says nothing. A type that fights the operating system is printed as a disagreement. It is not smoothed into a class.
The quarantine card prints that line for any device it inspects. A private address is labeled as having no manufacturer. A chip whose vendor is simply unknown stays “Unknown vendor”. Nothing in that line is written to the firewall, to Home Assistant, to the canon, or to the identity file the screen engine reads.
What EETISMAD looks like here
Section titled “What EETISMAD looks like here”| Gate | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Everything E2E Tested | Columbo Naming Contract (test_columbo_naming.py): 62 passed. A user-agent is printed as a lead and is not written as a name. A private address is not a manufacturer. DHCP and Bonjour still win. Columbo Self-Class and Columbo Phonebook Identity still pass, 14 each |
| in Sanctum-docs | This field note, its sidebar entry, and the suite row on engineering discipline |
| Merged | sanctum-config 68fbdd7 on origin/main |
| And Deployed | haus.sanctum.columbo runs ~/.sanctum/bin/columbo/columbo-run.sh every ten minutes. That script calls the naming tool and the quarantine card in the same sanctum-config checkout |
The bar for the claim is engineering discipline. The address on the card stays the address. The lead can sit beside it. It does not get a nameplate.