Checksum-invariant transpositions · routing numbers
Some digit swaps in a bank routing number still pass the checksum — the math that validates it can't see them.
Why refused: flagging every routing number as unverifiable would train owners to rubber-stamp the flag. The checksum catches most corruption; the residue is documented, not hidden.
On-catalog neighbor swaps · 6207 ↔ 6307
Our catalog check caught 6397 because it doesn't exist. But 6207 and 6307 are both real bearings — a misread between two valid parts sails through every plausibility test.
Why refused: the only "fix" is flagging every catalog-valid part number, which is all of them. This is exactly the class where the photo crop beside the field — and a human's eyes — is the design.
Valid-but-wrong dates and phone numbers
A 4/22 read as 6/22 is a perfectly well-formed date. A phone number one digit off is still a phone number. Sanity checks catch impossible values, not plausible-wrong ones.
Why refused: date/phone repeat-conflict checks already fire when the document itself disagrees; flagging every well-formed date would be noise. High-risk contexts route these to confirm anyway.
All-alpha glyph runs · IOOB · O/0 soup
Pure-letter sequences give the numeric cross-check nothing to anchor on — two readers can agree on the same wrong letters.
Why refused: a letters-are-suspect rule flags every word on the page. Model/serial fields (mixed alpha-numeric) are already always-confirm; free text rides the owner's read.
European locale amounts · 12,50 vs 12.50
Beyond the canonicalizer fix we shipped (after our own guard once turned 12,50 into 1250 — that story's in the guide), locale ambiguity persists when a document doesn't declare its convention.
Why refused: guessing the locale IS the bug we fixed. Ambiguous-locale amounts stay flagged for a human instead of auto-resolved.
Fine print below the detector floor · 9pt footnotes · wrapped values
Designed blind spots: tiny footnotes and values that wrap across lines can slip layout detection. On real photographs both still tend to flag — the two readers diverge more on real JPEGs than clean renders — but we don't promise it.
Why refused: lowering the detector floor multiplies phantom regions. The whole-page recall pass is the backstop; fine-print documents route to full resolution.
The self-consistent misread · the one that scares us
A wrong value that agrees with itself — passes arithmetic, matches its restatement, looks plausible. We built 39 targeted attacks in this class and closed 11 initially-silent commits; the corpus has never produced one that survived. That is a clean record on 41 images, not a proof it can't happen.
Why refused (overclaiming): we say "zero on our corpus," never "impossible." The corpus grows with every real capture class; this line updates when the number does.