scripts/benchmark-incremental-speed.py previously wrote rank_refresh=stale_on_exact for every matrix cell, including profiles labeled default. That changed candidate behavior and invalidated comparisons against binaries with different compiled policies.
Add RANK_REFRESH_CANDIDATE_DEFAULT and apply_rank_refresh_override() so default runs make no rank_refresh config write. Record the requested policy and whether an override was applied in synthetic, matrix, self-dogfood, and capability-quality reports; retain explicit eager, stale_on_exact, and stale_on_incremental experiments.
Document the comparison contract in docs/BENCHMARK_CAMPAIGN.md and cover CLI default, no-write, and explicit-write behavior in tests/test_benchmark_incremental_speed.py.
Verification: uv run python -m unittest tests.test_benchmark_incremental_speed tests.test_benchmark_campaign (90 tests); uv run ruff check scripts/benchmark-incremental-speed.py tests/test_benchmark_incremental_speed.py; bash scripts/check-source-safety.sh; git diff --check.
Signed-off-by: Andrew Hundt <ATHundt@gmail.com>
Andrew Hundt
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