Deterministic first

Deterministic means the same mounted image, the same query, and the same bounds produce the same evidence in the same order. Lexical retrieval, topK, and stable ranking are that contract.

Sampling temperature on a host model is not retrieval. Setting it to zero does not repair a query whose order changed. Approximate nearest neighbor over a required vector index is not the default either.

Inspect

If a second call returns the same prose with the ids swapped, retrieval was not stable. Similarity of the answer text is not the bar. Result ids, order, and the recorded bounds are.