The Labour That Output No Longer Requires: A Protocol for Measuring Required Human Time and the Saved Hours Question

Labourfold is a proposed protocol for comparing required human person-time across declared production states. Its arithmetic is conventional; its contribution is a structured claim protocol covering output, quality, system boundaries, production states, time horizons and evidence.

The paper distinguishes action necessity from duration identification and modelled timing from physical demonstration. The Rzeppa assembly interval is retained only as a conditional standard-time illustration, not as demonstrated time savings.

Previous LLM coding exercises assessed rule application to author-prepared evidence packets. They do not establish independent source extraction, evidence completeness or human-expert validation. This revision has not undergone a new independent coding exercise.

This deposit contains the paper v1.0, including its technical appendix, and the accompanying Labourfold Coding Manual v1.6 with its changelog.