Official Transforms

This group decides whether FRED-provided transform codes are applied while constructing the source frame for FRED-MD and FRED-QD routes.

Visibility rule:

  • FRED-MD and FRED-QD expose this group because their source workbooks ship with official transform-code metadata.

  • Custom-only studies hide this group by default. The custom file is already a user-defined source frame, so transform decisions belong either in the custom file itself or in Layer 2 research preprocessing.

  • Standalone FRED-SD hides this group by default. FRED-SD has no official transform-code column comparable to FRED-MD/QD.

  • Composite fred_md+fred_sd and fred_qd+fred_sd routes expose this group for the FRED-MD/QD portion of the frame. FRED-SD-specific inferred or empirical transformations remain Layer 2 decisions.

Axis

Choices

Default / rule

official_transform_policy

apply_official_tcode, keep_official_raw_scale

Simple default apply_official_tcode.

official_transform_scope

target_only, predictors_only, target_and_predictors, none

Simple default target_and_predictors.

Layer boundary:

  • Layer 1 owns official FRED-MD/FRED-QD t-code application to the source frame.

  • FRED-SD has no official t-codes. Inferred or empirical FRED-SD t-code policies are Layer 2 representation policies because they are researcher-chosen transformations, not official source definitions.

  • Extra scaling, imputation, factor extraction, lag construction, and target representation choices are Layer 2.

  • If an imported recipe sets this axis while no FRED-MD/QD source is selected, the Navigator keeps the non-default choice visible as an incompatibility so the user can fix the recipe rather than silently dropping it.

YAML:

path:
  1_data_task:
    fixed_axes:
      official_transform_policy: apply_official_tcode
      official_transform_scope: target_and_predictors