Raw Source Cleaning

• Parent: Layer 1: Data Source, Target y, Predictor x

• Current group: raw source cleaning

These policies act on defects already present in the raw source panel before official transforms or FRED t-codes are applied.

Axis	Choices	Default / rule
raw_missing_policy	preserve_raw_missing, zero_fill_leading_predictor_missing_before_tcode, impute_raw_predictors, drop_raw_missing_rows	Default preserve_raw_missing; impute_raw_predictors requires leaf_config.raw_x_imputation.
raw_outlier_policy	preserve_raw_outliers, winsorize_raw, iqr_clip_raw, mad_clip_raw, zscore_clip_raw, set_raw_outliers_to_missing	Default preserve_raw_outliers; leaf_config.raw_outlier_columns can restrict the affected columns.

Boundary rule:

• Layer 1 raw cleaning changes the source panel before official transforms/T-codes. That means the transform output can change.

• Layer 2 missing/outlier policies act after the Layer 1 source frame exists. They can mix raw-source defects with transform-induced missing values and model-input preprocessing artifacts.

Full researchers can choose either phase, but provenance must record which phase was used.