vehicles 0.4.1 → 0.8.0

data/data/plates/au-nt.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,431 @@
+# plates/au-nt.yml — Northern Territory (PRD-PLATES gate L3, Australia).
+#
+# THE NORTHERN TERRITORY IS THE JURISDICTION THAT NEVER JOINED THE 1948 SCHEME,
+# and that is the fact that shapes this file. Every other Australian
+# jurisdiction took a letter block under the Australian Transport Advisory
+# Council's 1948 distribution (quoted from Access Canberra in plates/au-act.yml)
+# and ran a three-letter/three-numeral serial for decades. The NT did not: it
+# ran PURE NUMERALS from 1953 until 2011 — five digits, then six — and only
+# moved to an alphanumeric grammar in 2011, four decades after everyone else.
+# A parse layer therefore has one Australian jurisdiction whose historic plates
+# carry no letters at all, and whose current plates are pinned by a leading C.
+#
+# WHAT IS PRIMARY HERE. The NT Government's own number-plate page (nt.gov.au,
+# read via the Internet Archive because the live host returns HTTP 403 to
+# machine clients) gives the issuing rule, the "right to display" doctrine and
+# the confirmation that a "general issue plate" is the default. That is a real
+# authority publication (PRD-PLATES §4) and it is quoted verbatim below.
+#
+# WHAT IS NOT. THE INSTRUMENT WAS NOT READ IN THIS PASS. legislation.nt.gov.au
+# returned HTTP 404 to every URL form attempted on 2026-08-02 (the portal's
+# consolidated-regulations paths are generated by a JavaScript application), so
+# NOT ONE WORD of the Motor Vehicles Regulations is quoted here. A sibling file
+# in this same wave (plates/au-nsw.yml, national_schemes.heavy_vehicle) reports
+# reading reg 10 of the Motor Vehicles Regulations 1977 (NT), headed "Ownership
+# of national heavy vehicle number plates"; that cross-reference is recorded as
+# a cross-reference and nothing in this file is built on it. Closing the NT
+# instrument is the single largest sourcing gap in this jurisdiction and the
+# first thing a verifier with a browser should do.
+#
+# AND THE FORMATS ARE SECONDARY, ALL OF THEM. No NT government page obtained
+# states the general-issue combination. The formats and their dates come from
+# the English Wikipedia article, mined per the Wikipedia Rule (PRD-PLATES §4,
+# owner override 2026-08-02): its own citations were chased — the two NT
+# Government newsroom media releases it cites are dead, and archive.today
+# rate-limited the request (HTTP 429) on 2026-08-02 — so every such fact carries
+# `period_evidence: secondary-wikipedia` plus the article URL, which is the
+# reversibility guarantee that rule exists for.
+#
+# THE SEPARATOR IS A DIAMOND AND WE DO NOT WRITE IT (PRD-PLATES §2.6). NT plates
+# print a diamond between groups (CC♦73♦IQ). U+2666 is neither in the serial
+# alphabet nor in the emitted separator set, so patterns spell the gap as an
+# emitted SPACE and regexes accept it optionally; the glyph is recorded as a
+# design fact and flagged for the _meta/separators.yml owner, together with the
+# only government sentence found anywhere in this wave that touches it (Access
+# Canberra: "A diamond symbol or space counts as a character" — an ACT
+# plate-capacity rule, quoted in plates/au-act.yml).
+jurisdiction: au-nt
+authority:
+  name: Motor Vehicle Registry (MVR), for the Registrar of Motor Vehicles (Northern Territory)
+  url: "https://nt.gov.au/driving/registration/number-plates-apply-or-transfer-plates"
+binding: vehicle
+binding_note: >-
+  THE NT HAS A NAME FOR THE THING OTHER JURISDICTIONS LEAVE IMPLICIT, and it is
+  worth carrying into the schema's vocabulary. NT Government, verbatim: "The
+  permission to display number plates on your vehicle in the Northern Territory
+  (NT) is called the right to display." The right is time-limited and it lapses:
+  "You hold the right to display your number plates for 12 months after your
+  registration expires. If you don't fit your plates to your registered vehicle
+  for more than 12 months, your right to display returns to the MVR and the
+  number plates will be available for other customers to order." So an NT
+  combination is a LEASE, not a property: it returns to the registry and is
+  re-issued to someone else. A consumer treating an NT serial as a permanent
+  vehicle identifier will be wrong, and will be wrong in a way that silently
+  merges two vehicles' histories.
+issuing_rule:
+  quote: >-
+    NT Government, verbatim: "All number plates must be approved by the
+    Registrar of Motor Vehicles and issued by the MVR. Any other number plates
+    are illegal." And: "You will be given a general issue plate unless you want
+    to apply for personalised plates."
+  what_it_establishes: >-
+    Two things this file needs and can get nowhere else: that a distinct
+    "general issue" plate class exists and is the default (which is what the
+    standard series below stands for), and that the Registrar's approval is
+    constitutive — an unapproved plate is not a bad plate, it is an illegal one.
+  source: "https://nt.gov.au/driving/registration/number-plates-apply-or-transfer-plates  # Northern Territory Government, 'Number plates: apply or transfer plates' (page footer: 'Last updated: 28 November 2017'), read via the Internet Archive on 2026-08-02 because nt.gov.au returns HTTP 403 to non-browser clients"
+instrument:
+  citation: "Motor Vehicles Regulations (NT), made under the Motor Vehicles Act 1949 (NT) — the consolidated regulations, cited in this wave as the Motor Vehicles Regulations 1977 (NT)"
+  access_note: >-
+    NOT READ. legislation.nt.gov.au returned HTTP 404 to both attempted URL
+    forms on 2026-08-02 (the portal serves its consolidated regulations through
+    a JavaScript application whose document URLs are not derivable), and no
+    Internet Archive snapshot of the instrument was reachable. NOTHING in this
+    file is attributed to the NT regulations. The wave cross-reference recorded
+    in the header (reg 10, "Ownership of national heavy vehicle number plates",
+    read by the sibling pass that produced plates/au-nsw.yml) is noted so a
+    verifier knows the document is reachable from a browser, and is not relied
+    on here.
+  expected_content: >-
+    Recorded so the verifier knows what to look for and what NOT to hope for: on
+    the evidence of every other Australian instrument read in this wave
+    (Queensland s 117, the ACT s 49, Tasmania reg 88), the NT regulations will
+    give the Registrar's power to assign a distinguishing registration number,
+    the number of plates per vehicle class, ownership of plates and the display
+    and visibility rules — and will NOT give a serial grammar. The NT format
+    gaps below are unlikely to be closed by the instrument; they need an MVR
+    publication or a Northern Territory Government Gazette notice.
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# The national layer, recorded once per file in this wave.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+national_context:
+  atac_1948: >-
+    The 1948 Australian Transport Advisory Council distribution of alpha-numeric
+    letter blocks among the States and Territories is quoted verbatim from a
+    government source (Access Canberra) in plates/au-act.yml. THE NT'S RELATION
+    TO IT IS A NEGATIVE ONE and is the most interesting national fact in this
+    file: secondary sources report that "The Northern Territory has never fully
+    adopted the 1950s three letter, three number Federal scheme" and that the
+    block proposed for it (XAA-000 to XZZ-999) was later taken up by Western
+    Australia — where it demonstrably was issued (plates/au-wa.yml records the
+    X series). That is a secondary claim about a secondary claim and is recorded
+    as such, NOT asserted; what is not in dispute is the observable consequence,
+    that NT general issue stayed numeric until 2011.
+  heavy_vehicles: >-
+    Heavy vehicles (over 4.5 t) are registered under the Heavy Vehicle National
+    Law as applied locally and carry a "national heavy vehicle number plate"
+    issued BY the local registrar — a MECHANISM, not a series. The Queensland
+    regulation defines the object in terms (sch 8: "national heavy vehicle
+    number plate means a plate designed to be attached to a category 2 vehicle
+    to identify the vehicle"; "category 2 vehicle means a vehicle with a GVM,
+    GCM or ATM of more than 4.5t"). NO SERIES IS AUTHORED in any file of this
+    wave: no source obtained states a distinct national serial grammar
+    (recorded gap). Secondary reporting that the NT adopted the national
+    heavy-vehicle plate at a particular date rests on a trade-press article
+    (bigrigs.com.au, dead, archived) that was not fetched and is not asserted.
+  sources:
+    - "https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/sl-2021-0113  # Transport Operations (Road Use Management-Vehicle Registration) Regulation 2021 (Qld) sch 8, fetched 2026-08-02 — the two national heavy-vehicle definitions quoted above"
+    - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_Northern_Territory  # secondary (CC BY-SA; facts extracted in our expression per the PRD-PLATES §4 Wikipedia rule, accessed 2026-08-02): the claim that the NT never adopted the three-letter scheme and that its proposed X block went to Western Australia — uncited in the article"
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# Plate stock. AND A DISCREPANCY INSIDE THIS WAVE, RECORDED RATHER THAN HIDDEN.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+plate_stock:
+  dimensions_not_sourced_here: >-
+    NO NT DIMENSION WAS OBTAINED IN THIS PASS, and the gap has a consequence
+    that must not be papered over: FOUR SIBLING FILES IN THIS WAVE
+    (plates/au-vic.yml, plates/au-qld.yml, plates/au-sa.yml and
+    plates/au-tas.yml) cite "plates/au-nt.yml (NT MVR: 372 x 133 mm)" as one of
+    the two per-State sources for the cross-State Australian passenger-plate
+    size. That figure could NOT be re-sourced here: the NT Government plate page
+    was read in full and states no millimetres, and the MVR's fitting-instruction
+    subpages were unreachable (the Internet Archive refused the requests on
+    2026-08-02 after serving the parent page). The 372 x 133 mm figure is
+    therefore recorded as a WAVE CROSS-REFERENCE AWAITING RE-VERIFICATION, not
+    as a fact of this file, and no `design.plate` block below claims NT
+    millimetres. VERIFIER ACTION: either re-pin the MVR figure and add it here,
+    or correct the four sibling cross-references. Leaving it silently unsourced
+    in one file while four others lean on it is exactly the failure mode the
+    per-claim citation rule exists to catch.
+  what_is_sourced_elsewhere: >-
+    For orientation only, and cited in the files that own the claims: the ACT
+    Government publishes 372 mm as its standard plate LENGTH (with 317 mm medium
+    and 190 mm short); Transport for NSW publishes "Car plate dimensions 317mm x
+    134mm" and "Motorcycle plate dimensions 186mm x 100mm" for its Classic
+    Vehicle Scheme plate; WA's Department of Transport publishes 372 x 134 mm.
+    None of those is an NT figure.
+  group_separator:
+    printed_glyph: diamond
+    note: >-
+      Printed between serial groups. Never written in a pattern or regex here
+      (PRD-PLATES §2.6 emits only "-" and " "); patterns spell the gap as a
+      SPACE. Flagged for the _meta/separators.yml owner with the ACT agency
+      sentence quoted in plates/au-act.yml.
+
+series:
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # CURRENT GENERAL ISSUE — the C series, the NT's first alphanumeric grammar.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-nt-standard
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 2011 }        # SECONDARY. Announced 2009, unveiled
+                                   # January 2011, first issued June 2011 —
+                                   # all from the same uncited article. See
+                                   # notes for the three-date problem.
+    period_evidence: secondary-wikipedia
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "CL 99 LL"
+      regex: '\AC[A-Z] ?\d{2} ?[A-Z]{2}\z'
+      evidence: secondary
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          C IN THE FIRST POSITION. Reported as the chosen shape "Ca-nn-aa", with
+          the leading C constant across the series to date; it is encoded as a
+          LITERAL in `pattern` and `regex`, which is why this series is `strict`
+          with no strict twin. NO LETTER EXCLUSION IS SOURCED for the remaining
+          three letter positions, so none is claimed — whether the NT skips I, O
+          or Q as its mainland neighbours historically did is UNKNOWN and is a
+          recorded gap. THE LEADING C IS ALSO A RISK WORTH NAMING: if the NT
+          advances to a D block on exhaustion (as Victoria advanced 1 -> 2 and
+          Queensland A -> Z), this regex becomes wrong rather than merely
+          narrow. It is written as observed and must be re-audited, not
+          extrapolated.
+      progression: "ascending; the second character advances first, on the reported evidence of plates observed in the CA and CC blocks"
+    design:
+      background: { color: "#FFFFFF", finish: retroreflective, hex_basis: observed }
+      colour_note: >-
+        OCHRE CHARACTERS ON REFLECTIVE WHITE — the NT is the only Australian
+        jurisdiction with an ochre plate, and the colour is the single most
+        distinctive thing about it. NO HEX IS RECORDED FOR THE OCHRE: no NT
+        government source publishes a colour, let alone a chromaticity, and
+        picking a red-brown would be inventing a fact the Territory has never
+        stated. The white ground is recorded as a hex because white is
+        unambiguous. The colour WORDS are secondary (the programme's own pinned
+        research appendix independently captured "ochre on white" for the NT,
+        which is corroboration, not verification).
+      legend_bottom: "NT OUTBACK AUSTRALIA"
+      legend_note: >-
+        Reported: the pre-2011 plates carried the slogan with punctuation
+        ("N.T. - OUTBACK AUSTRALIA") and the 2011 series "slightly modified
+        [it] to show as NT OUTBACK AUSTRALIA without dash and full stops". A
+        legend is not a serial and nothing encodes it; it is recorded because
+        the punctuation change is a useful era signal on a photograph.
+      group_separator_glyph: diamond
+      rear_differs: false
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://nt.gov.au/driving/registration/number-plates-apply-or-transfer-plates  # Northern Territory Government, read via the Internet Archive 2026-08-02: 'You will be given a general issue plate unless you want to apply for personalised plates' — the agency's confirmation that a general-issue class exists and is the default. NEGATIVE FINDING, recorded: the page never states the combination"
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_Northern_Territory  # secondary (accessed 2026-08-02): the Ca-nn-aa format, the 23 October 2009 announcement, the January 2011 unveiling and the June 2011 first issue, and the slogan change. The article cites an NT Government newsroom media release for the 2009 announcement; that URL is DEAD and its archive.today copy returned HTTP 429 on 2026-08-02 — the citation was chased and not reached"
+      - "https://vehiclesdb-pipeline/aux/research/plates-2026-07/plates-research-us-world.md  # this programme's own pinned research appendix, §2.5: an independent capture of the NT's 'Ca·nn·aa' format and 'ochre on white' colours. Corroboration, not a source of record"
+    notes: >-
+      THE NORTHERN TERRITORY'S FIRST ALPHANUMERIC GENERAL ISSUE, AND A TEXTBOOK
+      THREE-DATE ROLLOUT. The secondary source gives three different dates for
+      one series and they are all real: ANNOUNCED 23 October 2009 (by an NT
+      Government media release), UNVEILED January 2011, AVAILABLE FOR ISSUE June
+      2011. PRD-PLATES §2.2 anticipates exactly this ("rollouts need three
+      dates ... `period.rollout:` sub-keys when they differ") and the Mercosur
+      rollout is its worked example. No rollout sub-keys are written here for
+      one reason only: all three dates come from the SAME uncited paragraph, so
+      recording them as structured data would dress one weak source as three
+      strong ones. `period.start: 2011` is the FIRST-ISSUE year, which is what
+      period.start means (PRD-PLATES §4 instrument-date rule: the year the
+      format began), and the announcement year is deliberately not used —
+      announcing a format is not issuing it. THE ID IS DELIBERATELY UNDATED
+      (`au-nt-standard`, not `au-nt-standard-2011`), as in every other file of
+      this wave, because minting a dated id on an uncited boundary builds a
+      dated id on sand (PRD-QUALITY I-5/I-6). VERIFIER TARGET: the NT Government
+      newsroom media release of 23 October 2009 ("Territory Growth Brings Change
+      to Number Plates") is the document that would turn this whole entry
+      primary. It is dead at source; archive.today holds a copy at
+      /20130616013841/ which rate-limited this pass.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # ONE SERIES BACK — and it is the reason the NT is interesting: six numerals,
+  # no letters at all, for thirty-two years.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-nt-standard-numeric
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 1979, end: 2011 }
+    period_evidence: secondary-wikipedia
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "999 999"
+      regex: '\A\d{3} ?\d{3}\z'
+      evidence: secondary
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          SIX NUMERALS AND NOTHING ELSE. This is the only general-issue series in
+          the Australian wave with no letter in it, and one of very few in the
+          whole dataset. Reported allocation detail, secondary and NOT encoded:
+          "There doesn't seem to be a noticeable system to plate series, as
+          numbers of all types appear on both halves of the plate" — i.e. the
+          six digits carry no reported sub-structure, so the printed 3+3
+          grouping is typography rather than meaning. The regex accordingly
+          treats the gap as optional and claims nothing about the halves.
+      progression: >-
+        Reported: the NT ran FIVE numerals from 1953, "by the 1970s it reached
+        100-000 so a 6-digit version was added", and the six-numeral form ran
+        from the 1979 colour change until the 2011 alphanumeric changeover.
+        Reported reserved blocks, recorded and not authored as series: NT
+        Government vehicles 800-000 to 899-999 (with NTG embossed at the left of
+        the plate), government motorcycles 80-000 to 85-999, and an MO 8-000
+        series for Darwin buses.
+    design:
+      background: { color: "#FFFFFF", finish: retroreflective, hex_basis: observed }
+      colour_note: >-
+        Ochre on reflective white from 1979 — the changeover that ENDS the
+        preceding white-on-black numeric era and BEGINS the ochre one. Reported:
+        "All black-and-white plates were recalled and replaced on expiry of
+        registration, retention fees applied if the motorist wished to keep the
+        original number." No hex for the ochre, for the reason given on the
+        current series.
+      legend_bottom: "N.T. - OUTBACK AUSTRALIA"
+      group_separator_glyph: diamond
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_Northern_Territory  # secondary (accessed 2026-08-02): the 1953-1979 white-on-black five- then six-numeral series, the 1979 changeover to ochre on reflective white with the recall-on-expiry rule, the six-numeral general issue running to 2011, the NTG and Darwin-bus reserved blocks, and the observation that the halves carry no system. NONE of these carries a footnote in the article"
+    notes: >-
+      THE NT'S THIRTY-TWO-YEAR NUMERIC GENERAL ISSUE, and the single most useful
+      era signal in the jurisdiction: any NT plate with a letter in it is 2011 or
+      later; any all-numeric NT plate is 2011 or earlier. Both boundaries are the
+      secondary article's and neither is cited, so the series is tagged
+      `secondary-wikipedia` end to end — but the SHAPE is corroborated by the
+      thing the article cannot fake, namely that the successor series exists at
+      all and had to be introduced because "both motorcycles and general series
+      have reached the 9's". DELIBERATELY NOT AUTHORED, for the usual reason (no
+      primary, uncited secondary): the white-on-black five-numeral series of
+      1953-1979, the pre-1953 NT band plates, and the separate Central Australia
+      / Northern Australia plates of 1927-1933. They are L4 work and the article
+      is the only source for any of them.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # CORE CLASSES.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-nt-motorcycle
+    class: motorcycle
+    categories: [motorcycle]
+    period: { start: 2011 }
+    period_evidence: secondary-wikipedia
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "L 9999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z] ?\d{4}\z'
+      evidence: secondary
+      charset: { notes: "one letter then four numerals — a shorter grammar than the car series, on a smaller plate. No letter exclusion is sourced; none is claimed" }
+      progression: "reported: adopted in March 2011 replacing the all-numeric motorcycle series; reported to have reached the A-8900s by October 2015"
+    design:
+      background: { color: "#FFFFFF", finish: retroreflective, hex_basis: observed }
+      colour_note: "ochre on reflective white, as the car series; no hex for the ochre"
+      group_separator_glyph: diamond
+      plates_issued: 1
+      layout_history_note: >-
+        Reported, and a genuinely unusual sequence of THREE physical versions of
+        one serial grammar in four years: version 1 from March 2011 with a
+        registration-label box; version 2 from 2013 when labels were abolished
+        and the characters were re-centred (reported to have lasted about 2,500
+        plates); version 3 from October 2015 on the standard Australian
+        motorcycle plate stock, from the A-8900s. Same grammar throughout, so
+        one series with a note rather than three series (PRD-PLATES §2.3: own
+        series iff format OR design OR period differs — these differ in
+        FURNITURE, and no source gives clean boundaries).
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_Northern_Territory  # secondary (accessed 2026-08-02): the A-1234 motorcycle format from March 2011, the three physical versions, and the pre-2011 all-numeric motorcycle series"
+    notes: >-
+      NT MOTORCYCLES. Authored because a motorcycle grammar that DIFFERS from
+      the car grammar is a real parse fact (contrast the ACT and Tasmania, where
+      no motorcycle grammar could be sourced at all and none is authored). The
+      registration-label furniture history is recorded on the design rather than
+      split into series because the SERIAL never changed and no source dates the
+      changes precisely enough to carry a period.
+
+  - id: au-nt-trailer
+    class: trailer
+    categories: [trailer]
+    period: { start: 2011 }
+    period_evidence: secondary-wikipedia
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "TL 9999"
+      regex: '\AT[A-Z] ?\d{4}\z'
+      evidence: secondary
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          T IN THE FIRST POSITION IS THE TRAILER MARKER, which is the same
+          convention New South Wales uses (plates/au-nsw.yml) and South
+          Australia uses in a different position (S999 TLL). Encoded as a
+          literal, hence `strict` with no strict twin. Reported photographic
+          corroboration: a 1979-era NT trailer plate captioned "T indicates
+          trailer", i.e. the convention predates this series.
+    design:
+      background: { color: "#FFFFFF", finish: retroreflective, hex_basis: observed }
+      colour_note: "ochre on reflective white; no hex for the ochre"
+      group_separator_glyph: diamond
+      plates_issued: 1
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_Northern_Territory  # secondary (accessed 2026-08-02): the TA-1234 trailer format, and the caption evidence that T marked NT trailers under the earlier numeric regime too"
+    notes: >-
+      NT TRAILERS. The weakest-sourced series in this file and it says so: the
+      format is a single line in an uncited article, corroborated only by a
+      photograph caption in the same article. It is authored because the T-first
+      convention is consistent across three Australian jurisdictions in this wave
+      and because a consumer parsing an NT string needs to know that T-then-letter
+      is not a car. A verifier should treat it as the first candidate for
+      deletion if the MVR turns out to say otherwise.
+
+  - id: au-nt-personalized
+    class: personalized
+    categories: [car, van, truck, motorcycle, trailer]
+    period: { start: 2017 }        # IN-FORCE OBSERVATION, not a scheme start:
+                                   # the last-updated date of the agency page
+                                   # read. The scheme is older. See notes.
+    period_evidence: agency-page-in-force
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLLLLL"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9]{1,7}\z'
+      evidence: none
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          NO CONFIGURATION RULE WAS OBTAINED — not a length cap, not an
+          alphabet, not the refusal criteria. The NT Government page names the
+          scheme and its subpages ("Apply for personalised plates", "Types of
+          personalised and special plates", "Apply for club vehicle plates",
+          "Apply to buy souvenir plates") and describes none of their grammars;
+          those subpages were unreachable in this pass. The regex is therefore a
+          deliberate over-approximation over the serial alphabet, bounded by a
+          seven-character cap borrowed from ANOTHER jurisdiction's plate-capacity
+          rule (the ACT's 372 mm plate "can have up to seven characters"). Hence
+          `matching: recall-only`: a match is a shape hit and nothing more
+          (PRD-PLATES §2.7), and a `regex_strict` here would be a contradiction.
+    design:
+      background: { finish: retroreflective }
+      note: >-
+        Reported colour options, secondary: ochre on white, black on white and
+        black on yellow bases, with slogan options "N.T. - OUTBACK AUSTRALIA",
+        "N.T. - NATURE TERRITORY" or plain "N.T."; slimline plates from the
+        early 2000s. Individual designs are out of scope (PRD-PLATES §2.5).
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://nt.gov.au/driving/registration/number-plates-apply-or-transfer-plates  # Northern Territory Government, read via the Internet Archive 2026-08-02: 'You will be given a general issue plate unless you want to apply for personalised plates'; the section index naming the personalised, club-vehicle and souvenir-plate subpages; the right-to-display lapse rule that governs the combination"
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_Northern_Territory  # secondary (accessed 2026-08-02): the claim that 'In the 1990s MVR started offering custom, or combination of alphanumerics personalised' with the three colour bases and three slogan options. The DECADE is uncited and is NOT used as this series' start"
+    notes: >-
+      NT PERSONALISED PLATES, AUTHORED THIN AND HONEST. `start: 2017` is NOT a
+      claim about when the scheme began — it is the last-updated date of the
+      agency page that evidences the scheme in force, hence
+      `period_evidence: agency-page-in-force`, the weakest honest reading. The
+      secondary source puts the scheme's origin in the 1990s; a bare decade is
+      not a start year and is deliberately not promoted into `period.start`
+      (PRD-PLATES §9: primary-source-or-marked, and a marked guess is still a
+      guess). `matching: recall-only` follows from the §2.7 test read straight:
+      the regex is wider than anything the MVR issues, because what the MVR
+      issues is unpublished. VERIFIER TARGET: the four nt.gov.au subpages named
+      in the page index — they are the documents that would give this series a
+      real grammar, a real start and the club/souvenir series this file does not
+      author.