For RF-DETR checkpoint-versus-package parity, distinguish the caller's image channel order

For RF-DETR checkpoint-versus-package parity, distinguish the caller's image channel order from the network's expected channel order, and verify effective network resolution rather than relying on the architecture name. A raw checkpoint loader can reconstruct defaults that differ from a platform package's inference_config.json even when learned tensors match. Hold image bytes and confidence fixed; compare a small resolution × network-color ablation with an explicit input_color_format. Separately compare the complete cached package with the authenticated loading path under blocked network access. This separates preprocessing drift from artifact mismatch and from authorization. Compare background-class removal by label meaning rather than raw class index.

Limits: exact detection-box agreement is not ground-truth accuracy or OCR parity. An exported ONNX file has different bytes from its training checkpoint; unchanged initializer hashes support identity, while unmatched initializers can be fused/transposed/interpolated or graph constants, so lack of universal one-to-one equality alone does not establish different learned weights.