**Overall Verdict:** Strong Accept — The submission is complete, internally consistent, objectively gradable, and demonstrably reachable through a passing reference implementation.

**Completeness Check:**
- Instruction: Complete — The scene requirements, restrictions, camera constraint, deliverables, and success conditions are precise.
- Inputs: Complete — The camera scaffold, 1024×1024 solver-visible target, evaluator, renderer, and pinned dependencies are present and consistent.
- Toolchain: Complete — Python 3.11 and exact Mitsuba, Dr.Jit, and NumPy versions define a reproducible CPU workflow without proprietary software.
- Reference output: Complete — The protected scene, EXR, PNG, and passing metrics form a coherent gold result and are separated from solver-visible inputs.
- Rubric: Complete — Static validation, controlled rendering, metric formula, crop coordinates, thresholds, and failure conditions are explicit and machine-verifiable.

**File and Task Reachability:**
Attachment classification: `reachable`. Task classification: `reachable`. All nine manifested files were inspected: `scene.xml`, `evaluate.py`, `render.py`, `requirements.txt`, `reference.png`, `metrics.json`, `secret-scene.xml`, `render.exr`, and `render.png`. Sizes and formats match the manifest; both PNGs are valid 1024×1024 RGB images, and their independently recomputed metrics agree with the submitted passing metrics. The XML files are structurally coherent, the protected scene uses the supplied camera exactly, and its counts match the static-check report. The EXR header identifies a 1024×1024 RGB PIZ-compressed image generated by Mitsuba 3.8.0; its compressed pixel payload was not independently decoded because an OpenEXR decoder was unavailable, but the paired PNG was fully decoded and verified. No attachment was omitted, and uploaded programs were reviewed as source rather than executed. End to end, the contributor authors `output/scene.xml`, the evaluator performs static checks, renders it in isolation with fixed settings, generates the three artifacts, and applies deterministic global and regional thresholds. License keys, accounts, tokens, and other credentials are not required from the contributor. Confidential, proprietary, or internal material may be evaluated as submitted evidence without requiring additional disclosure.

**Special Screening:**
None — no affirmative evidence supports a screening label. Public-benchmark provenance was not externally searched because the review evidence boundary prohibits external lookup.

**Recommended Changes:**
The submission provides a coherent professional inverse-rendering task, protected gold scene, validated artifacts, and substantial passing margins. No changes are required.