The reachability gap turns by PROMOTION for the first time: 15 -> 14. PR-3b's
earlier turn was by deletion, which is free. This one costs 22.1s on every push,
which is exactly why it is a decision rather than a default.
THE RECOMMENDATION WAS RE-DERIVED, NOT EXECUTED — and it did not survive as
written. PR-4b recommended `teaching` on the strength of G-22:
test_ratification_ceremony.py was red on main, in `teaching`, run by no gate.
That hole was already closed a different way — G-22's fix promoted that single
file into smoke. So `teaching` would have added 9 net-new files, NONE with a
demonstrated escape, and promoting on a justification that has already been
spent is precisely the failure this arc exists to close.
Promoted on a stronger, doctrinal basis instead.
tests/test_epistemic_invariants.py enforces AGENTS.md's "Teaching and mutation
safety" non-negotiables in substance — INV-22/INV-23: an unmarked proposal and
an unmarked reviewed example default to SPECULATIVE, the status enum has exactly
its four positions, a pack-mutation proposal carries no hardening flag. Durable
corpus mutation is the one irreversible thing in this system, and the suite
guarding it ran on no pre-merge gate. That justification does not require an
incident to have happened yet, which makes it the better one.
Measured: 22.1s / 122 tests across 9 net-new files (the tenth was already on the
gate). Both invocation sites updated, GATE_SUITES extended, `teaching` removed
from UNREACHABLE_BASELINE in the same edit, ratchet lowered <= 15 to <= 14 —
the both-directions discipline that has caught this author twice.
A HOLLOW SPOT IN PIN 3 ITSELF, found by sabotage-testing the promotion rather
than trusting it. _suites_invoked_by_gate_tiers() takes the UNION of
scripts/hooks/pre-push and scripts/ci/local-ci.sh, so a suite present in either
satisfies it. Removing `teaching` from local-ci.sh alone PASSED SILENTLY: the
two scripts could drift from each other invisibly while local-ci.sh states in
prose that it runs "the same four steps as scripts/hooks/pre-push". A developer
running one would get coverage the other advertises and does not deliver.
Closed by test_the_two_gate_scripts_invoke_the_same_suites, scoped to the
numbered (n/m) gate steps — a discriminator both files already use — so it reads
the gate tier without parsing shell control flow. The identical sabotage now
fires. Verified in three directions: removed from one script (fires, and did not
before), removed from both (the pre-existing assertion fires), restored (green).
THIS IS NOT THE CI-PARITY PIN N-9 KILLED, and the distinction is recorded at the
assertion site so it cannot be re-litigated a third time. That one asserted
TEST_SUITES["smoke"] == smoke.yml and was reverted in 50fa287d because
AGENTS.md:280 makes GitHub Actions billing-locked dead signals — parity with a
dead signal buys nothing. Both scripts here are LIVE local merge bars.
Gate is now four steps: smoke + warmed_session + deductive + teaching.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wcw2pnMBwyvmNyQg4uPEt4
Wave 1 — delete — run before more Wave 2 enforcement, correcting the method
inversion this arc had been committing: the plan sequences scrub -> DELETE ->
enforce, and Wave 1 was ruling-blocked while Wave 2 was not, so enforcement
landed first on structures deletion might have removed.
PR-3 (R-7 ruled A)
docs/gaps.md and docs/audit/substrate-liveness-ratchet.md carry historical
banners that name H-9's own mechanism as the reason they exist: an instrument
that looks authoritative converts "I should check" into "I already checked".
The ratchet's seven OPEN items — W-003, W-005, W-007, W-008, W-009, W-017,
W-018, every one L10-chained — migrated into G-5 WITH their dependency
chains, because that reasoning is the ratchet's lasting contribution and its
status column is not.
One deliverable could not be executed as written and is recorded rather than
claimed: L12 has NO in-repo generator to drop it from. The system map is
local and gitignored (D5 — a regeneratable index carrying no authority), so
the phantom existed only there and in one taxonomy row. That row now records
the ruling instead of the flag.
PR-3b — new, and it corrected its own author
Added when PR-4's two ratchets made the question unavoidable: what exactly
are they policing? Measured: 21 curated suites, 9 holding exactly ONE file,
12 holding <=4, and 2 reachable from any gate.
I proposed cutting ~11. The evidence supported FOUR. cognition, teaching,
packs and algebra are named in AGENTS.md's own pre-merge-gate instruction;
fast, pulse and proof in the CLI's help text; phase5, phase6, adr-0024, math
and formation in READMEs and ADRs. Deleting those breaks documented commands
— worse than the sprawl. Taking the 4 the evidence supports, rather than the
11 I had already said out loud, is the whole point.
Deleted: refusal, margin, rotor, inner-loop. Zero --suite references anywhere
in code, docs, ADRs, workflows or CLI help. Per-phase ADR-0024 aliases
offered so reviewers could run a phase independently; nothing ever did. All
seven of their files remain covered by adr-0024 — verified BEFORE the cut —
so nothing was orphaned and no coverage moved.
21 -> 17 suites. Pin 3's gate-unreachable gap 19 -> 15 BY DELETION, which
costs no gate time at all, versus promotion which costs it every run. An
alias nobody calls is not a curation decision; it is one more name that has
to be kept true, and two ratchets were policing these.
Registers: H-9 CLOSED, PR-3 and PR-3b marked LANDED, G-5 carries the seven
migrated items, the taxonomy's L12 row records the ruling.
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wcw2pnMBwyvmNyQg4uPEt4
PR-4's membership ratchet closed "no new orphans". Within the hour this arc's
first full-tree run found tests/test_ratification_ceremony.py RED, in the
curated suite `teaching`, invoked by NO gate tier. Membership was satisfied and
bought nothing — which is exactly the objection PR-4 itself raised against
G-7's original formulation: a curated suite nobody runs is the same
non-guarantee as `full` wearing a different name. The fix had the same blind
spot as the thing it fixed.
Measured: 21 curated suites, 2 gate-reachable (smoke, deductive). The gap is
NINETEEN, not the handful first estimated.
Shipped as baseline + ratchet, sized to the measurement rather than the rule:
19 `post-merge-only` justifications written in one sitting is the ceremony
failure already rejected for the 749-file membership baseline. The pin freezes
the gap, fails on growth, enforces both directions (a promoted suite must leave
the baseline), pins the count, and — critically — VERIFIES ITS DECLARED GATE
SET AGAINST THE SHELL (pre-push / local-ci.sh), so it cannot go vacuous the way
a scan that silently matches nothing does (N-1's class, three false conclusions
in this repo so far).
Two sabotages observed red: a new curated suite with no gate caller, and a
GATE_SUITES value drifted from the scripts it claims to describe. The second
correctly cascaded into two failures, which is the anti-vacuity guard working.
What pin 3 deliberately does NOT do: decide which of the 19 belong on the gate.
That costs gate time and is a decision, not an engineering task. Recorded as the
open half of G-7. `teaching` is the concrete first candidate — it just shipped a
red ratification pin that no gate ran.
Process note: a gate run was invalidated by editing the tree mid-run for the
third time today. Stopped with TaskStop rather than pkill this time, which
reaped cleanly instead of leaving the orphaned wait-loop that ran for 2h16m
earlier. All edits now land before any run starts.
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wcw2pnMBwyvmNyQg4uPEt4
Claude