Rank 3 on the docket. RuntimeConfig carries 32 boolean fields and nothing in
the repository stated that set, distinguished a capability flag from a posture
flag from a deployment knob, or recorded what evidence would flip any of them.
Two independent counts of the same set differed by eleven — the assessment said
"seventeen capability flags," N-7 measured 28 default-off plus 4 default-on —
and neither was wrong about what it looked at. They counted different things
because nothing declared what the set was.
R-3 (ruled A — incomplete flag set). accrue_realized_knowledge joins
CONTINUOUS_LIFE_CONFIG_FLAGS. Step D consolidates the realized facts Step B
writes, and the daemon forced the consumer without the producer: a continuous
life consolidating an empty set, which the mastery framework calls "garbage at
high speed." It shipped that way for six weeks.
The decisive evidence was in the code, not the documents. BOTH flags' comment
blocks in core/config.py already described the corrected profile —
accrue_realized_knowledge says "the production L10 process enables it alongside
persist_session_state", consolidate_determinations says "...alongside
accrue_realized_knowledge + persist_session_state". Three records (two
docstrings and the 07-25 verification doc) agreed with each other and disagreed
with four lines of code. Dormancy was a coherent ruling and would have cost
correcting three records that were RIGHT about the design; incompleteness cost
one line.
So the planned "N-6 docstring correction" deliverable DISSOLVED rather than
shipping: adding the flag made both docstrings true. Recorded explicitly,
because a PR that quietly ships less than it promised is the same divergence
class this arc exists to close.
R-4 (ruled A) — docs/specs/flag_register.md. All 32 booleans with class,
governing ADR or an honest "none", recorded rationale, and what evidence would
flip it. The classification is the load-bearing half and is stated as a
taxonomy rather than a label:
CAPABILITY — what CORE can do; engineering may flip it on named evidence
POSTURE — what CORE serves or refuses AS TRUE; the wrong=0 boundary,
ruling-only
DEPLOYMENT — cost, lifecycle, process shape; per-deployment
estimation_enabled and composed_surface are both "= False" and are not the same
kind of thing. Nothing said so before.
Profiles are declared as the UNIT of decision (R-4's mechanism): one-shot/eval
and continuous-life. The absence of a SERVING profile is stated deliberately —
the four POSTURE serving flags each ride their own license, and grouping them
before the ledger is sealed would license by association, the outcome R-8
exists to prevent.
tests/test_flag_register.py, on the gate. BIDIRECTIONAL, because either
direction alone would have passed through both failures it exists to prevent:
a flag added to config.py and not registered fails; a register row outliving
its flag fails. The counts the register's prose states (32 / 4 ON) are pinned,
since a stale count is how this register came to be needed. Four sabotages
observed red — new unregistered flag, deleted row, orphaned row, and a flag
silently flipped ON, the last caught by two independent pins.
THREE FINDINGS THE ITEM DID NOT ANTICIPATE, all from measuring rather than
reading.
1. Accumulated permissiveness, not just hesitancy. Of the four default-ON
flags, ONE has a governing ADR (deduction_serving_enabled / ADR-0256) and
TWO have no recorded reason of any kind — allow_cross_language_recall and
use_salience carry no comment block, no ADR, no criterion. In an
architecture built on earned licenses, two permanently-on capability flags
with no recorded decision is G-8's question inverted. Registered and
deliberately NOT fixed: writing a rationale after the fact would invent a
decision nobody made, which is worse than recording the absence.
2. A hollow gate inside the governance pin itself.
test_default_on_flag_is_not_governed_by_a_proposed_adr is parameterized over
(default-ON flag x cited ADR), so the three uncited ON flags contribute ZERO
cases — it covered exactly one flag. Its non-vacuity guard asserted only
that SOME flag cites an ADR, which default-off flags satisfy in abundance.
One reformatted comment away from zero coverage with everything green: the
failure state indistinguishable from the success state, inside the module
written to prevent exactly that. Guard tightened to require a non-empty
parametrization, and observed red by stripping ADR-0256's citation.
3. The daemon's own tests ran on no gate. R-3 changes what the always-on
process does every beat, and tests/test_l10_always_on_daemon.py was in no
curated suite — so this behaviour change would have shipped guarded solely
by tests no gate invokes, which is the hollow-gate pattern landing on the
exact file covering the change. Promoted to smoke WITH the change it guards.
Measured +9.4s, +4.3% of smoke — paid deliberately, not estimated. Removed
from full_only_baseline.txt in the same edit (both-directions ratchet; the
baseline shrank 747 -> 746).
Red before green throughout: the assertion cfg.accrue_realized_knowledge is
True was added to the daemon test and OBSERVED FAILING before the flag existed.
H-8(c) closed by AMENDING the correction note rather than deleting it, and the
amendment is the more useful artifact. PR-1's note said the 07-25 document's
claim was false; R-3 then made that claim TRUE, so the correction note itself
went stale — in the direction nobody guards, a correction made wrong by its own
subject being fixed. Both notes now carry the commit window they apply to. A
dated correction survives its subject changing; an undated "this is false" does
not.
Also delivered, from the 2026-07-28 external-assessment triage: §5, the
declared-table index. Eight single-source-of-truth tables and the pin that makes
each true. A reader's aid, explicitly NOT a central contracts.toml — that would
add a fifth copy needing agreement with four generators and put four different
authorities in one merge surface.
Handed forward to PR-11: the 5000-beat soak recorded in
evals/l10_always_on/contract.md (2026-07-19) predates this change and therefore
describes a configuration that NO LONGER SHIPS. PR-11's re-run is the first soak
of the corrected profile, and Step B feeding Step D is exactly what a long
horizon stresses.
Closes G-6, G-8, H-6, H-8(c), H-8(d) — and H-8 in full. Wave 4's F-6 half-gate
is lifted; the Track C half is untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wcw2pnMBwyvmNyQg4uPEt4
6c67e88df1