core/docs/assessment
Claude 68e68589a2
feat(tests): curated-suite membership ratchet — and PR-4's parity pin withdrawn (PR-4, G-7, N-9)
N-9 is the finding, and it PREVENTS work rather than re-scoping it.

WHAT THE PLAN GOT WRONG. N-3 concluded the 23-vs-13 smoke delta was unintended
drift, on two in-repo comments asserting parity, and called that "the strongest
evidence available that the drift was never intended". H-12 repeated it; R-14
built three options on it recommending "raise CI, +46s measured"; PR-4
specified a bidirectional parity pin as deliverable one.

A third artifact answers all of it, and none of them read it.
tests/test_cli_test_suites.py::test_cli_smoke_suite_covers_ci_smoke_gate has
pinned smoke.yml SUBSET-OF TEST_SUITES["smoke"] since before this assessment —
which is why every measurement finds CI-only == 0; a pin, not luck — beneath a
comment headed "DELIBERATELY ONE-DIRECTIONAL — do not 'complete' this by also
asserting local_paths <= ci_paths". Its history is 50fa287d (2026-07-25):
"revert(tests): drop the local-to-CI smoke parity assertion — CI is not a
gate." An earlier agent read the same comment, drew the same inference, made
the assertion symmetric, and reverted it hours later: "That was wrong, and
AGENTS.md says so in a line I had already read."

AGENTS.md:280 — GitHub is "a mirror only; its Actions are billing-locked and
produce dead signals — never chase them." §277 — the workflows are "secondary
observability only." So the local suite is the SOURCE and is deliberately
broader; the delta is the design.

  - PR-4 pin 1: WITHDRAWN. It exists, in the direction that protects something.
  - R-14: premise corrected in the packet. Option A spends 46s on a workflow
    that does not gate; option B would delete real protection for a fiction;
    option C's live half is a two-line comment fix, done here.
  - N-3's exposure claim was too GENEROUS to CI: for a push that skipped the
    local gate there is no automatic check at all. Larger than stated, and not
    closable by editing smoke.yml.

WHAT LANDED. Measured: 749 of 877 test files are in no curated suite. The
plan's mechanism ("assign every orphan, or 749 exclusion reasons") is hollow at
that scale — glob topic-suites ("adr": tests/test_adr_*.py absorbs 172) satisfy
the assertion while changing nothing about what executes, which is precisely the
Third-Door objection the plan levels at G-7's own first formulation. All four
demonstrated incidents (#113, #136, negation-survives-articulation,
speculative-subject-lifecycle) were caused by a NEWLY LANDED orphan; none by a
legacy one.

So: a ratchet. tests/test_suite_membership.py + tests/full_only_baseline.txt.
New orphans fail. The baseline is enforced in BOTH directions — a promoted or
deleted file must leave it, so the list can only shrink — and its count is
pinned so bulk movement is a reviewed decision, in the discipline
test_volume_honesty.py uses.

Also: the gate-guarding pin now runs on the gate. test_cli_test_suites.py lived
in `fast`; the pre-push gate runs smoke + deductive. The pin guarding the gate
did not run on the gate.

Three sabotages, each OBSERVED RED: a new unregistered test file, a stale
baseline entry, the parity pin demoted out of smoke.

Note on the delta: now 12 (local 27, CI 15) because this session added three
pins locally. Under the corrected reading that is the design, not widening
drift — the invariant is CI-only == 0, and that is pinned. The registers now
say so; "ten files" was a measurement, never a target.

Process note: `git checkout --` during sabotage cleanup destroyed uncommitted
edits to core/cli_test.py, which were redone. Backups, not checkout, on files
with unstaged work.

Registers: G-7 CLOSED, H-12 amended, R-14 dissolved in the packet, PR-4
re-specified, N-9 added to plan §0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wcw2pnMBwyvmNyQg4uPEt4
2026-07-28 04:03:51 +00:00
..
10-layer-cards docs(assessment): Phase 3 — component descent; the correction chain continues into code 2026-07-27 15:57:36 -07:00
20-component-cards docs(assessment): Phase 3 — component descent; the correction chain continues into code 2026-07-27 15:57:36 -07:00
00-scope-and-method.md docs(assessment): Phase 4 — the gap register and the hindrance audit 2026-07-27 16:04:22 -07:00
01-phase0-ground-truth.md
02-layer-taxonomy.md
03-card-schema.md
04-phase2-findings.md docs(assessment): Phase 2 — nine layer cards, verified against code not documents 2026-07-27 15:45:52 -07:00
05-phase3-findings.md docs(assessment): Phase 3 — component descent; the correction chain continues into code 2026-07-27 15:57:36 -07:00
30-gap-register.md feat(tests): curated-suite membership ratchet — and PR-4's parity pin withdrawn (PR-4, G-7, N-9) 2026-07-28 04:03:51 +00:00
31-hindrance-audit.md feat(tests): curated-suite membership ratchet — and PR-4's parity pin withdrawn (PR-4, G-7, N-9) 2026-07-28 04:03:51 +00:00
40-assessment.md feat(rnd): ADR-0252 §5 run to a verdict — NO-GO, and the two prior GOs are void 2026-07-28 02:55:31 +00:00
50-execution-plan.md feat(tests): curated-suite membership ratchet — and PR-4's parity pin withdrawn (PR-4, G-7, N-9) 2026-07-28 04:03:51 +00:00
50-rulings.md feat(tests): curated-suite membership ratchet — and PR-4's parity pin withdrawn (PR-4, G-7, N-9) 2026-07-28 04:03:51 +00:00
README.md docs(assessment): fold in the external-assessment triage — H-13, H-14, H-8e; six proposals cleared 2026-07-28 03:17:54 +00:00

docs/assessment/ — The Holistic Macro→Micro Assessment (2026-07-27)

A read-only, evidence-bearing assessment of CORE's cognitive-cycle design versus implementation fulfillment, conducted under docs/conceptualizing_engineering_mastery.md at forgejo/main @ 8927c563. Phases 05 change no runtime behavior, fix no defect, and decide nothing — they produce evidence and judgments for ruling. Phase 6 adds the execution plan built on them and the ruling packet they require.

Start here: 40-assessment.md — the synthesis (the verdict, the five frontiers, the recommended attack order). Then 50-execution-plan.md for what follows from it, and 50-rulings.md for what is waiting on a decision. The registers rank the work; the cards are the evidence base.

File / dir Phase What it is
00-scope-and-method.md Charter, method, rules of engagement, phase/executor table
01-phase0-ground-truth.md 0 Corpus triage, the five unreconciled articulations, system-map recovery
02-layer-taxonomy.md 1 The two-axis taxonomy: 7 macro layers + 2 cross-cuts over 33 zones; the Candidate Register (CR-1…4); completeness criteria
03-card-schema.md 1 The card metadata schema: liveness ⊥ fitness, design ⊥ build, sabotage-tested evidence, verified_at stamps
10-layer-cards/ 2 Nine layer cards (M0M6, MG, MV), every liveness label re-verified against code
04-phase2-findings.md 2 Stage-coverage audit; corrections to Phase 0; findings F-1…F-5
20-component-cards/ 3 Eight component cards: the four zero-subsystem zones + always-on, derivation organs, surface selection, attention
05-phase3-findings.md 3 Corrections C-1…C-5; findings F-6…F-10; the consolidated Phase-4 seed list
30-gap-register.md 4 The live gap register — 20 entries, 4 tiers, each with evidence + deciding authority (proposes superseding docs/gaps.md); four entries amended in Phase 6
31-hindrance-audit.md 4 Fourteen hindrances with fitness verdicts and better homes; eleven candidates examined and cleared (five in Phase 4, six in the 2026-07-28 external-assessment triage)
40-assessment.md 5 The synthesis
50-execution-plan.md 6 The execution plan — five waves + five frontier tracks over every G/H entry, with the dependency gates and the risks. §0 carries seven corrections to the assessment found while sizing it
50-rulings.md 6 The ruling packet — R-1…R-14, each with evidence, options, a recommendation, and the exact diff that follows from each choice. Wave 0's deliverable

Maintenance contract (from §8 of the synthesis): a card whose verified_at falls behind a load-bearing arc is testimony, not evidence. Update cards when their subsystems move, or this directory becomes the next dead instrument it was built to replace.

Standing note: the PR #138 fabrication findings appear throughout as measured & pinned, fix held for ADR + ratification — recorded, never re-discovered, never fixed here, per explicit instruction.