core/docs/handoff/BRIEF-CLOSE-assessment-verification-2026-07-25.md

# Arc-Close Brief — Assessment Verification & Lateral Closures

**Arc:** assessment-verification-2026-07-25 · **Closed:** 2026-07-25 · **Closing tier:** Opus 5
**Plan of record:** independent verification of an external Tier-S assessment + its five-pillar blueprint
**ADRs minted:** none (one amendment: ADR-0263 gains rule 5, recorded in `core/ratified_ledger.py`)

> First use of `ARC-CLOSE-TEMPLATE.md`, written in the same arc. Filling it in
> was also the test of it.

## 1. What shipped

| Capability | Enforcement site | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| `deduction`/`curriculum` registered as grounding sources, cross-stack | `core/epistemic_state.py`, `workbench-ui/` badges + snapshot | `tests/test_workbench_deduction_provenance.py` (14) |
| Coercion derives its whitelist from the enum instead of restating it | `workbench/api.py::_coerce_grounding_source` | same file, parametrized over the registration |
| Ledger absence policy declared, not passed (ADR-0263 rule 5) | `core/ratified_ledger.py::CAPABILITY_LEDGERS` | `tests/test_ratified_ledger_bridge.py::TestCapabilityManifest` |
| Deductive suite in the pre-push gate | `scripts/hooks/pre-push` | measured 285 tests / 29s vs smoke 216 / 62s |
| One-command local CI runner, fail-closed on interpreter | `scripts/ci/local-ci.sh` | `gate` tier verified: 236 + 10 + 285 |
| Lane roster red on clean `main` fixed | `tests/test_lane_sha_verifier.py` | two arc lanes were never registered |
| Test writing proposals into the live in-repo sink | `tests/test_derived_close_proposals.py` | plus a vacuous `or True` assertion removed |
| Correction-binding lockstep pinned on the deduction path | `tests/test_prior_surface_deduction_binding.py` (6) | mutation-checked |
| Ratification ceremony + `core proposal-queue ratify` | `teaching/ratification.py`, `core/cli_proposal_queue.py` | `tests/test_ratification_ceremony.py` (14) |
| Domain-keyed ADR index | `docs/adr/INDEX-by-domain.md` | `tests/test_adr_index.py` (5) |
| Arc-close brief template | `docs/handoff/ARC-CLOSE-TEMPLATE.md` | this file |

## 2. Flag state at close

| Flag | Default at close | Ratified by | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| `deduction_serving_enabled` | **True** | ADR-0256, 2026-07-24 | Unchanged. Its suite is now a pre-push gate, not async CI. |
| `curriculum_serving_enabled` | False | — | Unchanged. Blocked on volume, not machinery; the ceremony is the volume path. |
| `accrue_realized_knowledge` | False | — | Unchanged, and **not** debt: a deployment profile (session memory), ON in production L10. |

No flag was flipped in this arc.

## 3. Falsified assumptions

| The assessment assumed | Measurement showed | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| `parents[n]` audit is high-payoff | 168 sites, **0** outside the repo root | audit run |
| Guard exemption undocumented | Documented at **both** guard sites with rationale | `chat/runtime.py:2371`, `:3007` |
| T12 ledger entry missing | Present as an open pattern-watch item | `weekly-audit-2026-07-22-stragglers-todo.md:170` |
| `assert_corpus_sound` has one impl | Already domain-parameterized, called unconditionally | `evals/curriculum_serve/runner.py:71,105-108` |
| Promotion oracle must be built | Already the `wrong=0` lane gate | `tier-s-housekeeping-2026-07-24.md` §3 |
| `EntailmentTrace` drops proof chains | ROBDD tautology check; **no intermediate steps exist** | `generate/proof_chain/entail.py:125-190` |
| Cross-subject proof could emerge accidentally | `resolve_domain` refuses `ambiguous_reading` | `chat/curriculum_surface.py:138` |
| Second subject arena is next | 11 bands across 4 subjects already route; all 24×–73× short | `curriculum-volume-quantification-2026-07-24.md` §2 |
| **(mine)** `versor_condition` is the hot spot | **0.22%** of a turn | `cga-hot-path-measurement-2026-07-25.md` §2 |
| **(mine)** Workbench also falsifies `epistemic_state` | It does not — reads `epistemic_state_needed`, honest | `workbench/api.py:818` |

## 4. Binding constraint going into the next arc

Unchanged and unmoved: **ratified curriculum volume.** Eleven live bands, every
one 24×–73× short of the entailed-bucket floor, and physics — the deepest — has
16 chains against a ~219 floor. This arc built the machine that converts a
reviewed decision into a routable chain and proved it moves the band
(`causal: 7 → 8` on a dry run), but it ratified no content. The ceremony is a
pipe; someone still has to put curriculum through it. Nothing else in the
roadmap unblocks until that number moves.

## 5. Trigger state

**Core Logos Phase 5 (multi-step articulation) is NOT triggered**, contrary to
the assessment's reading. The trigger was described as "the renderer discards
intermediate proof chains" — there are none to discard.
`evaluate_entailment_with_trace` decides by asking whether
`(P1 & … & Pn) -> Q` is a tautology; `EntailmentTrace` carries five opaque BDD
node keys.

What must land in a higher tier **before** any implementation: a feasibility
study for **proof-term extraction** over the ROBDD — a derivation calculus with
a real soundness surface, not a data-structure refactor. Scoping it as the
latter produces a renderer with nothing to render.

## 6. What is NOT next, and why

- **Widening the math reader for cases 0000/0001/0148/0082.** Traced; their
  blocking gaps affect **1 and 2 cases out of 500**. ADR-0251's prohibition now
  rests on a count.
- **A `.metal` Cl(4,1) kernel / MLX fusion / bf16.** The Cayley table already
  exists at compile time in `cl41.rs`; the fusion target is 0.22% of a turn;
  bf16's ε ≈ 7.8e-3 against a 1e-6 gate. And there is an exact CPU win
  available first.
- **The diagonal `cga_inner` shortcut.** Tempting, 32× fewer ops, and **not
  bit-exact** (954/4000 in f32). It would move lane pins.
- **Discovery-yield stratification.** Blocked on new persisted per-source
  counters in the engine_state manifest.
- **Band-level capability index.** Blocked on a scoring decision — 25 near-1.0
  entries inflate `coverage_geomean` against the index's own anti-gaming claim.
- **`engine_refused` as a standing gate.** Classifier already CI-gated; pinning
  a count on an empty bucket is the stale-pin failure mode.

## 7. Open items carried forward

| Item | Kind | Recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Does `core_rs` hold bit-exact parity? | blocked (network policy denies `static.crates.io`) | `cga-hot-path-measurement-2026-07-25.md` §7 |
| Rust typestate `UnverifiedClaim`→`VersorClaim` | blocked on a build | same, §7 |
| Serial-fold `cga_inner` in the search paths | untested (exactness proven, change not made) | same, §6 |
| Audit-ledger **R7** — telemetry sink gets pre-override events | deferred | `docs/specs/runtime_contracts.md` |
| `hash_surface` on `TurnEvent`, or not | undecided | same |
| Arena queue entry + ledger reseal after ratification | deferred by design (bridge rule 1) | `RatificationReceipt.pending_stages` |
| Forgejo zero-length-object claim | unverified from this environment | assessment doc, preamble |
**A non-finding, recorded so it is not re-found.** Mid-arc this brief listed
"three files owed to `smoke.yml`" as blocked work: `test_pack_draft_serve_boundary.py`
plus the two new provenance files sit in the local gate and not in the CI yaml,
which a newly-bidirectional parity assertion flagged as drift.

It is not drift, and the assertion was wrong to exist. Per `AGENTS.md`, GitHub
Actions are billing-locked dead signals, the Forgejo host cannot run workflows
either, and CI is run **manually in-worktree** — which is faster anyway on UMA
hardware with real RAM. `smoke.yml` is secondary observability, not a gate. The
local suite is the source and is free to be broader; asserting the reverse turns
a file nobody executes into a maintenance obligation that agents cannot even
discharge (pushing workflow changes needs an OAuth scope the push credential
lacks).

Reverted the same day, with the reasoning left at the assertion site so the
"completion" is not attempted again. The surviving direction — CI ⊆ local —
still protects something real: if `smoke.yml` ever names a path the local gate
lacks, the local gate is narrower than a published claim about it.

## 8. Gates and their state at close

| Gate | Command | Result |
|---|---|---|
| smoke | `core test --suite smoke -q` | **236 passed** (216 baseline + 20 new) |
| deductive | `core test --suite deductive -q` | **285 passed** |
| workbench-ui | `vitest run` | **598 passed / 73 files**; `tsc -b` clean |
| capability index | `pytest tests/test_capability_*` | **11 passed**, baseline digest unchanged |
| math holdout | `evals/gsm8k_math/holdout_dev/v1/runner.py` | `correct=5 wrong=0 refused=495` |
| proposal/curriculum sweep | `pytest -k "proposal_queue or ratification or curriculum"` | **246 passed** |
| grounding/epistemic sweep | `pytest -k "workbench or epistemic or grounding or …"` | **741 passed, 1 skipped** |

**Environment caveat, and it matters for how much these are worth.** The repo
pins `requires-python == 3.12.13`, which `uv` cannot fetch for
linux-x86_64, so `uv sync --locked` fails. All Python runs above used a scratch
venv on 3.12.11 with the declared deps — **not the locked dependency universe**,
and not the full ~12k suite. The pin was left untouched. Re-run the real gates
on a 3.12.13 host before treating any of this as merged-quality evidence.

## 9. Ground truth corrections for the next opener

1. **`chat/runtime.py:471-481` was stale and is now rewritten.** It argued the
   unregistered `deduction` label was "inert today" because REPL turns do not
   reach Workbench. True, and irrelevant — Workbench builds a bare
   `ChatRuntime()`, so the traffic flows the other way. Live from the moment
   the flag was ratified ON. This is the class of staleness nobody greps for:
   a comment reasoning from a premise that has since changed.

2. **A second copy of a closed enum is worse than no copy.** The *unregistered*
   path degraded honestly (`epistemic_state_needed` = "needs determination").
   The hand-copied whitelist asserted a falsehood (`none` = ungrounded). Derive
   from the enum; do not restate it.

3. **Silent-drop is correct at serving time and a trap at ratification time.**
   `_ratified_rows` dropping unadmissible rows is right when serving. Appending
   a row the loader will drop looks identical to appending one that works. Any
   future corpus-writing path needs the same confirm-admission discipline.

4. **Do not compare a microbenchmark to a latency figure.** §3's last two rows
   are both mine, and both came from reasoning about measurements instead of
   taking them. The turn is the denominator.

5. **`assert_corpus_sound` is two functions with one name** —
   `evals/deduction_serve/practice/gold.py:1163` (no args, practice corpus) and
   `evals/curriculum_serve/runner.py:71` (`domain, cases`, lane contract). Not
   a missing contract; a name collision. Worth renaming before a third appears.