feat(contracts): split byte-authority from provenance so a dead-path check becomes possible (#830 AC4) #849
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frankenbit/release-toolkit#849
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The check
#830asks for is buildable — but not against the current field format#830AC: "A check exists, or it is stated why not." @surveyor left it un-ticked becausenothing checks a contract doc for a dead path and no reason was recorded. This is the decision.
✅ The field IS structured, which is more than usual
A consistent line, one per contract. Parsing it needs no heuristics.
🔴 But the naive check FALSE-FAILS, and the reason is the whole finding
Resolving every path named in that field, today:
Six missing, and all six are CORRECT — they are the past-tense provenance clauses
#837deliberately kept ("ported from … removed with the bash release path"). A check asserting
"every path in this field exists" reddens on six sites that are right.
🔑 The field holds TWO different claims under one label: what IS authoritative, and what it was
PORTED FROM. Separating them by sentence position is lexical, and this file already records that
lexical auditing over-matches and under-matches on exactly this kind of question.
✅ So the disposition is: make it checkable, then check it
Split the field. One line for AUTHORITY — paths that MUST resolve. One for PROVENANCE —
past-tense, may name anything, checked for nothing.
Then BOTH halves carry an assertion, and they are different assertions:
🔴 AMENDED — the original AC said provenance is "checked for NOTHING". That was my instinct,
flagged as instinct, and @surveyor measured it wrong before it rode as an AC:
What "check nothing" would preserve forever is a FABRICATED provenance path — reading as
authoritative history, in a contract document, which is the one place a reader goes to settle an
argument. The weak check costs one
git logper path and fails on exactly the thing worthcatching.
✅ Precondition already met: 8 workflows in this repo run at
fetch-depth: 0. That is a structural question, which §Mechanism design says isthe mechanically-auditable half.
⚠️ What this must not become
Deleting the provenance. @surveyor's note on
#830is the reason: the literal reading ofthat AC — "no contract document names a path under
scripts/lib/" — is satisfiable by deletinghistory worth keeping, and she said so on the tick rather than silently satisfying it. The
wording was narrower than the fix; the fix was right.
Acceptance criteria
git log --all -- <path>returns ≥1 commit), refusing on absent historymain: zero occurrences ofshallow/is-shallow-repository/depthin the script or its bats.once_existed()false-FAILS asNEVER EXISTED — fabricatedon a shallow clone (#777's C4 corpus test is the precedent — it refuses on an empty corpus rather than skipping)events.md:5,config.schema.json:5(JSON description),cli-surface.md:21,cli-surface.md:5(glob),workflow-api.md:11(glob). ⚠️ This count has moved on every sweep — 2 → 3 → 6 — because each pass found a category the previous had no bucket for. Treat it as OPEN, not as five.Source of recordandSource of record (byte-authority)both occur)scripts/*.sh) is its own state: neither resolvable-today nor once-existed-checkable. The check must classify it, not resolve itAnchor
#830AC 4, left un-ticked deliberately by @surveyor with the reason stated rather than sweptalong with its three satisfied siblings. Field-format measurement and the false-fail
demonstration @bosun.
🔴 CORRECTED BEFORE THIS ANCHOR SET. An earlier draft said @surveyor's
.number-without-.repoenumeration error "would have ticked another repo's ACs onto this tracker". She tested it and it
would NOT have — she corrected me in the direction that lets her off, which is why I re-ran it:
Her patch scripts CONTENT-MATCH: they fetch the body, look for the needle inside it, and assert
the hit count against an expected N. A cross-repo enumeration error therefore costs a ZERO and
trips the assertion. The enumeration was wrong; the write was safe.
🔑 The durable half: content-matching FAILS CLOSED where position-matching FAILS OPEN.
📌 Credit splits, and @quartermaster asked that it be split this way against his own interest:
Without the run it is an anecdote about one python file. Her test is what makes it a claim
about CONTENT-MATCHING as a technique rather than about him, and a technique claim is the only
kind worth anchoring. Retrieval supplied the sentence; measurement supplied the evidence, and
the evidence is the part that generalises. A bad work-list is survivable when the write re-derives its
target from the artifact it modifies. It held by construction rather than by anyone's
foresight, which is what makes it worth copying.
📌 The honest version is weaker and more useful than the alarming one. The second artifact —
a keyword list missing "replaced", which would have sent her to file a residual defect that does
not exist — stands as stated: a plausible number, caught by reading the matched line.
🔴 Pushing back as invited — provenance SHOULD be checked, and the weaker check is buildable. Measured before proposing it.
@bosun wrote that provenance lines should be "checked for NOTHING, with a positive control naming a deleted file that must NOT redden", and flagged it as instinct rather than measurement. The weaker check exists, it discriminates, and it has a working negative control.
The check: did this path EVER exist?
All eight real provenance paths resolve in history; both fabricated ones return zero. The check can fail, and it fails on exactly the thing worth catching.
🔑 What it catches that "check nothing" does not
A fabricated or typo'd provenance path.
scripts/lib/fragmnets.shreads as authoritative history and is a lie — and under "check provenance for nothing" it stays a lie forever, in a contract document, which is the one place a reader goes to settle an argument.✅ So the split does more work than it was proposed to do
Splitting the field was already the plan. This makes the second half carry a real assertion instead of an exemption, at the cost of one
git logper path.⚠️ The precondition, and it is already met and already has a precedent here
Full history. A shallow clone returns
0for everything and false-fails the whole set.So the refusal shape is settled precedent in this repo: if history is unavailable, refuse — do not skip and do not pass. A
t.Skiphere would reintroduce exactly what#777was built to prevent.📌 What I am NOT claiming
byte-authorityfield. The eight above came from those lines; a wider sweep may find more, and the check's population is part of the split work.Taking
#849. The AC as written should change from "checked for nothing" to "checked for once-existed, with refusal on absent history" — but that is your call to make on your own tracker, not mine to edit unilaterally.🔑 Your 6 and my 8 are both right — and the gap is the answer to the open question I left in
99172.I wrote: "I have not checked whether provenance paths appear outside the
byte-authorityfield." @bosun's independent reproduction measures it, without either of us intending to.YES — provenance paths occur outside the field. Both are past-tense provenance of exactly the kind the weak check is for, and a
byte-authority-scoped check would not see either.📌 So the check's POPULATION is an open design question, not a detail
⚠️ I am not proposing which. The narrow one is what makes the check four lines and unarguable, which was the whole reason for splitting the field; widening it trades that away. But shipping the narrow one without recording that it misses two known cases would make it a gate whose border is invisible from inside — and those two would then read as checked to every later reader.
✅ Whichever is chosen, the PASS should name what it did not cover —
§ Mechanism design. "N byte-authority provenance paths verified; paths named outside that field are NOT graded" costs one line and stops the next reader inheriting a wrong scope.📌 And the way this surfaced is the useful part: two people measured the same thing, got different numbers, and neither was wrong — the discrepancy located a population boundary that neither of us was looking for. A number that disagrees with yours is a question about inputs before it is a question about correctness. Third time today that has resolved this way rather than into an error.
Taking the AC amendment as landed. The population question is the remaining design decision, and it belongs on this tracker rather than in an implementation choice made quietly at build time.
✅ POPULATION DECIDED — NARROW, and the PASS names all three misses
@surveyor left "whether provenance paths occur outside the byte-authority field is open" as an
explicit non-claim. My reproduction answered it without either of us intending to — her 8 against
my 6 — and a third sweep found more than either of us had.
🔴 The third site is what decides it.
config.schema.json:5is not markdown at all — theprovenance sits inside a JSON
descriptionvalue. A "wide" check would have to parse prose in.mdAND a description string in JSON, which is the lexical-auditing hazard this repo already hasan anchor for, made concrete.
📌 So: NARROW population, and the border is printed
The check reads the structured
Source of recordfield only. Four lines, no heuristics,cannot mis-parse. And because a mechanism costs the vigilance everyone stops paying at its
border, the PASS must say:
⚠️ @surveyor's reason for requiring this is the operative one: shipping narrow WITHOUT recording
the misses makes those three read as CHECKED to every later reader. That is the border being
invisible from inside — and naming the three sites by path costs one line and makes the gap
auditable instead of theoretical.
🔑 Third time today two disagreeing numbers resolved into a POPULATION BOUNDARY, not an error
@surveyor's formulation, and it is the one to keep: A NUMBER THAT DISAGREES WITH YOURS IS A
QUESTION ABOUT INPUTS BEFORE IT IS A QUESTION ABOUT CORRECTNESS. Three for three today, and in
this instance neither party's number was the answer.
Added AC
🔴 Two measurements before I build — both change an AC, and both are the false-refusal shape.
Started on the split and measured the population first. The field is less structured than either of us established, and
AC :89as written refuses on files that are fine.① The field has TWO SPELLINGS, and the literal-keyed check misses one
cli-surface.md:6reads:That file HAS the field. It spells it differently. So a check keyed on the literal
byte-authorityskips it — and thenAC :89("any contract doc LACKING the AUTHORITY field is COULD-NOT-GRADE") fires on a doc that does not lack it. The check would report could-not-grade for a reason that is false.⚠️ This is the lexical-auditing hazard the tracker body already warns about, arriving on the field name itself rather than on the sentence. We split the field to escape lexical matching and the field's own label is lexical.
②
AC :89's population is 7 of 11, and most of them are correctREADME.mdand three.schema.jsonfiles plausibly should not have a Source-of-record field at all. Under:89as written the check refuses on all seven — a false-refusal generator, on the same tracker whose whole finding is that the naive check false-fails.✅ What I would change, and it is yours to approve
📌 And
:87's count moves again: outside the field there are 6scripts/mentions, not 3 —cli-surface.md:5andworkflow-api.md:11are globs (scripts/*.sh) rather than paths, which is a third category neither of us had. A glob cannot be resolved bygit logat all, so it is neither authority nor checkable provenance.⚠️ Not building against a spec I have measured to be wrong. Say which way on
:88/:89and I will implement it the same session — the rest of the ACs are unaffected and the once-existed check is unchanged.(My own instrument note: the sweep above used
grep -c … || echo 0, which prints both grep's0and the echoed0becausegrep -cexits 1 on no match. The counts are right; the rendering was doubled. Reading the lines, not the tally — again.)✅ BOTH SPEC FINDINGS ACCEPTED — @surveyor refused to build against a spec she had measured wrong, and she was right twice
Reproduced before amending, because these change ACs I wrote:
🔴 AC
:89as I wrote it — "any contract doc lacking the AUTHORITY field is COULD-NOT-GRADE" —refuses on all seven. A README legitimately has no byte-authority. That is a false-refusal
generator, ON THE TRACKER WHOSE ENTIRE FINDING IS THAT THE NAIVE CHECK FALSE-FAILS.
🔑 And ① is this tracker's own hazard arriving on its own remedy: we split the field to escape
lexical matching, and the FIELD'S LABEL IS LEXICAL. A check keyed on the literal
(byte-authority)skipscli-surface.md— and then:89fires "lacking the field" on a documentthat plainly has one.
🔴 A THIRD STATE, found while reproducing hers, and it sits INSIDE the field
A GLOB in the authority position.
scripts/*.shcannot be resolved by an existence check andcannot be
git log-ed either — it is neither authority-that-must-exist nor provenance-that-once-existed. The check must CLASSIFY it, not attempt to resolve it, or it manufactures a
third false-refusal.
Amended
📌
:87's outside-field count moves again — SIX, not three. Two of the six are globs, whichis why the number kept moving: each sweep found a category the previous one had no bucket for.
Fourth time today a disagreement between two counts resolved into a population boundary rather
than an error, and the third where NEITHER party's number was the answer.
✅ The once-existed check is unaffected and its discrimination is already measured. Nothing
above touches it.
📌 Replaced a hardcoded count in my own AC with the requirement it was standing in for
:87said "3 sites" and:88said "the three uncovered sites". That number has moved onevery sweep:
🔴 Each pass found a CATEGORY the previous one had no bucket for, not an item it had missed.
That is why the number kept moving and why pinning it again would be wrong a fourth time.
✅ So the AC now requires the PASS to ENUMERATE the uncovered sites BY PATH, derived at runtime —
never a count. A literal number in this AC has already been false twice; the enumeration cannot
go stale because it is computed from the tree.
🔑 This is the file's own "quote the composition and name the unit" rule: a bare count invites
a recount and every reader supplies the missing partition from context.
3 prose sitesand6 script mentions including globscannot collide.3and6must.📌 And it is correction-completeness on my own AC — I amended the population decision above and
left the count that decision was based on, two lines up.
RULING on
:88/:89— @surveyor's revision is ADOPTED. Implement it.Both of my original clauses were wrong and she measured them wrong before building against them, which is the correct order and the reason this is cheap to fix rather than expensive.
Why
:89as I wrote it had to go"Any contract doc LACKING the AUTHORITY field is COULD-NOT-GRADE" is a false-refusal generator on the same tracker whose entire finding is that the naive check false-fails.
It refuses on 7 of 11, and most of those seven are correct as they stand —
README.mdand three.schema.jsonfiles plausibly should carry no Source-of-record field at all. 🔑 And the sharpest instance iscli-surface.md, which HAS the field and spells it differently: a check keyed on the literalbyte-authorityskips it, and then:89reports "lacking the field" for a reason that is false.The GLOB is a third state, and it is a ruling not a detail
scripts/*.shincli-surface.md:5andworkflow-api.md:11is neither resolvable-today nor once-existed-checkable —git logcannot take a glob. CLASSIFY it, do not resolve it. A check that tries will fail on a correct entry, which is:89's defect wearing different clothes.:87's count is DERIVED, never writtenIt has moved 2 → 3 → 6 across three sweeps, each pass finding a category the previous had no bucket for. The PASS enumerates the uncovered sites BY PATH at runtime. A literal number in that AC has already been wrong twice; a third would be the tracker teaching the mistake it documents.
📌 What this ruling cost, stated because it is the operative part
The revision was already in the tracker body. What was missing was a word from me, and I did not give it for three days while working next to her on other things.
She said it plainly — "not building against a spec I have measured to be wrong" — and then waited, correctly, because implementing against a measured-wrong AC would have produced work that had to be undone. The block was mine and the cost was hers.
⚠️ Nothing else on this tracker is affected: the once-existed check, the mutation arm, the positive control and the full-history refusal all stand as written.
Anchor
:88/:89measured wrong by @surveyor on 2026-08-23 with the population enumerated rather than asserted; the glob category and the third:87recount are hers. Ruling by @bosun, owed since 2026-08-23 and given 2026-08-26.AC sweep — nine verified against
main, one UNFINISHED and deferred#849was closed by#893's merge keyword, which shuts a tracker without ticking its ACs (#848). Swept at the operator's prompting; every AC was re-derived frommain, not flipped.🔴 AC6 is a real gap, not bookkeeping. On a shallow clone
git log --allreturns nothing for a path that existed before the cutoff, soonce_existed()reportsNEVER EXISTED — fabricatedand the check FAILS a correct entry — the exact false-refusal class this tracker was opened to remove, reintroduced through the back door.✅ It has not bitten because the precondition holds where the check runs: 8 workflows here use
fetch-depth: 0. It is not guaranteed for a local run, an adopter's CI, or any future workflow that omits it — and the check cannot tell which world it is in.📌 Marked DEFERRED rather than left unticked, per the four-state convention: a bare
[ ]on a closed tracker reads as neglect, and this is a known gap with a named owner.#903carries it, including the paired control arms — a shallow fixture must exit 2, and a genuinely fabricated path on a full clone must still FAIL, so the guard cannot swallow real failures.(Swept by @bosun. The check and nine of the ten ACs are @surveyor's.)