diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index 5490034..a765652 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -72,6 +72,12 @@ jobs:
       - uses: ./actions/changelog-armed
         with:
           changelog: CHANGELOG.scratch.md
+      # The same scratch tree exercises drill-recorded: 0.0.1-dev is a
+      # development tree, so the guard proves its wiring (action.yml,
+      # $GITHUB_ACTION_PATH, the lib sourcing) through the nothing-to-assert
+      # path — the state every consumer PR is in. The bare path is the test
+      # suite's job.
+      - uses: ./actions/drill-recorded
       - name: Construct a scratch history for the monotonic guard
         # The monotonic guard's input is a DIFF, so its exercise needs
         # history, not just a file: commit a scratch changelog, mark that
diff --git a/actions/drill-recorded/action.yml b/actions/drill-recorded/action.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2e32ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/actions/drill-recorded/action.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+name: Drill recorded
+description: >-
+  Assert a release tree carries its drill record — the release-evidence
+  gate, keyed on the tree's version (from box, where box#95, box#114 and
+  box#148 all shipped with no drill because the gate was only a sentence in
+  CONTRIBUTING). The caller must have checked out its own repository first:
+  the guard reads the consumer's tree at the workspace.
+inputs:
+  version-source:
+    description: Where the tree's version lives ("file" or "package-json")
+    required: false
+    default: file
+  drills-dir:
+    description: Directory of drill records, relative to the workspace
+    required: false
+    default: drills
+runs:
+  using: composite
+  steps:
+    - name: drill recorded
+      shell: bash
+      env:
+        DRILLS_DIR: ${{ inputs.drills-dir }}
+        VERSION_SOURCE: ${{ inputs.version-source }}
+      run: bash "$GITHUB_ACTION_PATH/drill-recorded.sh"
diff --git a/actions/drill-recorded/drill-recorded.sh b/actions/drill-recorded/drill-recorded.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2076e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/actions/drill-recorded/drill-recorded.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+set -euo pipefail
+
+# drill-recorded.sh [<drills-dir>] [<version-source>] — assert that a
+# RELEASE tree carries a drill record: that the ritual this repo says a
+# release rests on was actually run for this version, and written down as
+# <drills-dir>/<version>.md.
+#
+# Ported from box .github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh (the origin); rig and
+# cast carry their own rephrasings of the same rule, and this action is the
+# one copy they all converge on (#13–#16).
+#
+# Why it exists: box's CONTRIBUTING said since box#96 that "this PR is where
+# the release ritual hangs: the full drill on real hardware, recorded". No
+# release ever did it. box#95, box#114 and box#148 all shipped as a VERSION
+# bump plus a CHANGELOG.md stamp and nothing else. That is three releases
+# through the same gap, because the gate was a sentence in a document and
+# the only thing standing on it was a reviewer remembering to ask. A
+# reviewer finally did — which is the point: the ONE time it was caught is
+# the time somebody happened to look, and that is not a gate, it is luck
+# with good manners. So the rule moves into CI, where it fires on every
+# release PR whether or not anyone is paying attention.
+#
+# It is keyed on the tree's version for the same reason changelog-armed is —
+# the two states are genuinely different:
+#
+#   version ends in -dev  ->  PASS. A development tree ships nothing, so
+#                             there is nothing for it to have proven. Almost
+#                             every PR in a consumer repo is this case, and
+#                             a guard that nagged all of them would be
+#                             turned off.
+#   version is bare       ->  the ceremony tree, the one about to ship.
+#                             <drills-dir>/<version>.md MUST exist and carry
+#                             at least one non-whitespace character.
+#
+# ONE FILE PER VERSION, and that is the whole design. Records used to be
+# sections sharing one file, and every hard edge the old guard had existed
+# only because of that sharing: em-dash field matching, an optional
+# ' — DATE' tail, whole-version comparison so '0.9.0-rc1' could not satisfy
+# '0.9.0', avoiding '\x' escapes because CI runs mawk not gawk, and a
+# non-blank body rule to tell an empty section from a filled one. Two
+# separate defects were found in review because of that complexity — a
+# `sed '/./,$!d'` whitespace bypass, and heading-grammar drift from the
+# sibling repos. Splitting the file makes almost all of it UNREPRESENTABLE:
+# '0.9.0.md' and '0.9.0-rc1.md' are simply different files, so whole-version
+# matching is free rather than a trap, and there is no grammar left to
+# drift.
+#
+# The directory is plain 'drills', NOT '.drills'. A dot-directory is
+# invisible to a glob without dotglob, which is exactly what caused box#116
+# and box#118; evidence a sweep cannot see is evidence that goes missing
+# quietly.
+#
+# What this guard asserts is a RECORD, deliberately — not a passing drill.
+# CI cannot run a consumer's drill: box's wants real hardware, a real Incus,
+# and the better part of an hour. What CI can do is refuse to let a release
+# claim a ritual it left no evidence of. That also leaves the maintainer
+# waiver intact and honest: a release that must ship without a full drill
+# records WHY in its own file, which is a deliberate, reviewable commit in
+# the diff — rather than the silent skip that let box#95, box#114 and
+# box#148 all ship unproven.
+#
+# What a drill MEANS is the consumer's business (box: the isolation
+# contract; rig: convergence; cast: promotion; each names it in its own
+# drills/README.md). This guard only ever reads the record file in the tree
+# it runs in.
+#
+# A file of its own (not inlined in action.yml) so
+# test/drill-recorded.test.sh can drive it against constructed trees for
+# both states — the same discipline as the libs it sources.
+
+drills="${1:-${DRILLS_DIR:-drills}}"
+version_source="${2:-${VERSION_SOURCE:-file}}"
+
+# The shared libs travel with this action: a consumer's
+# `uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/drill-recorded@<tag>` downloads this
+# whole repository at that ref, so ../../lib is always present and always at
+# the same ref — no checkout step, no version skew possible.
+here="$(cd -- "$(dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)"
+# shellcheck source=lib/version.sh
+. "$here/../../lib/version.sh"
+
+# A missing or empty version source is an ERROR, never a silent pass. A
+# guard that cannot read the version cannot know whether this tree is its
+# business, and "could not tell" must not resolve to "allowed". version_read
+# refuses loudly on its own; the wrapper line names the guard so a workflow
+# log shows which check refused.
+ver="$(version_read "$version_source")" || {
+  echo "drill-recorded: cannot read the version (version-source: $version_source)" >&2
+  exit 1
+}
+
+# version_is_dev is the single definition of the -dev special case (#3): an
+# rc is a pre-release, not a dev tree — it ships, so it needs its own record
+# ('2.0.0-rc1.md'), which one-file-per-version makes just another path.
+if version_is_dev "$ver"; then
+  # Nothing to assert, and saying so is the point: the operator reading a
+  # green log should be able to tell "the guard passed" from "the guard
+  # decided this tree was not its business".
+  echo "drill-recorded: version '$ver' is a development tree — nothing to assert; only ceremony trees ship"
+  exit 0
+fi
+
+record="$drills/$ver.md"
+
+# The one rule that survives the rewrite, and it survives because it was
+# never really about heading parsing: a file of only spaces, tabs and
+# newlines is NOT a record. The first cut of box's guard extracted with
+# `sed '/./,$!d'`, where `.` matches a space — so a record whose body was
+# one tab satisfied a guard that promised "at least one non-blank line". An
+# evidence-free release for the price of an invisible character, on the one
+# check whose entire job is to demand evidence. Existence alone is a weaker
+# claim than `touch` can defeat, so existence alone is not the test.
+if [ ! -f "$record" ] || ! grep -q '[^[:space:]]' "$record"; then
+  cat >&2 <<EOF
+drill-recorded: the version is '$ver' — a release — and there is no drill
+  record for it. The file this looks for is:
+
+    $record
+
+  ...with something written in it. Either the file is absent entirely, or it
+  is present and blank; both mean the same thing, which is that this release
+  is asserting a ritual it has left no evidence of — this release is
+  unproven.
+
+  The unblock is to RUN THE DRILL and record it at that path — what it
+  measured, what it found, what it cost. See $drills/README.md for what a
+  drill means in this repo and what a record should contain. CI cannot run
+  the drill for you; it can only refuse a release that never ran one.
+
+  If this release must ship without a full drill, that is a maintainer's
+  call to make and it is still recorded: create the same file and say
+  plainly that the drill was WAIVED and why. The guard requires a record,
+  not a passing result — a failed drill honestly written down satisfies it
+  too — so a skip is a visible, reviewable file in the diff rather than the
+  silent gap that let box#95, box#114 and box#148 all ship unproven.
+EOF
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+echo "drill-recorded: version '$ver' has a drill record at $record"
diff --git a/test/drill-recorded.test.sh b/test/drill-recorded.test.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08d0fa6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/drill-recorded.test.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+# Contract tests for actions/drill-recorded (issue #7). Constructed fixture
+# trees — a dir with a drills/ directory plus a VERSION file or
+# package.json, not git repos — the same discipline as the box suite this
+# guard is ported from. set -u, not -e: failing commands are behavior for
+# the harness to inspect.
+set -u
+
+ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")/.." && pwd)"
+# shellcheck source=test/harness.sh
+. "$ROOT/test/harness.sh"
+
+SCRIPT="$ROOT/actions/drill-recorded/drill-recorded.sh"
+
+TMP="$(mktemp -d)"
+trap 'rm -rf "$TMP"' EXIT
+
+# The guard reads the consumer's tree at its working directory, so every
+# case runs from inside a constructed fixture tree.
+in_tree() {
+  local dir="$1"
+  shift
+  (cd "$TMP/$dir" && bash "$SCRIPT" "$@")
+}
+
+# tree <name> <version> — a fixture tree with a VERSION file and no drills
+# dir; cases add records themselves.
+tree() {
+  mkdir -p "$TMP/$1"
+  printf '%s\n' "$2" >"$TMP/$1/VERSION"
+}
+
+# pkg_tree <name> <version> — the same, package-json backend.
+pkg_tree() {
+  mkdir -p "$TMP/$1"
+  printf '{ "name": "fixture", "version": "%s" }\n' "$2" >"$TMP/$1/package.json"
+}
+
+# record <tree> <version> <body> — write drills/<version>.md in the tree.
+record() {
+  mkdir -p "$TMP/$1/drills"
+  printf '%s\n' "$3" >"$TMP/$1/drills/$2.md"
+}
+
+# --- the -dev row: nothing to assert, and the log says why -------------------
+
+tree dev-tree 0.9.1-dev
+check "-dev tree with no drills dir at all passes" 0 "nothing to assert" \
+  in_tree dev-tree
+check "-dev pass names the version it keyed on" 0 "0.9.1-dev" in_tree dev-tree
+
+# --- the bare rows: the record file is the whole gate ------------------------
+
+tree bare-recorded 0.9.0
+record bare-recorded 0.9.0 "Ran the drill on real hardware; all green."
+check "bare + recorded drill passes" 0 "drills/0.9.0.md" in_tree bare-recorded
+
+tree bare-missing 0.9.0
+mkdir -p "$TMP/bare-missing/drills"
+check "bare + missing record fails" 1 "drills/0.9.0.md" in_tree bare-missing
+check "bare + missing record says the release is unproven" 1 "unproven" \
+  in_tree bare-missing
+
+tree bare-no-dir 0.9.0
+check "bare + no drills dir at all fails the same way" 1 "drills/0.9.0.md" \
+  in_tree bare-no-dir
+
+# The `sed '/./,$!d'` lesson: a record of only whitespace is not a record.
+tree bare-blank 0.9.0
+mkdir -p "$TMP/bare-blank/drills"
+printf ' \t\n\n' >"$TMP/bare-blank/drills/0.9.0.md"
+check "bare + whitespace-only record fails" 1 "drills/0.9.0.md" in_tree bare-blank
+check "blank-record failure is the same message family" 1 "unproven" \
+  in_tree bare-blank
+
+# Prefix confusion is unrepresentable — '0.9.0-rc1.md' is a different path
+# than '0.9.0.md' — and this row asserts it STAYS that way.
+tree bare-rc-only 0.9.0
+record bare-rc-only 0.9.0-rc1 "The candidate's drill."
+check "bare 0.9.0: an rc's record never satisfies it" 1 "drills/0.9.0.md" \
+  in_tree bare-rc-only
+
+# An rc is a pre-release, not a dev tree (#3's version_is_dev): it ships, so
+# it keys bare and wants its own record.
+tree rc-recorded 1.0.0-rc1
+record rc-recorded 1.0.0-rc1 "Drilled the candidate."
+check "rc keys as bare, its own record passes" 0 "drills/1.0.0-rc1.md" \
+  in_tree rc-recorded
+
+tree rc-missing 1.0.0-rc1
+check "rc keys as bare, no record fails" 1 "drills/1.0.0-rc1.md" \
+  in_tree rc-missing
+
+# --- degenerate version sources ----------------------------------------------
+
+mkdir -p "$TMP/no-version"
+check "missing version source fails" 1 "cannot read the version" \
+  in_tree no-version
+
+mkdir -p "$TMP/empty-version"
+printf '\n' >"$TMP/empty-version/VERSION"
+check "empty version source fails" 1 "cannot read the version" \
+  in_tree empty-version
+
+tree unknown-backend 0.9.0
+check "unknown version-source refused" 1 "unknown backend" \
+  in_tree unknown-backend drills carrier-pigeon
+
+# --- the package-json backend ------------------------------------------------
+
+pkg_tree pkg-recorded 0.3.0
+record pkg-recorded 0.3.0 "Promotion drill ran; notes attached."
+check "package-json: bare + recorded passes" 0 "drills/0.3.0.md" \
+  in_tree pkg-recorded drills package-json
+
+pkg_tree pkg-missing 0.3.0
+check "package-json: bare + missing record fails" 1 "drills/0.3.0.md" \
+  in_tree pkg-missing drills package-json
+
+# --- a non-default drills dir ------------------------------------------------
+
+tree alt-dir 0.9.0
+mkdir -p "$TMP/alt-dir/evidence"
+printf 'Ran it.\n' >"$TMP/alt-dir/evidence/0.9.0.md"
+check "a non-default drills-dir is honored" 0 "evidence/0.9.0.md" \
+  in_tree alt-dir evidence
+
+# --- the action's wiring: inputs arrive as env vars --------------------------
+
+tree env-tree 0.9.0
+mkdir -p "$TMP/env-tree/evidence"
+printf 'Ran it.\n' >"$TMP/env-tree/evidence/0.9.0.md"
+# A non-default drills dir proves the env var is honored, not the default.
+env_tree() {
+  (cd "$TMP/env-tree" && DRILLS_DIR=evidence VERSION_SOURCE=file bash "$SCRIPT")
+}
+check "env vars drive the script the way action.yml does" 0 "evidence/0.9.0.md" \
+  env_tree
+
+summary