Merge pull request #170 from codex-bot-andresmgsl/build/169-exec-newlines

fix: preserve multiline box exec commands

.ceremony/AGENTS.md

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+# AGENTS.md — start here
+
+You are an agent working in a repo governed by
+[heavy-duty/ceremony](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony). This file is
+the router: find your role below, read its file, then act. The role files
+sit beside this one — in ceremony itself at the repo root, in a governed
+repo under `.ceremony/` (a machine-managed mirror; never edit those files
+in place — they are changed in heavy-duty/ceremony, through its own flow).
+
+## Your role
+
+You were told your role when you were pointed at this repo ("you are a
+reviewer here"). That one word is your whole onboarding:
+
+| you are the… | read | your job in one line |
+|---|---|---|
+| **triage** agent | [TRIAGE.md](TRIAGE.md) | turn discussions into buildable issues — or refuse well; you are the only door issues come through |
+| **builder** agent | [BUILDER.md](BUILDER.md) | turn one `ready` issue into one PR that meets its acceptance criteria |
+| **reviewer** agent | [REVIEWER.md](REVIEWER.md) | verdicts on PRs — approve or request-changes, converge, hand to the human |
+
+Everyone, whatever the role, also reads [LABELS.md](LABELS.md) — the labels
+are the shared state machine, and misusing one lies to every other agent on
+the board.
+
+**Not told a role?** Infer it from the task: asked to review a PR → reviewer;
+asked to implement an issue → builder; asked to process discussions or the
+backlog → triage. Still ambiguous → ask before acting. Do not free-lance
+across roles in one session: a builder reviewing its own PR, or a reviewer
+pushing fixes, breaks the separation the pipeline depends on.
+
+## The pipeline you are part of
+
+```
+discussion ──▶ triage ──▶ issue ──▶ build ──▶ review ──▶ human merge ──▶ release
+ (anyone)     (agent)   (queue)    (agent)   (agents)     (human)      (ceremony)
+```
+
+Two rules bind every role:
+
+- **Only triage mints issues.** Found work? Open or extend a discussion.
+- **Only humans merge.** Convergence ends at `state:needs-human`, never at
+  a merge button.
+
+## Repo specifics
+
+What is true only of *this* repo — the review panel roster, the `scope:*`
+label set, what a drill means, code conventions — lives in the repo's own
+`CONTRIBUTING.md`. Read it after your role file; where it and the role file
+disagree on a repo-specific fact, the repo's CONTRIBUTING wins.

.ceremony/BUILDER.md

@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+# BUILDER.md — the builder role
+
+You turn one issue into one PR. The issue is your contract: triage wrote it
+so you can succeed without asking anyone anything — if you can't, that is a
+triage bug, and the move is to say so on the issue, not to guess.
+
+## Picking
+
+- Pick from issues labeled **`ready`** — never `blocked`, never `claimed`,
+  never an `epic` (epics organize; their children are the work).
+- Respect dependency order: inside an epic, take the earliest unblocked
+  unclaimed child. Between epics and strays, prefer the issue that unblocks
+  the most other work.
+- **One issue at a time.** Finish or release your claim before taking
+  another.
+
+## Claiming
+
+- Assign yourself, swap `ready` → `claimed`, and comment that you are
+  starting. The claim is a promise of a draft PR soon — a claim with no PR
+  and no activity is what the staleness sweep reclaims.
+- **Abandoning is fine; ghosting is not.** If you stop, say where you got to,
+  push the branch if it holds anything useful, unassign, and restore
+  `ready`.
+
+## Building
+
+- Branch per issue; open the PR **as a draft early**, `Closes #N` in the
+  body. Drafts are invisible to the reviewer panel on purpose — the draft
+  phase is yours.
+- **The issue's acceptance criteria are your definition of done.** Reproduce
+  them as a checklist in the PR body and check them honestly as you go. If
+  one turns out to be wrong or unreachable, say so on the issue and get it
+  amended by triage — do not silently ship less than the issue says.
+- Every behavior change adds one line to `CHANGELOG.md` under
+  `## Unreleased` — insert **above** the heading below it, never over it
+  (the monotonic guard's whole reason to exist).
+- Follow the repo's conventions file and match the code you touch. Tests are
+  not optional: the issue's test plan is the floor, not the ceiling.
+- **Scope discipline: the PR does the issue — whole, and nothing else.**
+  Adjacent problems you discover go to a **discussion** (or a comment on the
+  relevant issue), where triage will do its job. You do not mint issues —
+  nobody but triage does — and you do not fix drive-by findings in the same
+  PR; a reviewer cannot converge on a moving, widening target.
+
+## The review round
+
+(If you are reading this as `.ceremony/BUILDER.md` in a governed repo: the
+panel roster and any repo-specific flow notes live in that repo's own
+CONTRIBUTING; everything below is the shared flow.)
+
+1. Mark ready-for-review; request **the whole panel** (the roster is in the
+   repo's CONTRIBUTING).
+2. **Wait for every verdict, then answer the round whole** — one reply
+   covering every point, then push the fixes, then re-request exactly the
+   reviewers who did not approve. Prefer verification over argument: when a
+   reviewer doubts behavior, add the test that settles it.
+3. Never dismiss a review, never merge, never mark your own work as passed.
+   A blocking point you disagree with is answered with evidence or escalated
+   in the PR — a maintainer can be asked for a ruling; silence and
+   force-forward are not options.
+
+## Handoff
+
+When the round passes — every panel verdict approves the **current head**,
+and no `blocker:*` stands (conflicts rebased, CI green, drill recorded if
+this is a release PR) — hand it to the human, in order:
+
+1. post the round summary (what changed per round, what was verified);
+2. request the human's review;
+3. set `state:needs-human` yourself.
+
+The label write is optimistic — the reconciler validates it, and takes it
+back if the PR is not actually mergeable-right-now. Then stop: the PR is the
+human's. Address what comes back (`state:addressing`) and re-hand-off the
+same way.

.ceremony/LABELS.md

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+# Labels
+
+The taxonomy shared across the heavy-duty repos. Only the `scope:` set
+differs per repo (each repo's `.github/labels.conf` names its actual
+surfaces); everything else below is core and identical everywhere, created by
+the labels workflow's bootstrap dispatch (issue #10).
+
+Two state machines share the taxonomy: the **PR machine** (proven in
+box/rig/cast, reconciled by machinery) and the **issue flow** (the
+triage → build queue, doctrine-enforced today, machinery to follow —
+issue #18). One rule joins everything: **states are machine-owned, intent
+labels are hand-set** — a hand-moved state label is a lie waiting to happen,
+and the reconciler recomputes it from GitHub's own facts.
+
+## PR state — who is the ball with? (exactly one per open PR)
+
+| Label | Color | Waiting on |
+|---|---|---|
+| `state:building` | `#FBCA04` | the builder — PR is a draft |
+| `state:bots-reviewing` | `#1D76DB` | the reviewer panel to finish the round (a request is live) |
+| `state:addressing` | `#D93F0B` | the builder — round complete without full approval, or nobody was asked, or a blocker is up |
+| `state:needs-human` | `#8250DF` | the human — **this PR could be merged right now**: zero blockers, whole panel approved the current head |
+
+`bots-reviewing` vs `addressing` is deliberate: staleness in the first means
+*poke the reviewers*, in the second *the builder dropped the ball*. And
+`state:needs-human` means exactly one thing — a human could merge this now —
+so it requires zero blockers and head-current approvals; anything less and
+the reconciler takes it back. The author sets it at handoff (the one
+hand-set state); the `labeled` event fires the sweep that validates the
+write within seconds.
+
+## PR blockers — what is in the way? (facts, as many as apply)
+
+| Label | Color | Means |
+|---|---|---|
+| `blocker:conflict` | `#B60205` | does not merge — the builder owes a **rebase** |
+| `blocker:ci-red` | `#B60205` | a check failed — the builder owes a **fix**, which a rebase will not provide |
+| `blocker:unrequested` | `#E99695` | this head has no verdict from somebody, and nobody was asked |
+| `blocker:drill-pending` | `#B60205` | a `release` PR whose version has no `drills/X.Y.Z.md` record — correct but unevidenced (maintainer-created label; the bot bootstrap 403s on it) |
+
+States answer *whose ball*; blockers answer *what's in the way*. They are
+separate axes because the single-label version kept lying — independent facts
+projected onto one totally-ordered label meant one always won and the losers
+vanished off the board (box's `state:needs-rebase`, retired: the reconciler
+strips it on sight).
+
+## Issue flow — the work queue (exactly one per open, triaged, non-epic issue)
+
+| Label | Color | Means | Set by |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| `needs-triage` | `#FBCA04` | an issue that did not come through triage — it owes normalization or conversion back to a discussion | anyone who spots one; cleared by triage |
+| `ready` | `#0E8A16` | triaged, spec complete, unblocked — a builder can start now and succeed | triage |
+| `claimed` | `#1D76DB` | a builder owns it: assignee set, a draft PR expected shortly | the claiming builder |
+| `blocked` | `#6A737D` | waiting on another issue or PR (`Blocked by #N` in the body names it) | triage; anyone may correct it |
+| `epic` | `#5319E7` | organizes other issues via a dependency-ordered task list; **builders never pick an epic** | triage |
+
+The invariant a board scan relies on: every open issue is either
+`needs-triage`, `epic`, or carries exactly one of `ready` / `claimed` /
+`blocked`. A `claimed` issue with no open PR and no activity is what the
+staleness sweep will reclaim (issue #18); until that machinery exists,
+[TRIAGE.md](TRIAGE.md) owns the hygiene by hand.
+
+## Cross-cutting (PRs and issues)
+
+| Label | Color | Meaning |
+|---|---|---|
+| `stale` | `#B60205` | no activity for 48h — sweep-managed, never hand-applied |
+| `blocked` | `#6A737D` | (see above — same label serves PRs waiting on another PR/issue; legitimately quiet, the staleness sweep skips it) |
+| `release` | `#0E8A16` | release flow, versioning, packaging work — and the ceremony PR itself |
+| `merge-next` | `#0E8A16` | head of the merge queue — merge this one next. Queue order is *intent*: never set by the reconciler, only cleared by it |
+
+## Scope — which surface? (PRs and issues, any number)
+
+All scopes share one calm color, `#C5DEF5` — scopes locate, states alert. The
+set is per-repo (`.github/labels.conf`); PRs get theirs from changed paths via
+actions/labeler, issues get theirs from triage. This repo's set:
+
+| Label | Covers |
+|---|---|
+| `scope:release-flow` | the reusable release workflow, decide, the doors |
+| `scope:guards` | changelog-armed / changelog-monotonic / drill-recorded |
+| `scope:labels` | the labels workflow, reconciler, this taxonomy |
+| `scope:docs` | README doctrine, CONSUMERS.md, the role files |
+
+## Issue types
+
+`bug`, `enhancement`, `documentation` — issues only, set by triage. PRs carry
+their type in the conventional title (`feat:`, `fix:`, `docs:`); a type label
+on a PR would say the same thing twice and drift.
+
+## Maintenance
+
+The labels workflow (issue #10) recomputes PR state statelessly on PR events
+plus a 15-minute advisory cron, and bootstraps this taxonomy idempotently on
+manual dispatch. Issue-flow labels are doctrine-owned until #18 lands
+machinery for them. Default GitHub labels (`duplicate`, `invalid`,
+`question`, `wontfix`, `help wanted`, `good first issue`) are deleted at
+bootstrap — a `question` is a discussion, not an issue.

.ceremony/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+# .ceremony/ — the vendored doctrine mirror
+
+Machine-managed by heavy-duty/ceremony's `actions/docs-sync`. Never edit
+these files here: they are byte-identical copies of
+[heavy-duty/ceremony](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony) at this
+repository's pinned ref, and CI re-diffs them on every PR — a hand edit
+goes red. They are changed in heavy-duty/ceremony, through its own flow,
+and arrive here when the pin moves.
+
+The pin lives in `.github/workflows/release.yml` — the single
+`uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/.github/workflows/release.yml@<ref>` line. One
+pin governs machinery and doctrine alike: bump it and re-sync this mirror
+in the same PR (`docs-sync --fix`, or let the red check on the bump PR say
+what is stale).

.ceremony/REVIEWER.md

@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+# REVIEWER.md — the reviewer role
+
+You are one voice on a panel. The panel's job is to converge — on an
+approval the human can trust, or on a precise statement of what is wrong.
+The machine reads only your **verdict**; humans read your reasons.
+
+## The verdict doctrine
+
+- **Every review ends in a verdict**: approve, or request changes. A
+  comment-only review is a non-verdict — it does not say whether the round
+  passed, the state machine treats it as not-approved, and the PR simply
+  stalls. If you have an opinion, you have a verdict; commenting without one
+  only wedges the flow.
+- **The verdict carries blockingness only; the body carries the feedback.**
+  Non-blocking nits ride an **approval**, and the builder addresses them at
+  their discretion. Anything blocking — including a question whose answer
+  gates your approval — is **request changes**, saying exactly what
+  unblocks it.
+- An approval you would not defend to the human is a defect. You are not
+  being asked to be agreeable; you are being asked to be right.
+
+## What you review against
+
+In order of authority:
+
+1. **The issue's acceptance criteria** — the PR's `Closes #N` names your
+   spec. Check every criterion; a PR that ships less than the issue says is
+   a request-changes even if the code is beautiful.
+2. **The repo's load-bearing constraints** — the rules bought with
+   incidents (in ceremony itself: issue #1's constraint list; in a governed
+   repo: its own CONTRIBUTING plus ceremony's README). A change that
+   "simplifies away" a constraint gets request-changes with a link to the
+   incident that made the rule.
+3. **The code itself** — correctness first, then tests (does the test plan's
+   floor exist? do the failure cases actually fail?), then conventions.
+   Changelog line present for behavior changes; comments carry why, not
+   what.
+
+**Verify over opine.** Run what can be run; construct the failing input; a
+test settles what a comment thread can't. A review that says "I ran X and
+saw Y" outranks one that says "this looks like it might".
+
+## What you do not do
+
+- **Re-litigate the spec.** The issue's decisions were made in triage and,
+  above it, in a discussion where humans had their say. If you think the
+  spec itself is wrong, say so with reasons — as a comment pointing at the
+  discussion, while still reviewing the implementation against the spec as
+  written. Spec changes go through triage, not through a review round.
+- **Merge, or tell the builder to merge.** Convergence hands the PR to a
+  human; only humans merge.
+- **Approve a moving target.** Your approval is of a specific head. If the
+  builder pushes after your approval, GitHub stales it — that is correct,
+  and the builder owes a re-request, not an assumption.
+
+## The round rhythm
+
+- Review the **whole PR at the current head** each round, not just the diff
+  since your last comments — the fix for someone else's point can break
+  yours.
+- The builder answers rounds whole and re-requests you; until re-requested,
+  the ball is not yours (`state:addressing` is the builder working — pile-on
+  reviews mid-address just churn the target).
+- Convergence = every panel verdict approves the current head, no
+  `blocker:*` standing. Then the builder hands off (`state:needs-human`) and
+  the panel's job is done.
+- If a round exposes a disagreement **within the panel**, argue it in the PR
+  with evidence until one side concedes or the builder escalates to the
+  maintainer for a ruling. Two reviewers pulling a builder in opposite
+  directions without resolution is a panel failure, not a builder failure.

.ceremony/TRIAGE.md

@@ -0,0 +1,95 @@
+# TRIAGE.md — the triage role
+
+You are the only door issues come through. Humans and agents open
+**discussions**; you decide what becomes work. The quality of every
+downstream stage — a builder succeeding without asking, a reviewer having a
+spec to review against — is set here, by you, and nowhere else.
+
+## Why this door exists
+
+Discussions are allowed to be ambiguous; issues are not. An issue is a work
+order a builder must be able to execute **without asking anyone anything**.
+Keeping one accountable role between the two is what keeps the bar from
+eroding — the moment anyone can mint an issue, the backlog fills with
+"improve X" entries nobody can build, and builders start guessing. Guessing
+is the failure this whole flow exists to prevent.
+
+## Your inputs
+
+- **Every open discussion** in the repo you serve.
+- **Stray issues** — anything filed directly, by anyone. Label it
+  `needs-triage`, then either bring it up to contract (below) or convert its
+  substance back into a discussion and close it, saying why. Do not shame the
+  filer; do route the work correctly.
+
+## For each discussion, converge on exactly one outcome
+
+1. **Answer.** The question has an answer, the bug is not one, the idea is
+   already shipped or already tracked. Reply with the answer (link the code,
+   the doc, the existing issue), mark answered.
+2. **Ask.** Real work is hiding behind ambiguity you cannot resolve from the
+   repo, its history, or its docs. Ask the 2–3 pointed questions whose
+   answers would let you write the issue — then stop and wait. Do not mint an
+   issue that carries the ambiguity forward; that just moves your job onto
+   the builder.
+3. **Escalate.** The blocker is a *decision* only a human owns — scope,
+   money, product direction, breaking a public contract. Say precisely what
+   the decision is, list the options with your recommendation, and name the
+   decider. The discussion is where humans decide; wait there.
+4. **Decline.** Real idea, wrong repo or wrong time. Say why plainly, link
+   where it belongs if anywhere, close. A refusal with reasons is a good
+   outcome; a zombie discussion is not.
+5. **Accept.** It justifies work → mint the issue(s). The contract below is
+   the bar.
+
+## The issue contract
+
+Every issue you mint carries, in this order:
+
+- **A title that names the deliverable** — "lib/version.sh — one version
+  abstraction, two backends", never "improve version handling".
+- **Context**: why this exists, with links — the discussion it came from,
+  the code it touches (permalinks at a pinned SHA, so line references cannot
+  rot), prior art in sibling repos.
+- **The spec**: decisions made, not options listed. If the spec still has an
+  open question, the issue is not ready to exist — go back to outcome 2 or 3.
+- **Tasks**: the steps, checkboxed, in order.
+- **Acceptance criteria**: checkboxed, verifiable, and honest — these become
+  the builder's definition of done and the reviewer's review spec, verbatim.
+- **Test plan**: what proves it, including the cases that must fail.
+- **Dependencies**: `Blocked by #N` / `Blocks #N`, and `Part of #E` when an
+  epic organizes it.
+- **Labels**: type (`bug`/`enhancement`/`documentation`), `scope:*`, and
+  exactly one of `ready` / `blocked` (see [LABELS.md](LABELS.md)).
+
+The bar, stated once: **a competent builder who has read only this issue and
+the repo can succeed.** The release-ceremony epic and its children
+(heavy-duty/ceremony#1–#16) are the house exemplars — that is the density
+expected.
+
+## Multi-issue work
+
+When an acceptance produces more than one issue, mint an **epic** (`epic`
+label): the approach, the decisions, the constraint list, and a
+dependency-ordered task list of child issues. Children reference the epic;
+the epic's checklist is the progress view. Builders never pick the epic
+itself. Keep the checklist current — a stale epic misleads every scan.
+
+## Backlog hygiene (yours until #18 automates it)
+
+- **Dedup before minting** — search issues *and* closed issues; extend or
+  reopen before duplicating.
+- **Flip `blocked` → `ready`** when the named dependency lands.
+- **Reclaim abandoned claims**: `claimed` + no open PR + no activity →
+  comment, unassign, restore `ready`.
+- **Close obsolete issues** with the reason and a link to what obsoleted
+  them. Every label on every open issue stays true; the board is only worth
+  scanning if it does not lie.
+
+## What you never do
+
+- Write code, review code, or build the thing yourself.
+- Assign a builder — builders pick and claim ([BUILDER.md](BUILDER.md)).
+- Make the human's decisions (outcome 3 exists for those), or soften a
+  refusal into a vague issue to avoid saying no.
+- Mint an issue to "discuss" something — that is a discussion.

.github/labeler.yml

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# path → scope:* map for actions/labeler — the PR half of LABELS.md's scope
+# path → scope:* map for actions/labeler — the PR half of .ceremony/LABELS.md's scope
 # story (issues are hand-scoped at triage; paths only exist on PRs). Additive
 # only: sync-labels stays off in labels.yml, so a hand-applied scope survives.
 "scope:cli":

.github/labels.conf

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+panel=claude-bot-andresmgsl codex-bot-andresmgsl grok-bot-andresmgsl kimi-bot-andresmgsl
+scope:cli|C5DEF5|bin/box — the command surface
+scope:installer|C5DEF5|install.sh, versioned installs, upgrade/uninstall
+scope:host|C5DEF5|host/ — setup, teardown, firewall, isolation stack
+scope:tiers|C5DEF5|restricted tier — grant/revoke, multi-user
+scope:templates|C5DEF5|templates/ — the box seeds
+scope:drill|C5DEF5|drill/ — rehearsals, doctor, RUNS.md

.github/scripts/changelog-armed.sh

@@ -1,145 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-set -euo pipefail
-
-# changelog-armed.sh [<changelog>] [<version-file>] — assert that
-# CHANGELOG.md is ARMED: that there is a heading for the next PR's entry to
-# land under, and that it is the right one for the state this tree is in.
-#
-# The failure it exists to catch (#108, heavy-duty/rig#66) leaves no trace:
-# the ceremony PR stamps '## Unreleased' into '## X.Y.Z — DATE' by hand, and
-# nothing puts the heading back. A PR authored BEFORE the release wrote its
-# entry under '## Unreleased'; that heading is gone by the time it merges, so
-# git lands the entry under whatever heading now occupies that position — the
-# just-shipped section — CLEANLY, with no conflict. The one signal an author
-# would trust ("git told me to look") is absent exactly when the result is
-# wrong, and the drift is only ever discovered by reading the file.
-#
-# The rule, keyed on VERSION, because the two states are genuinely different:
-#
-#   VERSION ends in -dev  ->  the top section MUST be '## Unreleased'
-#   VERSION is bare       ->  the top section may be '## Unreleased' (armed,
-#                             the ceremony's own re-arm) or the stamped
-#                             section for exactly that VERSION — AND the
-#                             section for that VERSION must exist and carry
-#                             prose, because it is the one about to ship
-#
-# Keying on VERSION is the whole design, and the reason this is not simply
-# "require '## Unreleased'". That unconditional form is what rig#44 and
-# heavy-duty/cast#108 had to REVERT: it is false by construction on the
-# ceremony PR's own tree, which makes the release unshippable through a green
-# CI. Anyone tempted to simplify this back should read those two first.
-#
-# The consequence worth stating plainly: a ceremony PR that stamps and forgets
-# to re-arm still passes here — its VERSION is bare, and a bare tree is
-# allowed to be stamped. It goes red the moment the '-dev' bump lands on main,
-# which release.yml does automatically in the same job as the publish. So the
-# guard does not block the release; it refuses to let main SIT disarmed, which
-# is the window a late PR can fall into.
-#
-# A file of its own (not inlined in ci.yml) so test/release.sh can drive it
-# against constructed trees for both states — the same discipline as
-# release-notes.sh.
-
-changelog="${1:-CHANGELOG.md}"
-version_file="${2:-VERSION}"
-
-# release-notes.sh lives beside this script; the bare-VERSION branch runs it
-# rather than re-implementing the extraction, so the guard and the publisher
-# cannot disagree about what a section is or when one counts as empty.
-here="$(cd -- "$(dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)"
-
-[ -f "$changelog" ]    || { echo "changelog-armed: no such file: $changelog" >&2; exit 1; }
-[ -f "$version_file" ] || { echo "changelog-armed: no such file: $version_file" >&2; exit 1; }
-
-ver="$(tr -d '[:space:]' < "$version_file")"
-[ -n "$ver" ] || { echo "changelog-armed: $version_file is empty" >&2; exit 1; }
-
-# The TOP section: the first '## ' heading in the file. Everything above it is
-# the changelog's own preamble and belongs to no section.
-top="$(grep -m1 '^## ' "$changelog" || true)"
-[ -n "$top" ] || {
-  echo "changelog-armed: $changelog has no '## ' section at all — nothing for a PR entry to land under" >&2
-  exit 1
-}
-
-# '## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-19' -> '0.7.0'. Split on whitespace, same shape
-# release-notes.sh matches on, so the two cannot disagree about what a
-# section header is.
-top_ver="$(printf '%s\n' "$top" | awk '{ print $2 }')"
-
-case "$ver" in
-  *-dev)
-    if [ "$top_ver" != "Unreleased" ]; then
-      cat >&2 <<EOF
-changelog-armed: VERSION is '$ver' (a development tree) but the top section of
-  $changelog is:
-
-    $top
-
-  A -dev tree MUST carry '## Unreleased' at the top. Without it, a PR that
-  wrote its entry under '## Unreleased' before the release merges CLEANLY into
-  the section above — the one that already shipped — and the changelog quietly
-  misattributes it (#108, heavy-duty/rig#66).
-
-  The fix is to re-arm: add an empty '## Unreleased' immediately above
-  '$top'. The release ceremony is supposed to do this in the same edit that
-  stamps the version — see CONTRIBUTING.md, "Releases".
-EOF
-      exit 1
-    fi
-    ;;
-  *)
-    # A bare VERSION is the ceremony tree and the merge commit that publishes
-    # it. Both arrangements are legal there: re-armed ('## Unreleased' back on
-    # top, above the section just stamped) or not yet re-armed (the stamped
-    # section still on top). What is NOT legal is a stamped top section naming
-    # some OTHER version — that is a ceremony that stamped the wrong number,
-    # and release.yml would publish a body that is not this release's.
-    if [ "$top_ver" != "Unreleased" ] && [ "$top_ver" != "$ver" ]; then
-      cat >&2 <<EOF
-changelog-armed: VERSION is '$ver' but the top section of $changelog is:
-
-    $top
-
-  A bare VERSION means this tree is a release. Its top section must be either
-  '## Unreleased' (re-armed after stamping) or the stamped section for '$ver'
-  itself. A stamped section naming a different version means the ceremony
-  stamped the wrong number, and the published release body would come from
-  the wrong section.
-EOF
-      exit 1
-    fi
-    # The top heading is deliberately left UNCONSTRAINED above — both ceremony
-    # shapes must stay legal, which is the #44 / cast#108 lesson and is not
-    # negotiable. That asymmetry leaves a gap of its own, the HALF-ceremony
-    # tree: VERSION bumped to the release, a populated '## Unreleased' still on
-    # top, and no stamped section for the version anywhere. The test above is
-    # false on its first clause, short-circuits, and passes. Nothing else
-    # refuses until release.yml extracts the notes — which happens AFTER the
-    # merge, on main, and publishes a release with an empty body, the worst
-    # place for this to land. So make the same assert one step earlier by
-    # running the very script release.yml runs (heavy-duty/rig#67).
-    if ! bash "$here/release-notes.sh" "$ver" "$changelog" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
-      cat >&2 <<EOF
-changelog-armed: VERSION is '$ver' but $changelog has no non-empty section for
-  '$ver'. The top section is:
-
-    $top
-
-  This is a HALF-DONE ceremony: the version was bumped but its section was
-  never stamped — the stamp is MISSING, not misnumbered. A bare VERSION means
-  this tree is a release, and the section it is about to publish has to exist
-  and have prose in it. Left alone, this passes CI, merges, and only then does
-  release.yml refuse to extract the notes — on main, after the fact, with the
-  release already half-shipped.
-
-  The fix is the ceremony's first edit (CONTRIBUTING.md, "Releases"): stamp
-  '## Unreleased' into '## $ver — DATE', then put an empty '## Unreleased'
-  back above it.
-EOF
-      exit 1
-    fi
-    ;;
-esac
-
-echo "changelog-armed: VERSION '$ver' agrees with the top section ($top_ver)"

.github/scripts/changelog-monotonic.sh

@@ -1,225 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-set -euo pipefail
-
-# changelog-monotonic.sh [<base-ref>] [<changelog>] — assert that no SHIPPED
-# release heading was DELETED by this branch: the set of '^## X.Y.Z' headings
-# on HEAD must be a SUPERSET of the set at the merge base.
-#
-# The failure it exists to catch (#122, caught in review of #118) leaves no
-# trace either. An author adding an entry under '## Unreleased' REPLACES the
-# line below it instead of inserting above it:
-#
-#     -## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19
-#     +## Unreleased
-#     +
-#     +### Fixed
-#     +
-#     +- **An entry**
-#
-# git merges that cleanly — it is a one-line edit inside a file nobody has
-# touched concurrently — and the shipped section's whole body is silently
-# absorbed into '## Unreleased'. 0.8.0 no longer HAS a section; the notes
-# anchor release-notes.sh extracts by is gone, and the next release cut from
-# that state republishes 0.8.0's prose as if it were new.
-#
-# changelog-armed.sh is green on exactly that tree, correctly: it asks only
-# whether the TOP section agrees with VERSION, and deleting '## 0.8.0' leaves
-# '## Unreleased' on top. It is not wrong, it is narrow — it guards ONE
-# heading, the one a PR is about to write under. This guards the REST of the
-# file, the part no single tree can be asked about at all, because "a heading
-# disappeared" is not a property of a tree — it is a property of a DIFF.
-#
-# The rule, and why it needs no tuning: release headings are APPEND-ONLY. The
-# ceremony (#96) adds one and never removes one; nothing else in the documented
-# flow (CONTRIBUTING.md, "Releases") touches them. So SUPERSET is exact — it
-# has no legitimate violation to carve an exception for. The stamp is covered
-# for free: rewriting '## Unreleased' -> '## X.Y.Z — DATE' ADDS X.Y.Z and
-# removes no X.Y.Z heading, because 'Unreleased' is not one. '## Unreleased'
-# is deliberately NOT in the set this guards — changelog-armed.sh owns that
-# heading, keyed on VERSION, and the ceremony legitimately consumes it.
-#
-# A file of its own, NOT a clause inside changelog-armed.sh, for three
-# reasons. Its input is different (a git history, not two files). Its
-# degradation is different (no base ref is a SKIP, not a failure). And
-# changelog-armed.sh is driven by test/release.sh against constructed
-# two-file trees that are not git repos at all — folding a git-dependent
-# assert into it would make every one of those cases either skip or lie.
-# Same discipline as release-notes.sh: its own file so a test can drive it.
-
-base_ref="${1:-${CHANGELOG_MONOTONIC_BASE:-origin/main}}"
-changelog="${2:-CHANGELOG.md}"
-
-# Fail-closed switch: CI sets it, so a SKIP that would be a sensible local
-# degradation becomes a red run there instead. A guard that can silently
-# stop guarding is the failure shape this whole family of checks exists to
-# refuse, so the skip path is loud and CI refuses to take it at all.
-strict="${CHANGELOG_MONOTONIC_STRICT:-0}"
-
-skip() {
-  if [ "$strict" = "1" ]; then
-    echo "changelog-monotonic: $* — and CHANGELOG_MONOTONIC_STRICT=1, so this is a FAILURE, not a skip." >&2
-    echo "  CI sets STRICT because a guard that quietly stops guarding is worse than no guard." >&2
-    echo "  (Uniqueness on HEAD already passed; it is containment that cannot run.)" >&2
-    echo "  Fix the checkout, not this script: the base ref must be fetched (fetch-depth: 0)." >&2
-    exit 1
-  fi
-  echo "changelog-monotonic: containment SKIPPED — $*"
-  echo "  (Uniqueness on HEAD already ran and passed — only the deleted-heading"
-  echo "   half needs the history. In CI this same condition is a hard failure.)"
-  exit 0
-}
-
-[ -f "$changelog" ] || { echo "changelog-monotonic: no such file: $changelog" >&2; exit 1; }
-
-# The set of RELEASE headings: '## <token> ...' where <token> looks like a
-# version. Field $2, the same split changelog-armed.sh and release-notes.sh
-# use, so the three cannot disagree about what a section header is.
-# 'Unreleased' fails the shape and is excluded by construction.
-headings_raw() {
-  awk '
-    /^## / && $2 ~ /^[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+/ { print $2 }
-  '
-}
-headings() { headings_raw | sort -u; }
-
-# --- uniqueness on HEAD (the #118 class) -------------------------------------
-# Containment catches a DELETED heading. It cannot catch a DUPLICATED one: the
-# duplicate is head-side SURPLUS, and `comm -23` (base minus head) is blind to
-# extras on the head side — with or without `sort -u`, base {0.8.0} minus head
-# {0.8.0, 0.8.0} is empty. Multiset comparison does not close it either, for
-# the same reason. The assert that does is uniqueness of version headings ON
-# HEAD, kept alongside containment rather than replacing it.
-#
-# This is the shape #118's bad rebase actually produced: two
-# `## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19` headings with the incoming entry between them. Every
-# other guard stayed green — markers absent, changelog-armed.sh happy (the top
-# section was still right), tests and shellcheck clean — while
-# release-notes.sh re-armed its grab on the second heading and folded post-cut
-# prose into the shipped release body.
-#
-# Nothing legitimate repeats a version heading: the ceremony stamps a NEW
-# version, and 'Unreleased' fails the version shape and never reaches here.
-dupes="$(headings_raw < "$changelog" | sort | uniq -d)"
-if [ -n "$dupes" ]; then
-  {
-    echo "changelog-monotonic: $changelog has DUPLICATE release heading(s):"
-    echo
-    printf '%s\n' "$dupes" | sed 's/^/    ## /'
-    echo
-    cat <<EOF
-  Each version heading must appear exactly once. A repeat splits one release
-  into two same-named sections, and release-notes.sh re-arms its extraction on
-  every matching '## ' line — so the published body for that version absorbs
-  whatever sits between the copies, and an entry stranded there is dropped from
-  the NEXT release's notes as well.
-
-  This is the #118 shape: an entry meant for '## Unreleased' was inserted after
-  a shipped heading, and the heading re-added below it. The fix is one heading,
-  with the entry above it under '## Unreleased':
-
-      ## Unreleased
-
-      ### Fixed
-
-      - **Your entry**
-
-      ## $(printf '%s\n' "$dupes" | head -1) — DATE     <- exactly once
-
-  Quick check on any changelog-touching rebase:
-
-      diff <(git show origin/main:$changelog | grep '^## ') <(grep '^## ' $changelog)
-EOF
-  } >&2
-  exit 1
-fi
-
-# --- everything below needs the HISTORY ------------------------------------
-# Uniqueness is settled. What follows is containment, which compares HEAD
-# against the merge base and therefore genuinely depends on the base ref, the
-# merge base, and the base blob. Each of those can be unavailable for reasons
-# that are not the author's fault (a shallow clone, a fork checkout without
-# the upstream remote, the commit that first adds the changelog), so each
-# degrades rather than failing — which is exactly why the uniqueness half must
-# NOT live down here (#143). It asks nothing of the history, and gating it
-# behind these conditions let a duplicate exit 0 on a message about deletion.
-
-git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree >/dev/null 2>&1 \
-  || skip "not inside a git work tree, so there is no history to compare against"
-
-git rev-parse --verify --quiet "$base_ref^{commit}" >/dev/null \
-  || skip "base ref '$base_ref' does not resolve here (a shallow clone, or a fork checkout without the upstream remote)"
-
-merge_base="$(git merge-base "$base_ref" HEAD 2>/dev/null || true)"
-[ -n "$merge_base" ] \
-  || skip "no merge base between '$base_ref' and HEAD (unrelated histories, or a clone too shallow to reach one)"
-
-# The changelog may not exist at the merge base at all (the commit that adds
-# it). Nothing to have deleted, so nothing to assert.
-base_file="$(git show "$merge_base:$changelog" 2>/dev/null || true)"
-[ -n "$base_file" ] || {
-  echo "changelog-monotonic: $changelog does not exist at the merge base ($(git rev-parse --short "$merge_base")) — nothing could have been deleted (uniqueness on HEAD already passed)."
-  exit 0
-}
-
-base_headings="$(printf '%s\n' "$base_file" | headings)"
-head_headings="$(headings < "$changelog")"
-
-# comm -23: lines in the base set that are NOT in the head set — exactly the
-# headings this branch removed.
-missing="$(comm -23 <(printf '%s\n' "$base_headings") <(printf '%s\n' "$head_headings"))"
-
-if [ -n "$missing" ]; then
-  {
-    echo "changelog-monotonic: this branch DELETES release heading(s) from $changelog:"
-    echo
-    printf '%s\n' "$missing" | sed 's/^/    ## /'
-    echo
-    cat <<EOF
-  Present at the merge base ($(git rev-parse --short "$merge_base")), absent on HEAD.
-
-  Release headings are APPEND-ONLY. The ceremony adds one (#96); nothing ever
-  legitimately removes one. So this is not a judgement call — it is a defect,
-  and almost always the same one (#122, caught in review of #118): an entry
-  written under '## Unreleased' REPLACED the heading below it instead of being
-  inserted ABOVE it. The shipped section's body is now sitting under
-  '## Unreleased', and the version it belonged to has no section at all.
-
-  Nothing else will say so. git merges that edit cleanly — no conflict, no
-  signal — and changelog-armed.sh stays green, because the TOP section is
-  still the right one for this VERSION. The damage surfaces at the NEXT
-  release, when release-notes.sh cannot find the section it extracts by
-  heading, or worse, republishes the absorbed prose as if it were new.
-
-  The fix is to put the heading back and INSERT above it, never over it:
-
-      ## Unreleased
-
-      ### Fixed
-
-      - **Your entry**
-
-      ## $(printf '%s\n' "$missing" | head -1) — DATE     <- untouched, still here
-
-  If you are genuinely renaming a released version, that is a rewrite of
-  history this guard is meant to stop; say so in the PR and change the guard
-  deliberately, in its own commit.
-EOF
-  } >&2
-  exit 1
-fi
-
-count="$(printf '%s\n' "$base_headings" | grep -c . || true)"
-head_count="$(printf '%s\n' "$head_headings" | grep -c . || true)"
-
-# The success line has two honest forms, because this step now runs on two
-# shapes of event. On a push to main the merge base IS HEAD: containment
-# compared the file against itself and asserted nothing, and deletion is
-# undetectable on that event by construction. Reporting "all N still present"
-# there would be the same dishonesty the skip messages were fixed for — a log
-# claiming a check that did no work. Uniqueness is the half that actually ran,
-# so that is the half the line names.
-if [ "$merge_base" = "$(git rev-parse HEAD)" ]; then
-  echo "changelog-monotonic: containment vacuous (the merge base IS HEAD, so nothing could have been deleted between them) — uniqueness on HEAD checked $head_count release heading(s)."
-else
-  echo "changelog-monotonic: all $count release heading(s) at the merge base ($(git rev-parse --short "$merge_base")) are still present in $changelog"
-fi

.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh

@@ -1,125 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-set -euo pipefail
-
-# drill-recorded.sh [<drills-dir>] [<version-file>] — assert that a RELEASE
-# tree carries a drill record: that the full real-hardware drill this repo
-# says a release rests on was actually run for this version, and written
-# down as drills/<version>.md.
-#
-# CONTRIBUTING.md has said since #96 that "this PR is where the release
-# ritual hangs: the full drill on real hardware, recorded". No release ever
-# did it. #95, #114 and #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 VERSION for the same reason
-# changelog-armed.sh 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 this 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 drill/RUNS.md, and every hard edge this script used to
-# have 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 '/./,$!d'` whitespace bypass, and heading-grammar drift from the
-# sibling repos. Splitting the file makes almost all of it UNREPRESENTABLE:
-# '0.9.0.md' and '0.9.0-rc1.md' are simply different files, so whole-version
-# matching is free rather than a trap, and there is no grammar left to drift.
-#
-# The directory is plain 'drills', NOT '.drills'. A dot-directory is
-# invisible to a glob without dotglob, which is exactly what caused #116 and
-# #118 in this repo; evidence a sweep cannot see is evidence that goes
-# missing quietly.
-#
-# drills/ is RELEASE EVIDENCE, one file per shipped version. It is NOT
-# drill/RUNS.md, which stays exactly as it is: the harness's own run log,
-# traps table and lore, a different artifact with a different purpose. This
-# guard reads drills/ and never looks at drill/RUNS.md.
-#
-# What this guard asserts is a RECORD, deliberately — not a passing drill.
-# CI cannot run the drill: it wants real hardware, a real Incus, and the
-# better part of an hour (see ci.yml, which says exactly this about the
-# rehearsal job it runs instead). What CI can do is refuse to let a release
-# claim a ritual it left no evidence of. That also leaves the maintainer
-# waiver intact and honest: a release that must ship without a full drill
-# records WHY in its own file, which is a deliberate, reviewable commit in
-# the diff — rather than the silent skip that got us here.
-#
-# A file of its own (not inlined in ci.yml) so test/release.sh can drive it
-# against constructed trees for both states — the same discipline as
-# changelog-armed.sh and release-notes.sh.
-
-drills="${1:-drills}"
-version_file="${2:-VERSION}"
-
-# A missing or empty version file is an ERROR, never a silent pass. A guard
-# that cannot read the version cannot know whether this tree is its business,
-# and "could not tell" must not resolve to "allowed".
-[ -f "$version_file" ] || { echo "drill-recorded: no such file: $version_file" >&2; exit 1; }
-
-ver="$(tr -d '[:space:]' < "$version_file")"
-[ -n "$ver" ] || { echo "drill-recorded: $version_file is empty" >&2; exit 1; }
-
-case "$ver" in
-  *-dev)
-    # 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 '$ver' is a development tree — nothing to assert; only ceremony trees ship"
-    exit 0
-    ;;
-esac
-
-record="$drills/$ver.md"
-
-# The one rule that survives the rewrite, and it survives because it was
-# never really about heading parsing: a file of only spaces, tabs and
-# newlines is NOT a record. The first cut of the old guard extracted with
-# `sed '/./,$!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: 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.
-
-  The unblock is to RUN THE DRILL (drill/drill.sh, on real hardware) and
-  record it at that path — what it measured, what it found, what it cost.
-  See $drills/README.md for what a record should contain. CI cannot run the
-  drill for you; it can only refuse a release that never ran one.
-
-  (drill/RUNS.md is a different artifact — the harness's own run log and
-  traps. Appending there does not satisfy this guard, and is not meant to.)
-
-  If this release must ship without a full drill, that is a maintainer's call
-  to make and it is still recorded: create the same file and say plainly that
-  the drill was WAIVED and why. The guard requires a record, not a passing
-  result — so a skip is a visible, reviewable file in the diff rather than
-  the silent gap that let #95, #114 and #148 all ship unproven. See
-  CONTRIBUTING.md, "Releases".
-EOF
-  exit 1
-fi
-
-echo "drill-recorded: VERSION '$ver' has a drill record at $record"

.github/scripts/labels-reconcile.sh

@@ -1,486 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-set -euo pipefail
-
-# labels-reconcile.sh — the automation LABELS.md promises: state labels are
-# written by machinery, never by hand. Every run derives each open PR's
-# state:* from GitHub's own facts (draft flag, requested reviewers, submitted
-# reviews) and converges the labels to it, so a killed run or a hand-moved
-# label heals on the next pass. Stale is judged from real activity — commits,
-# comments, reviews — never from label churn, or the sweep would un-stale its
-# own mark every tick.
-#
-# The verdict contract (CONTRIBUTING.md): reviews end in approve or
-# request-changes. Some live bots are comment-only and post agreement as a
-# COMMENTED review — a non-verdict this machine refuses to guess about (body
-# parsing is a heuristic, and a wrong guess promotes an unapproved PR). The
-# judgment call belongs to the PR AUTHOR, who reads the round and escalates
-# by requesting the human's review — an explicit request is a fact, and it is
-# the one this machine trusts (see decide_state's top precedence). The
-# machine auto-requests the human only in the no-judgment-needed case: three
-# formal head-current approvals. Any approval that counts must be bound to
-# the CURRENT head SHA: GitHub keeps approvals alive across pushes, and a
-# stale approval must never promote unreviewed code to the human.
-#
-# DRY_RUN=1 narrates every mutation instead of performing it (how this script
-# is rehearsed against the live repo). A workflow_dispatch run also bootstraps
-# the taxonomy (label create --force) — that heal is dispatch-only; the cron
-# sweep tolerates a missing label rather than recreating it.
-#
-# The state machine below is pure (globals in, state out) and covered by
-# fixture tests in test/labels-reconcile.sh.
-
-HUMAN="${HUMAN_REVIEWER:-danmt}"
-BOTS=(claude-bot-andresmgsl codex-bot-andresmgsl grok-bot-andresmgsl)
-STATES=(state:building state:bots-reviewing state:addressing state:needs-human)
-BLOCKERS=(blocker:conflict blocker:ci-red blocker:unrequested)
-# Labels this machine used to own and no longer does. Cleared on sight so a
-# retirement heals the board instead of stranding a label nothing recomputes.
-RETIRED=(state:needs-rebase)
-STALE_AFTER=$((48 * 3600))
-
-log() { printf 'labels: %s\n' "$*"; }
-
-run() { # every mutation goes through here — DRY_RUN=1 logs instead of doing
-  if [ -n "${DRY_RUN:-}" ]; then log "DRY_RUN: $*"; else "$@"; fi
-}
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# The state machine. Pure functions over four globals, set per PR:
-#   DRAFT        true|false
-#   HEAD_SHA     the PR's current head commit
-#   REQUESTED    newline-separated logins with a review currently requested
-#   REVIEWS_JSON JSON array of submitted (non-PENDING) reviews
-#   MERGEABLE    MERGEABLE | CONFLICTING | UNKNOWN  (GitHub's own verdict)
-#   CHECKS       SUCCESS | FAILURE | PENDING | NONE (the check rollup)
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-requested() { grep -qxF "$1" <<<"$REQUESTED"; }
-
-checks_state() { # rollup JSON on stdin → SUCCESS | FAILURE | PENDING | NONE | UNREADABLE
-  # UNREADABLE is the absence of the key itself, which is what a failed fetch
-  # leaves behind — distinct from a present-but-empty rollup, which honestly
-  # means this PR has no checks. Collapsing the two let an API hiccup present
-  # as "nothing is failing", i.e. as mergeable-by-a-human: the same
-  # unknown-certified-as-green shape as the bug this machine exists to stop.
-  # The caller skips the PR entirely rather than labelling on facts it did not
-  # read; blocking on it instead would flap the whole board on one bad call.
-  # The rollup mixes two node types with two different closed enums: CheckRun
-  # carries `conclusion` (CheckConclusionState), StatusContext carries `state`
-  # (StatusState). Rather than list the outcomes that block — the version that
-  # shipped in this PR's first round listed four, and ERROR, CANCELLED and
-  # STALE fell through its `else` into SUCCESS — this lists the outcomes that
-  # DON'T, and treats everything else as blocking.
-  #
-  # That direction is the point. An outcome we do not recognise is one we
-  # cannot certify as mergeable, and certifying the unrecognised as green is
-  # the exact shape of #136. The cost of being wrong is symmetric in form and
-  # not in consequence: a false FAILURE parks the PR on the agent, who looks;
-  # a false SUCCESS invites a human to merge a tree that will not merge.
-  jq -r '
-    if (has("statusCheckRollup") | not) then "UNREADABLE" else
-
-    # NEUTRAL and SKIPPED satisfy branch protection — a skipped required check
-    # is not a failed one, and path-filtered jobs skip constantly here.
-    ["SUCCESS", "NEUTRAL", "SKIPPED"] as $passing
-    # "" covers a StatusContext still reported with no state at all.
-    | ["", "PENDING", "IN_PROGRESS", "QUEUED", "WAITING", "REQUESTED", "EXPECTED"] as $waiting
-
-    # A re-run does not evict the run it superseded — the rollup keeps both.
-    # This PR proved it: its own tip carried a CANCELLED `scope` (15:19:39)
-    # beside the SUCCESS `scope` (15:19:45) that replaced it, same workflow.
-    # Once CANCELLED blocks, judging every entry would strand this very PR in
-    # needs-rebase forever, so collapse each context to its newest entry first.
-    # Key on workflow + name because a bare job name is only unique within its
-    # workflow.
-    #
-    # Dating a run is the subtle part, and getting it wrong restores the bug.
-    # A run still in flight has no completion, but `gh` does not omit the
-    # field: its Go struct marshals the zero time as "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
-    # which is a string, so `//` will not fall through it. Ordering on
-    # completion therefore sorted the LIVE re-run to the bottom and let `last`
-    # pick the very run it superseded — reporting the old SUCCESS while a
-    # replacement was still running, which is #136 again.
-    #
-    # So: date a run by when it BEGAN, discarding both spellings of absent
-    # (null, and the zero sentinel) and falling back only if it never recorded
-    # a beginning. NOT by the newest stamp of any kind: `max` compares the
-    # completion of a finished run against the start of a live one, which are
-    # different quantities and not an ordering on runs. A run cancelled by the
-    # concurrency group does not stop the instant its replacement starts — the
-    # runner has to wind down — so predecessor.completedAt > successor.startedAt
-    # is the ordinary case, and `max` dated the dead predecessor newer than the
-    # live run that replaced it, narrowing both failures above without closing
-    # them. The list is already in preference order, so `first` IS that rule.
-    #
-    # An entry that carries no usable timestamp at all sorts LAST rather than
-    # first — something we cannot date is most likely the thing just created,
-    # and treating it as newest keeps an undateable in-flight run from being
-    # discarded in favour of a stale success. Every ambiguity resolves toward
-    # "not settled".
-    | [ (.statusCheckRollup // [])[]
-        | { ctx: [.workflowName // "", .name // .context // ""],
-            at:  ([.startedAt, .createdAt, .completedAt]
-                  | map(select(type == "string" and . != ""
-                               and (startswith("0001-01-01") | not)))
-                  | first // ""),
-            outcome: ((.conclusion // .state // "") | ascii_upcase) } ]
-    | group_by(.ctx)
-    | map(sort_by([(.at == ""), .at]) | last | .outcome) as $latest
-
-    | if   ($latest | length) == 0                            then "NONE"
-      elif (($latest - $passing - $waiting) | length) > 0     then "FAILURE"
-      elif (($latest - $passing) | length) > 0                then "PENDING"
-      else "SUCCESS" end
-
-    end'
-}
-
-bot_verdict() { # $1 = login → MISSING | BLOCK | APPROVE | STALE | FEEDBACK
-  local review state commit
-  review="$(jq -c --arg u "$1" \
-    '[.[] | select(.user.login == $u)] | sort_by(.submitted_at) | last // empty' \
-    <<<"$REVIEWS_JSON")"
-  if [ -z "$review" ]; then echo MISSING; return; fi
-  state="$(jq -r '.state' <<<"$review")"
-  commit="$(jq -r '.commit_id' <<<"$review")"
-  case "$state" in
-    CHANGES_REQUESTED)
-      # blocks at ANY head — GitHub's own semantic: only a newer review
-      # from the same reviewer clears it
-      echo BLOCK ;;
-    APPROVED)
-      if [ "$commit" = "$HEAD_SHA" ]; then echo APPROVE; else echo STALE; fi ;;
-    *)
-      # COMMENTED and anything else: a non-verdict. The machine does not
-      # read bodies — if the comment is really an agreement, the AUTHOR
-      # says so by requesting the human's review.
-      echo FEEDBACK ;;
-  esac
-}
-
-human_request_needed() { # 0 when needs-human requires a FRESH human request
-  # already requested → the handoff is live; head-current human approval →
-  # nothing left to ask. Anything else (never reviewed, an old comment, an
-  # approval of an older head) stalls the handoff unless we request —
-  # guarding on "has the human ever reviewed" wedged exactly that way.
-  if requested "$HUMAN"; then return 1; fi
-  if [ "$(bot_verdict "$HUMAN")" = APPROVE ]; then return 1; fi
-  return 0
-}
-
-blockers() { # → the blocker:* labels this PR should carry, one per line
-  # The second axis. These are FACTS ABOUT THE BRANCH, and they are mutually
-  # independent — a PR can be conflicted and red and unasked at once — so they
-  # are a set, not an ordering. That is the whole point of splitting them out
-  # of state:*: every precedence bug this machine has had (needs-human
-  # surviving a conflict, MISSING swallowing STALE) came from projecting
-  # independent facts onto one totally-ordered label. A set has no precedence
-  # to get wrong.
-  #
-  # UNKNOWN mergeability is deliberately NOT a conflict: GitHub reports it for
-  # about a minute after every merge while it recomputes, and flapping every
-  # open PR on each merge would be worse than the bug. Same for a failed read
-  # of either fact — both default to the "do not know" value, which blocks
-  # nothing. An unset global (an older fixture, a failed fetch) must never
-  # invent a verdict it did not read.
-  case "${MERGEABLE:-UNKNOWN}" in CONFLICTING) echo blocker:conflict ;; esac
-  case "${CHECKS:-NONE}" in FAILURE) echo blocker:ci-red ;; esac
-
-  # Nobody is on the hook for a verdict somebody still owes. Distinct from
-  # bots-reviewing, which says a request is live and an answer is coming:
-  # here the round is stalled because no one was ever asked, and the board
-  # said "waiting on the bots" for the 48h it took `stale` to notice.
-  # A draft is exempt (the bots ignore drafts by design), and so is an
-  # explicit human request — a maintainer claiming a PR early is deliberate,
-  # not a dropped ball.
-  if [ "$DRAFT" != true ] && ! requested "$HUMAN"; then
-    local b v owed=false any_requested=false
-    for b in "${BOTS[@]}"; do
-      requested "$b" && any_requested=true
-      # MISSING and STALE are both verdicts this head does not have: nobody
-      # reviewed it, or everybody reviewed something else. The agent owes an
-      # ask either way — the stale round is if anything the worse of the two,
-      # since it has approvals on the page that no longer describe the tree.
-      v="$(bot_verdict "$b")"
-      case "$v" in MISSING | STALE) owed=true ;; esac
-    done
-    if [ "$owed" = true ] && [ "$any_requested" = false ]; then
-      echo blocker:unrequested
-    fi
-  fi
-}
-
-decide_state() { # → the one state:* label this PR should carry
-  if [ "$DRAFT" = true ]; then echo state:building; return; fi
-
-  local s
-  s="$(round_state)"
-
-  # The one rule joining the two axes: state:needs-human means a human could
-  # merge this RIGHT NOW, so it requires a clear branch. Any blocker at all
-  # means the work is the agent's — whatever the review round says — and the
-  # blocker label says which work it is. Nothing else in this function reads
-  # the branch, which is what keeps the ordering below purely about reviews.
-  if [ "$s" = state:needs-human ] && [ -n "$(blockers)" ]; then
-    echo state:addressing; return
-  fi
-  echo "$s"
-}
-
-round_state() { # → the state the REVIEW ROUND alone implies; knows no branch facts
-  local b verdicts=""
-  for b in "${BOTS[@]}"; do
-    if requested "$b"; then echo state:bots-reviewing; return; fi
-  done
-  # Collect the WHOLE round before applying any precedence. Deciding inside
-  # the loop let BOTS order pick the winner: a MISSING returned immediately,
-  # so a STALE belonging to a later bot was never even read, and the mixed
-  # round (one approval staled by a push, another bot yet to review) came out
-  # needs-human — the #136 headline shape, with zero reviews bound to the head.
-  for b in "${BOTS[@]}"; do
-    verdicts="$verdicts $(bot_verdict "$b")"
-  done
-  case "$verdicts" in
-    # STALE = a verdict for an older head. Unlike MISSING, this outranks the
-    # human request: every approval it covers was invalidated by a push, so
-    # NOBODY has reviewed this tree. Handing that to the human is the #136 case
-    # where everything reads green — mergeable, CI passing, "waiting on the
-    # human" — over code no reviewer has seen. The agent owes a re-request.
-    # Checked before MISSING because "unfinished" must not swallow "and also
-    # stale": a round that is both is a push that outran the re-requests, not
-    # a maintainer deliberately claiming the PR early.
-    *STALE*) echo state:addressing; return ;;
-  esac
-  case "$verdicts" in
-    # No verdict at all from some bot, and nothing staled. An explicit human
-    # request still outranks an unfinished round — a maintainer pulling a PR
-    # to themselves early is a deliberate act, and the original precedence.
-    #
-    # Otherwise it is the AGENT's ball, not the bots'. The loop above already
-    # returned for every live bot request, so reaching here with a MISSING
-    # means somebody owes a verdict and nobody was asked for one — the round
-    # is not running. Calling that bots-reviewing was the lie that let a
-    # forgotten PR read "waiting on the reviewers" for the 48h it took the
-    # stale sweep to notice. blocker:unrequested says why.
-    *MISSING*)
-      if requested "$HUMAN"; then echo state:needs-human; return; fi
-      echo state:addressing; return ;;
-  esac
-  # an explicit human request outranks the remaining bot outcomes — it is the
-  # final gate, and a maintainer pulling a PR to themselves early counts too
-  if requested "$HUMAN"; then echo state:needs-human; return; fi
-  case "$verdicts" in
-    # FEEDBACK = a comment with no verdict → the agent owes the round-reply.
-    *BLOCK* | *FEEDBACK*) echo state:addressing; return ;;
-  esac
-  # the bots all approve — but if the human's standing word is
-  # changes-requested (and nobody re-requested them yet), the agent owes
-  # fixes, not the human a nag
-  if [ "$(bot_verdict "$HUMAN")" = BLOCK ]; then
-    echo state:addressing
-  else
-    echo state:needs-human
-  fi
-}
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# The sweep: fetch facts, decide, converge. One PR's failure never aborts the
-# others — each PR reconciles in a subshell and a failure just logs.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-bootstrap_labels() { # dispatch-only: ~20 upserts is too chatty for every cron tick
-  while IFS='|' read -r name color desc; do
-    [ -n "$name" ] || continue
-    run gh label create "$name" -R "$REPO" --color "$color" --description "$desc" --force
-  done <<'EOF'
-state:building|FBCA04|PR is a draft — the coding agent is still building
-state:bots-reviewing|1D76DB|Waiting on the bot reviewers to finish the round
-state:addressing|D93F0B|All bots reviewed — coding agent owes the single reply + fixes
-state:needs-human|8250DF|No blockers, all bots approve — waiting on the human reviewer
-blocker:conflict|B60205|Does not merge — the branch conflicts and the agent owes a rebase
-blocker:ci-red|B60205|A check is failing — the agent owes a fix (not a rebase)
-blocker:unrequested|E99695|Somebody still owes a verdict and nobody was asked for one
-merge-next|0E8A16|Head of the merge queue — merge this one next (set by hand/agent, cleared here)
-stale|B60205|No activity for 48h — needs a poke (sweep-managed)
-blocked|6A737D|Waiting on another PR or issue to land first
-release|0E8A16|Release flow and version/packaging work
-scope:cli|C5DEF5|bin/box — the command surface
-scope:installer|C5DEF5|install.sh, versioned installs, upgrade/uninstall
-scope:host|C5DEF5|host/ — setup, teardown, firewall, isolation stack
-scope:tiers|C5DEF5|restricted tier — grant/revoke, multi-user
-scope:templates|C5DEF5|templates/ — the box seeds
-scope:drill|C5DEF5|drill/ — rehearsals, doctor, RUNS.md
-EOF
-}
-
-has_label() { grep -qxF "$1" <<<"$LABELS"; }
-
-reconcile_pr() { # $1 = PR number; relies on the globals set from its fetch
-  local n="$1" desired remove s args last_activity age
-
-  desired="$(decide_state)"
-
-  # encode the runbook's last step for the no-judgment case: three formal
-  # head-current approvals → the human is asked, once. The guard asks whether
-  # a FRESH human review is needed for THIS head — never "has the human ever
-  # reviewed", which wedged the handoff after any earlier human comment.
-  # Idempotent (a live request suppresses it); race-free via the shared
-  # concurrency group in labels.yml. With a comment-only bot on the panel
-  # this path stays cold and the AUTHOR requests the human.
-  if [ "$desired" = state:needs-human ] && human_request_needed; then
-    run gh api "repos/$REPO/pulls/$n/requested_reviewers" -f "reviewers[]=$HUMAN" --silent
-    log "#$n: requested $HUMAN (round passed)"
-  fi
-
-  # ---- converge both axes ----
-  # state:* is exclusive (everything but $desired comes off); blocker:* is a
-  # set (each one on or off on its own); RETIRED always comes off. One edit
-  # call for all of it, so a PR never flickers through a half-applied board.
-  local want_blockers add=""
-  want_blockers="$(blockers)"
-
-  remove=""
-  for s in "${STATES[@]}"; do
-    if [ "$s" != "$desired" ] && has_label "$s"; then remove="$remove,$s"; fi
-  done
-  for s in "${RETIRED[@]}"; do
-    if has_label "$s"; then remove="$remove,$s"; fi
-  done
-  for s in "${BLOCKERS[@]}"; do
-    if grep -qxF "$s" <<<"$want_blockers"; then
-      has_label "$s" || add="$add,$s"
-    else
-      has_label "$s" && remove="$remove,$s"
-    fi
-  done
-  add="${add#,}"
-  remove="${remove#,}"
-
-  # Never NAME a label the repo does not have. `gh issue edit --add-label`
-  # rejects the WHOLE call on one unknown name — nothing is applied — so a
-  # single missing blocker would take the state convergence down with it, on
-  # exactly the PRs this change exists to fix, surfacing only as a log line.
-  # Batching state and blockers into one edit for anti-flicker is what widened
-  # that blast radius; filtering the add side is what closes it again.
-  # Removals need no filter: they are built from has_label, so the label
-  # provably exists. REPO_LABELS unreadable means no filtering rather than
-  # filtering everything out — a failed read must not silently strip the board.
-  local skip_edit=false
-  if [ -n "${REPO_LABELS:-}" ]; then
-    local kept="" missing="" want
-    for want in ${add//,/ }; do
-      if grep -qxF "$want" <<<"$REPO_LABELS"; then kept="$kept,$want"
-      else missing="$missing $want"; fi
-    done
-    add="${kept#,}"
-    # A missing STATE label skips only the EDIT — never the rest of this
-    # function. Everything below is independent of the state:* taxonomy, and
-    # returning here stranded it: `merge-next` kept claiming "merge this one
-    # next" on a PR the board had moved to the agent, and the stale sweep
-    # stopped running. That is the original false-invitation bug, reintroduced
-    # in the very fix meant to survive a cold-start repo — and a regression
-    # against the old behaviour, which failed the edit and fell through.
-    if ! grep -qxF "$desired" <<<"$REPO_LABELS"; then
-      log "#$n: WARNING: state label '$desired' does not exist — skipping the label edit; dispatch the workflow to bootstrap"
-      skip_edit=true
-    elif [ -n "$missing" ]; then
-      log "#$n: WARNING: missing label(s)$missing — state still converged; dispatch the workflow to bootstrap"
-    fi
-  fi
-  if [ "$skip_edit" = false ] && { ! has_label "$desired" || [ -n "$remove" ] || [ -n "$add" ]; }; then
-    args=(--add-label "$desired${add:+,$add}")
-    [ -n "$remove" ] && args+=(--remove-label "$remove")
-    if run gh issue edit "$n" -R "$REPO" "${args[@]}" >/dev/null; then
-      log "#$n: state -> $desired${add:+ +$add}${remove:+ (cleared $remove)}"
-    else
-      # a deleted label must not wedge the sweep — dispatch heals the taxonomy
-      log "#$n: WARNING: label edit failed (missing label? run the workflow manually to bootstrap)"
-    fi
-  fi
-
-  # ---- merge-next: cleared, never set ----------------------------------
-  # Queue order is INTENT — which PR should land first is a judgement about
-  # conflicts and dependencies that GitHub knows nothing about, so the
-  # reconciler must not guess it (LABELS.md's rule for `blocked`/`release`).
-  # What it CAN do is stop the label going stale the way needs-human did:
-  # the moment the PR is no longer the thing a human should merge next, the
-  # claim is removed. Setting it stays with whoever owns the queue.
-  if has_label merge-next && [ "$desired" != state:needs-human ]; then
-    run gh issue edit "$n" -R "$REPO" --remove-label merge-next >/dev/null
-    log "#$n: cleared merge-next (state is $desired, not mergeable-by-a-human)"
-  fi
-
-  # ---- stale: real activity only, and blocked is legitimately quiet ----
-  last_activity="$(
-    {
-      jq -r '.created_at' <<<"$PR_JSON"
-      jq -r '.[].submitted_at' <<<"$REVIEWS_JSON"
-      gh api --paginate "repos/$REPO/issues/$n/comments" --jq '.[].created_at'
-      gh api --paginate "repos/$REPO/pulls/$n/comments" --jq '.[].created_at'
-      gh api --paginate "repos/$REPO/pulls/$n/commits" --jq '.[].commit.committer.date'
-    } | sort | tail -n1
-  )"
-  age=$((NOW - $(date -d "$last_activity" +%s)))
-  if has_label blocked || [ "$age" -le "$STALE_AFTER" ]; then
-    if has_label stale; then
-      run gh issue edit "$n" -R "$REPO" --remove-label stale >/dev/null
-      log "#$n: unstale"
-    fi
-  elif ! has_label stale; then
-    run gh issue edit "$n" -R "$REPO" --add-label stale >/dev/null
-    log "#$n: stale ($((age / 3600))h quiet)"
-  fi
-}
-
-main() {
-  REPO="${REPO:?set REPO to owner/name}"
-  NOW="$(date +%s)"
-
-  if [ "${GITHUB_EVENT_NAME:-}" = workflow_dispatch ]; then
-    log "workflow_dispatch: bootstrapping the taxonomy"
-    bootstrap_labels
-  fi
-
-  # The repo's label set, read ONCE per sweep — reconcile_pr filters every
-  # add against it, because one unknown name fails the whole edit call.
-  REPO_LABELS="$(gh label list -R "$REPO" --limit 200 --json name --jq '.[].name' 2>/dev/null || echo "")"
-  [ -z "$REPO_LABELS" ] && log "WARNING: could not read the label set — applying labels unfiltered"
-
-  local n
-  for n in $(gh pr list -R "$REPO" --state open --limit 100 --json number --jq '.[].number'); do
-    (
-      PR_JSON="$(gh api "repos/$REPO/pulls/$n")"
-      DRAFT="$(jq -r '.draft' <<<"$PR_JSON")"
-      HEAD_SHA="$(jq -r '.head.sha' <<<"$PR_JSON")"
-      LABELS="$(jq -r '.labels[].name' <<<"$PR_JSON")"
-      REQUESTED="$(jq -r '.requested_reviewers[].login' <<<"$PR_JSON")"
-      # PENDING reviews are unsubmitted drafts in someone's browser — not a verdict
-      REVIEWS_JSON="$(gh api --paginate "repos/$REPO/pulls/$n/reviews" --jq '.[]' \
-        | jq -s '[.[] | select(.state != "PENDING")]')"
-      # mergeability + the check rollup, the two facts the state machine was
-      # blind to (#136). `gh pr view` rather than the REST PR object: the API's
-      # `mergeable` is a tri-state boolean that GitHub computes lazily, while
-      # this returns the same MERGEABLE/CONFLICTING/UNKNOWN string the UI shows.
-      # Failure to read them is NOT fatal and NOT treated as broken — an API
-      # hiccup must never flap every PR into needs-rebase, so both degrade to
-      # the "do not know" value that triggers nothing.
-      GH_VIEW="$(gh pr view "$n" -R "$REPO" --json mergeable,statusCheckRollup 2>/dev/null || echo '{}')"
-      MERGEABLE="$(jq -r '.mergeable // "UNKNOWN"' <<<"$GH_VIEW")"
-      CHECKS="$(checks_state <<<"$GH_VIEW")"
-      # Read failed: leave this PR exactly as it is. Recomputing on facts we
-      # did not read is how an API hiccup turns into a false "merge me" —
-      # and the next tick is 15 minutes away, not 15 hours.
-      if [ "$CHECKS" = UNREADABLE ]; then
-        log "#$n: could not read mergeability/checks — left alone this pass"
-        exit 0
-      fi
-      reconcile_pr "$n"
-    ) || log "#$n: reconcile failed — continuing with the remaining PRs"
-  done
-  log "reconciled."
-}
-
-# sourced by test/labels-reconcile.sh for the fixture tests; executed in CI
-if [ "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" = "$0" ]; then
-  main "$@"
-fi

.github/scripts/release-notes.sh

@@ -1,30 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-set -euo pipefail
-
-# release-notes.sh <version> [<changelog>] — print exactly <version>'s
-# section of the changelog: every line between its '## <version> — <date>'
-# header and the next '## '. This is what release.yml hands to
-# 'gh release create', so the release notes are the curated prose we wrote,
-# not the PR list GitHub would generate (#83). Fails loudly when the section
-# is missing or empty — a tag without its changelog section is a release
-# ritual skipped, and an empty release body would paper over it.
-#
-# A file of its own (not inlined in release.yml) so test/release.sh drives
-# the same extraction against fixtures and the real CHANGELOG.md.
-
-ver="${1:-}"
-changelog="${2:-CHANGELOG.md}"
-[ -n "$ver" ] || { echo "usage: release-notes.sh <version> [<changelog>]" >&2; exit 2; }
-[ -f "$changelog" ] || { echo "release-notes: no such file: $changelog" >&2; exit 1; }
-
-# $2 of a section header ('## 0.6.0 — 2026-07-18') is the bare version —
-# compared WHOLE, so 0.6.0 can never match a 0.6.0-rc1 section (or vice
-# versa), and no regex-escaping of dots. sed drops the blank padding under
-# the header; the command substitution eats the trailing blanks.
-notes="$(awk -v ver="$ver" '
-  /^## / { grab = ($2 == ver); next }
-  grab   { print }
-' "$changelog" | sed '/./,$!d')"
-
-[ -n "$notes" ] || { echo "release-notes: $changelog has no section for '$ver' — the release PR stamps the Unreleased section with version + date BEFORE the tag (#83)" >&2; exit 1; }
-printf '%s\n' "$notes"

.github/workflows/ci.yml

@@ -32,9 +32,9 @@ jobs:
         # `.github/` — and the whole release path (changelog-armed.sh, which
         # gates every PR, release-notes.sh, labels-reconcile.sh) went unlinted
         # while the comment above told the next author it was covered.
-        # Measured on this tree: dotglob adds exactly those three and nothing
-        # else — a checkout's `.git` carries no `*.sh` (its hooks ship as
-        # `*.sample`), so `**/*.sh` does not wander into it.
+        # Measured when this invariant was introduced: dotglob added exactly
+        # those three and nothing else — a checkout's `.git` carries no `*.sh`
+        # (its hooks ship as `*.sample`), so `**/*.sh` does not wander into it.
         #
         # The sweep below is the CLASS check, same shape as the eof_guard_sweep
         # in test/cli.sh (#112): the one-time fix is `dotglob`, but what keeps
@@ -58,8 +58,6 @@ jobs:
           shellcheck -x "${files[@]}"
       - name: cli tests
         run: bash test/cli.sh
-      - name: labels state-machine tests
-        run: bash test/labels-reconcile.sh
       - name: release-flow tests
         run: bash test/release.sh
       # The changelog is ARMED for the next entry (#108). Its own step rather
@@ -67,7 +65,7 @@ jobs:
       # tree, not about the release machinery, so when it goes red the log
       # says which check found the drift without anyone reading a suite.
       - name: changelog is armed for the next entry
-        run: bash .github/scripts/changelog-armed.sh
+        uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/changelog-armed@0.1.0
       # ...and no SHIPPED release heading was deleted or DUPLICATED (#122, #143).
       # Its own step for the same reason as the one above — when it goes red the
       # log names the invariant that broke — but a DIFFERENT invariant: armed is
@@ -104,11 +102,11 @@ jobs:
       # every ordinary push and PR, the script no-ops green by design, so
       # running it everywhere costs nothing and closes the route.
       - name: a release tree has a drill record
-        run: bash .github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh
+        uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/drill-recorded@0.1.0
       - name: no shipped changelog heading was deleted or duplicated
-        env:
-          CHANGELOG_MONOTONIC_STRICT: '1'
-        run: bash .github/scripts/changelog-monotonic.sh "origin/${{ github.base_ref || github.ref_name }}"
+        uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/changelog-monotonic@0.1.0
+      - name: vendored ceremony doctrine matches the pin
+        uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/docs-sync@0.1.0
 
   # The multi-user rehearsal, on a REAL incus — a GitHub runner is root on a
   # disposable VM, which is exactly the substrate the rehearsal needs. It runs

.github/workflows/labels.yml

@@ -1,78 +1,13 @@
 name: labels
-# The automation LABELS.md promises. Two halves:
-#   scope     — path-derived scope:* labels on PRs (actions/labeler)
-#   reconcile — the state:* machine + the stale sweep (.github/scripts/labels-reconcile.sh)
-#
-# pull_request_target, not pull_request: every PR here arrives from a fork,
-# where pull_request (and pull_request_review) run with a READ-ONLY token and
-# cannot label anything. _target is safe in this workflow because no PR code
-# is ever checked out or executed — labeler reads changed paths via the API,
-# and reconcile checks out the BASE branch only. Keep it that way.
-#
-# There is no pull_request_review_target, so a review landing cannot wake this
-# workflow directly — and the */15 cron is advisory: GitHub deprioritises short
-# intervals hard enough that a quiet repo goes hours between ticks. So the
-# handoff wakes the sweep itself: the author sets state:needs-human when handing
-# the PR to the maintainer (CONTRIBUTING step 6), and `labeled` fires this
-# workflow, which confirms or corrects that optimistic write within seconds. The
-# cron stays as the last resort, for the round an agent forgets to hand off.
-#
-# This cannot loop: the reconciler's own label writes use GITHUB_TOKEN, and
-# GitHub does not create workflow runs from GITHUB_TOKEN-triggered events. Agent
-# writes use a PAT and therefore do trigger — exactly the asymmetry wanted.
 on:
-  schedule:
-    - cron: "*/15 * * * *"
-  workflow_dispatch: # also bootstraps missing labels — run once on a fresh repo
+  schedule: [{cron: "*/15 * * * *"}] # advisory; the handoff label is the real wake
+  workflow_dispatch:                 # bootstraps missing labels on a fresh repo
   pull_request_target:
-    types:
-      [
-        opened,
-        reopened,
-        ready_for_review,
-        converted_to_draft,
-        synchronize,
-        labeled,
-        unlabeled,
-      ]
-
+    types: [opened, reopened, ready_for_review, converted_to_draft, synchronize, labeled, unlabeled]
 permissions:
   contents: read
   issues: write
   pull-requests: write
-
 jobs:
-  scope:
-    # Not on labeled/unlabeled: those events change no paths, so labeler has
-    # nothing new to derive — and label churn is precisely what they are.
-    if: >-
-      github.event_name == 'pull_request_target' &&
-      github.event.action != 'labeled' &&
-      github.event.action != 'unlabeled'
-    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
-    concurrency:
-      group: labels-scope-${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}
-      cancel-in-progress: true
-    steps:
-      - uses: actions/labeler@v5
-        with:
-          # additive only — a hand-applied scope must survive the machine
-          sync-labels: false
-
-  reconcile:
-    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
-    # ONE shared group: every reconcile sweeps every open PR, so cron and
-    # PR-event runs must serialize or two sweeps race the same PR's labels
-    # and both pass the request-the-human-once guard. GitHub keeps at most
-    # one queued run per group (older queued runs are superseded), which
-    # coalesces bursts instead of piling them up.
-    concurrency:
-      group: labels-reconcile
-      cancel-in-progress: false
-    steps:
-      - uses: actions/checkout@v4 # base branch only — never the PR's code
-      - name: reconcile state + stale
-        env:
-          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
-          REPO: ${{ github.repository }}
-        run: bash .github/scripts/labels-reconcile.sh
+  labels:
+    uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/.github/workflows/labels.yml@0.1.0

.github/workflows/release.yml

@@ -1,213 +1,18 @@
 name: release
-# The release publisher — two doors into the same act (#83, #96):
-#
-#  * The merge door (#96): merging the `release`-labeled PR into main IS the
-#    release. The label is the intent, the version transition is the
-#    interlock — VERSION at the merge commit must be non-`-dev` AND must have
-#    changed in this PR, so a mislabeled ordinary PR fails loudly and creates
-#    NOTHING. The job then tags the merge commit via the API and publishes,
-#    in the SAME job on purpose: a GITHUB_TOKEN-created tag does not trigger
-#    other workflows (GitHub's anti-recursion), so that tag can never re-enter
-#    the tag door below and double-publish — publishing here is the only
-#    chance, and the no-existing-tag/release assert covers a manual tag
-#    racing the merge.
-#
-#  * The tag door (#83) stays as the documented manual fallback and backfill,
-#    on a bare X.Y.Z tag push (the 0.6.0 tag set the precedent — no 'v'
-#    prefix). The tag must name the tree's own VERSION (a mismatch fails
-#    loudly and creates NOTHING — a wrong release is worse than a missing
-#    one).
-#
-# Both doors publish the release body from that version's CHANGELOG.md
-# section (.github/scripts/release-notes.sh, shared with test/release.sh) —
-# the curated prose, not the generated PR list. No assets are uploaded: for a
-# pure-bash tree, GitHub's source tarball for the tag IS the package, and
-# install.sh downloads exactly that.
+# Triggers and permissions MUST live here (a called workflow cannot define them):
 on:
+  # ONE push key, both filters — YAML maps are last-key-wins; a second sibling
+  # `push:` silently replaces the first and kills a door (rig's review catch).
   push:
-    # The merge door rides pushes to MAIN, not pull_request events, for one
-    # load-bearing reason the first review round caught (#97): a workflow
-    # run triggered by a pull_request from a public FORK gets a READ-ONLY
-    # GITHUB_TOKEN — `permissions:` cannot raise that ceiling — and every
-    # ceremony PR this org has ever merged is cross-repo from the bot fork.
-    # The asserts would pass and the tag create would 403, red on main,
-    # every release. A push to main is an in-repo event with the full write
-    # token, whoever authored the PR.
+    tags: ["**"]      # every tag — a wrong tag must FAIL the assert loudly,
+                      # never be skipped by a shape filter that didn't match
     branches: [main]
-    # Every tag, not a shape filter (rig's precedent): a tag that mismatches
-    # VERSION — a habitual v0.7.0, a typo — must fail the assert LOUDLY
-    # below, not be silently skipped by a pattern that didn't match.
-    tags: ["**"]
-
 permissions:
-  contents: write # create the tag ref + gh release create + the bump push
-  # Two consumers (a declared permissions: block zeroes every unspecified
-  # scope): the decide step's label read (commits/<sha>/pulls) and the bump
-  # fallback's `gh pr create --label`.
-  pull-requests: write
-  # ...and the --label on that fallback PR rides the ISSUES API (labels.yml
-  # grants the same pair for the same reason).
-  issues: write
-
+  contents: write       # tag ref create + release create + the bump push
+  pull-requests: write  # decide's label read; the bump-fallback `gh pr create`
+  issues: write         # --label on that fallback PR rides the issues API
 jobs:
-  # The merge door (#96), riding pushes to main (see the trigger comment:
-  # fork PRs get a read-only token on pull_request events). The hand-set
-  # `release` label (LABELS.md: automation never guesses intent) is read via
-  # the API off the merge commit's PR, inside the decide step below.
-  release-on-merge:
-    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
-    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
-    steps:
-      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
-        with:
-          # The pushed head plus its first parent (fetch-depth: 2): the
-          # first parent is main the instant before the PR landed, which the
-          # changed-in-this-PR assert compares against.
-          ref: ${{ github.sha }}
-          fetch-depth: 2
-      # The decide step — the version asserts fused, because the `release`
-      # label carries TWO legitimate meanings (LABELS.md: "release flow and
-      # version/packaging work"): the ceremony PR that ships a version, and
-      # ordinary work ON the release machinery — the PR that added this very
-      # job included. The version tells them apart, in four states:
-      #   -dev, unchanged            → work under the label: green NOTICE
-      #                                no-op, not a red run per infra PR
-      #   -dev, changed              → still a dev tree, so still work —
-      #                                the post-release bump PR above all
-      #                                (bare -> -dev after every release):
-      #                                green NOTICE no-op
-      #   bare, unchanged, released  → work merged in the post-release
-      #                                window (ceremony landed, the -dev
-      #                                bump has not): green NOTICE no-op
-      #   bare, unchanged, UNreleased→ the label says ship but this PR did
-      #                                not mint the version: refuse to guess
-      #   bare, changed              → the ceremony: proceed
-      - name: 'decide: ceremony, or release-flow work under the label?'
-        id: decide
-        env:
-          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
-        run: |
-          ver="$(cat VERSION)"
-          base="$(git show HEAD^1:VERSION)"
-          case "$ver" in
-            *-dev)
-              if [ "$base" = "$ver" ]; then
-                echo "NOTICE: VERSION '$ver' is -dev and unchanged by this PR — release-flow work under the release label, not a ceremony. Nothing to publish."
-                echo "ceremony=no" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-                exit 0
-              fi
-              echo "NOTICE: VERSION changed ('$base' -> '$ver') and still ends -dev — a dev tree is by definition not a release. This is work (the post-release bump, a renumber); nothing to publish."
-              echo "ceremony=no" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-              exit 0 ;;
-          esac
-          if [ "$base" = "$ver" ]; then
-            if gh release view "$ver" --json name >/dev/null 2>&1; then
-              echo "NOTICE: VERSION '$ver' is already released and unchanged by this PR — release-flow work merged in the post-release window (before the -dev bump). Nothing to publish."
-              echo "ceremony=no" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-              exit 0
-            fi
-            echo "VERSION '$ver' is bare, unchanged by this PR, and never released — the label says ship but this PR did not mint the version. Refusing to guess — creating nothing." >&2
-            exit 1
-          fi
-          # The version transitioned — now the LABEL, the operator's declared
-          # intent, read via the API because a push event carries no PR
-          # payload (and the PR lives on a fork — the trigger comment). No
-          # merged, release-labeled PR behind this commit = a transition
-          # nobody declared: refuse.
-          if ! gh api "repos/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY/commits/$GITHUB_SHA/pulls" \
-              -q '[.[] | select(.merged_at != null) | .labels[].name] | index("release") != null' | grep -qx true; then
-            echo "VERSION transitioned ('$base' -> '$ver') but no merged, release-labeled PR is behind this commit — a release is a labeled ceremony PR (#96), not a bare push — creating nothing." >&2
-            exit 1
-          fi
-          echo "ceremony=yes" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-      - name: release notes — the version's own CHANGELOG.md section
-        if: steps.decide.outputs.ceremony == 'yes'
-        # release-notes.sh fails loudly on a missing/empty section, which
-        # fails the release here — before anything is created.
-        run: |
-          bash .github/scripts/release-notes.sh "$(cat VERSION)" > "$RUNNER_TEMP/notes.md"
-          cat "$RUNNER_TEMP/notes.md"
-      - name: nothing may exist yet — no tag, no release (re-runs refuse loudly)
-        if: steps.decide.outputs.ceremony == 'yes'
-        env:
-          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
-        run: |
-          ver="$(cat VERSION)"
-          if gh api "repos/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY/git/ref/tags/$ver" --silent 2>/dev/null; then
-            echo "tag '$ver' already exists — a manual tag beat this run, or this is a re-run of a published release — creating nothing." >&2
-            exit 1
-          fi
-          if gh release view "$ver" --json name >/dev/null 2>&1; then
-            echo "release '$ver' already exists — creating nothing." >&2
-            exit 1
-          fi
-      - name: tag the merge commit, then publish — one job, on purpose
-        if: steps.decide.outputs.ceremony == 'yes'
-        # Same job as the asserts: the GITHUB_TOKEN-created tag triggers no
-        # workflows (GitHub's anti-recursion), so the tag door cannot fire
-        # off it — this step is the release's only chance to publish.
-        env:
-          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
-          MERGE_SHA: ${{ github.sha }}
-        run: |
-          ver="$(cat VERSION)"
-          gh api "repos/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY/git/refs" -f "ref=refs/tags/$ver" -f "sha=$MERGE_SHA"
-          gh release create "$ver" --verify-tag --title "$ver" --notes-file "$RUNNER_TEMP/notes.md"
-      # The post-release bump, folded into the release act (#96 followup —
-      # operator decision: a mechanical one-liner deserves no PR of its
-      # own). X.Y.(Z+1)-dev is arithmetic, not judgment: derived, committed
-      # straight to main with this job's token. A GITHUB_TOKEN push fires
-      # no workflows (anti-recursion), so the bump triggers neither this
-      # door nor a red run; should branch protection ever refuse the direct
-      # push, the step opens the bump PR itself and says so, loudly,
-      # instead of leaving main armed to impersonate the release.
-      - name: bump main to the next -dev — the release re-arms main itself
-        if: steps.decide.outputs.ceremony == 'yes'
-        env:
-          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
-        run: |
-          ver="$(cat VERSION)"
-          next="$(printf '%s' "$ver" | awk -F. '{ printf "%s.%s.%s-dev", $1, $2, $3 + 1 }')"
-          git config user.name "github-actions[bot]"
-          git config user.email "github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com"
-          git fetch origin main
-          git checkout -B main origin/main
-          printf '%s\n' "$next" > VERSION
-          git add VERSION
-          git commit -m "chore: bump main to $next — a dev install must not impersonate $ver"
-          if ! git push origin main; then
-            echo "direct push refused (branch protection?) — opening the bump PR instead" >&2
-            git checkout -b "chore/bump-$next"
-            git push origin "chore/bump-$next"
-            gh pr create -R "$GITHUB_REPOSITORY" --head "chore/bump-$next" \
-              --title "chore: bump main to $next" \
-              --body "The post-release re-arm, opened by release.yml because the direct push was refused. One file, one line." \
-              --label release
-          fi
-
-  # The tag door (#83) — the manual fallback and backfill, unchanged. Gated
-  # to the push event so a closed PR (the trigger above) never runs it
-  # against a branch ref.
   release:
-    if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/')
-    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
-    steps:
-      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
-      - name: the tag must name the tree's VERSION
-        run: |
-          ver="$(cat VERSION)"
-          if [ "$GITHUB_REF_NAME" != "$ver" ]; then
-            echo "tag '$GITHUB_REF_NAME' does not match VERSION '$ver' — creating nothing." >&2
-            echo "A release is a PR, then a tag (#83): the release PR bumps VERSION and stamps the changelog; the tag goes on its MERGE commit. Delete this tag and re-tag the right commit." >&2
-            exit 1
-          fi
-      - name: release notes — the version's own CHANGELOG.md section
-        # release-notes.sh fails loudly on a missing/empty section, which
-        # fails the release here — before anything is created.
-        run: |
-          bash .github/scripts/release-notes.sh "$GITHUB_REF_NAME" > "$RUNNER_TEMP/notes.md"
-          cat "$RUNNER_TEMP/notes.md"
-      - name: create the release
-        env:
-          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
-        run: gh release create "$GITHUB_REF_NAME" --verify-tag --title "$GITHUB_REF_NAME" --notes-file "$RUNNER_TEMP/notes.md"
+    uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/.github/workflows/release.yml@0.1.0
+    with:
+      version-source: file

AGENTS.md

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+# AGENTS.md — start at .ceremony/
+
+This repository is governed by
+[heavy-duty/ceremony](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony). Read
+`.ceremony/AGENTS.md` first — it routes you to your role file, vendored
+beside it. Repo specifics (the review panel roster, the scope labels, what
+a drill means here, code conventions) live in CONTRIBUTING.md.

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -5,6 +5,18 @@ which records not just what changed but what each drill run proved.
 
 ## Unreleased
 
+### Fixed
+
+- `box exec` preserves newlines and command argv across its login-user boundary (#169)
+
+### Changed
+
+- Release and repository governance now use the shared ceremony pinned at `0.1.0` (heavy-duty/ceremony#14)
+
+### Added
+
+- `kimi-box` template — the Moonshot Kimi CLI agent seed (#158; rig#109's tenant)
+
 ## 0.9.0 — 2026-07-21
 
 ### Added

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -1,313 +1,83 @@
 # Contributing
 
-How change lands in this repo. The short version: PRs are born as drafts,
-three reviewer bots take the first rounds, a human takes the last word — and
-labels tell you where everything is without opening anything.
+This repository is governed by
+[heavy-duty/ceremony](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony). Agents read
+[`.ceremony/AGENTS.md`](.ceremony/AGENTS.md) first, then the role file it
+selects. The files under `.ceremony/` are machine-managed and must never be
+edited in place.
 
-## The PR loop
+Only triage mints issues. Everyone else opens or extends a discussion when
+they find work outside an existing issue contract. Only humans merge.
 
-1. **Fork and branch.** Contributors work from forks; upstream branches are
-   for maintainers. Title the PR conventionally (`feat:`, `fix:`, `docs:`),
-   and include a `CHANGELOG.md` entry under `## Unreleased` when the change
-   deserves one.
-2. **Open as a draft** while you build. Drafts are invisible to the reviewer
-   bots on purpose.
-3. **When it's ready**: mark ready-for-review and request all three bots —
-   `claude-bot-andresmgsl`, `codex-bot-andresmgsl`, `grok-bot-andresmgsl`.
-   They poll roughly every 15 minutes.
-4. **Rounds are answered whole.** Wait until all three have reviewed, then
-   answer the entire round in a **single reply**, push the fixes, and
-   re-request the bots that didn't approve. Prefer verification over
-   argument: a test settles what a comment thread can't.
-5. **Reviews end in a verdict.** A reviewer — bot or human — either
-   **approves** or **requests changes**, never a bare comment. A
-   comment-only review is a non-verdict: it doesn't say whether the round
-   passed, and the state machine (and anyone scanning the board) has to
-   guess. The verdict carries *blockingness only*, the body carries the
-   feedback: non-blocking nits ride an **approval** and the author addresses
-   them at their discretion; anything blocking — including a question that
-   gates the verdict — is **request changes**, saying what unblocks it. The
-   reconciler treats a comment-only review as not-approved, so commenting
-   without a verdict only stalls the PR. The machine never reads review
-   bodies: when a comment-only reviewer's line is really an agreement, that
-   judgment belongs to the **author** — escalate by requesting the
-   maintainer's review (step 6), and the reconciler flips the label on that
-   request, because an explicit request is a fact it can trust.
-6. **When the round passes, the author hands the PR to the maintainer** in
-   three acts, in this order: post the tagged round summary, request the
-   maintainer's review, then set `state:needs-human` yourself — removing the
-   state label it replaces. The review request is what *earns* the label,
-   provided the PR carries **no `blocker:*` label**. A blocker means the work
-   is still yours whatever the round said, so on a conflicted or red PR
-   neither the request nor your own label write will stick — the sweep takes
-   it straight back off. With three formal head-current approvals the labels
-   workflow requests the maintainer automatically; when part of the panel is
-   comment-only, reading their agreement is the author's judgment, so the
-   author makes the request.
+## Review panel
 
-   Writing the label by hand is an **optimistic write, not a transfer of
-   ownership**. The machine stays the authority — but because the workflow
-   wakes on `labeled`, the author's own write fires the sweep that validates
-   it, and a handoff that had not earned the label is corrected seconds later.
-   Forgetting the write is not a failure either; it only means the label waits
-   for the cron, which is the lag this replaced.
-7. **Checks must be green**: `shellcheck` and `bash test/cli.sh` locally
-   mirror what CI runs; the multi-user rehearsal runs in CI on a real Incus.
+The review panel is:
 
-## Changelog entries
+- `claude-bot-andresmgsl`
+- `codex-bot-andresmgsl`
+- `grok-bot-andresmgsl`
+- `kimi-bot-andresmgsl`
 
-Every PR that changes behaviour adds **one line** to `## Unreleased`. One line
-is the whole rule — if it wraps more than twice in your editor, cut it down.
+Every PR needs a current-head verdict from the whole panel minus its author.
+`dan-claude-bot` is triage-only and is never a reviewer. Draft PRs remain
+invisible to the panel; when ready, request every eligible reviewer.
 
-- **Say what changed, and stop.** Why it was wrong, how it was found, what it
-  cost, what it implies — that belongs in the PR body and the commit message,
-  which is where anyone chasing the reasoning already goes. This file answers
-  one question: what is different in this version.
-- **Any word that can be removed, is removed.**
-- **Lead with the surface, not the mechanism.** "`state:needs-human` is set at
-  handoff" beats "the labels workflow now also wakes on `labeled`".
-- **Cite the issue or PR** — `(#141)` — and let the reader follow it for the
-  rest.
-- **Mark a breaking change** with a leading `BREAKING:`.
-- Group under `### Added` / `### Changed` / `### Fixed` / `### Removed`.
-- No bold run-in headings, no sub-paragraphs, no code blocks, no prose essays.
+## Code and verification
 
-Good:
+- Bash executables use `set -euo pipefail`; test harnesses use `set -u`
+  because they assert failing commands.
+- Keep shellcheck clean. Run `bash test/cli.sh` and `bash test/release.sh`;
+  CI also runs the Incus multi-user rehearsal.
+- Match whole versions: `0.7.0` must never match `0.7.0-rc1`.
+- Comments preserve the incident that bought a rule, including its issue
+  number.
 
-```markdown
-- `state:needs-human` is set at handoff, not by the cron (#141)
-- An unreadable check rollup no longer reads as "nothing is failing" (#136)
-- BREAKING: `--class human|server` is now `--root-door closed|open` (#77)
-```
+## Changelog
 
-Not an entry — that is a PR body:
-
-```markdown
-- **`state:needs-human` no longer waits on the cron to become true** (#141) —
-  the labels workflow now also wakes on `pull_request_target: labeled` and
-  `unlabeled`, and the author sets it themselves when handing a PR over. A
-  review landing was never a trigger. There is no `pull_request_review_target`,
-  and on fork PRs — which is all of them here — ...
-```
+Every behavior-changing PR adds one concise line under `## Unreleased`,
+above the shipped heading below it. Cite the issue or PR. Never replace or
+duplicate a shipped heading; the shared armed and monotonic guards enforce
+both halves of this rule.
 
 ## Releases
 
-A release is a PR, and merging it ships it
-([#96](https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/issues/96), building on
-[#83](https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/issues/83)):
+The release ceremony, merge and tag doors, version stamps, guard semantics,
+and recovery paths are defined by
+[heavy-duty/ceremony](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony/blob/0.1.0/README.md).
+Box pins the shared machinery and doctrine at `0.1.0`.
 
-1. **The release PR** — `release: X.Y.Z`, labeled `release` — bumps `VERSION`
-   from `X.Y.Z-dev` and stamps the `## Unreleased` section with version +
-   date (feature PRs land their changelog entry as part of the PR, so the
-   section is already written).
+Box uses the `file` version backend and has no artifact hook: for this
+pure-Bash tree, GitHub’s source tarball for the tag is the package, and
+`install.sh` downloads exactly that. `VERSION`, `CHANGELOG.md`, and
+`drills/<version>.md` remain box-owned release inputs.
 
-   **Stamping is two edits, not one — the second is re-arming.** After
-   rewriting `## Unreleased` into `## X.Y.Z — DATE`, put an **empty
-   `## Unreleased` back at the top**, immediately above the section you just
-   stamped:
+### What a box drill proves
 
-   ```markdown
-   ## Unreleased
+The box drill is the 85-probe VM isolation contract: it exercises the trust
+boundary on real hardware. The lighter Incus container rehearsal in CI proves
+the tier mechanics but cannot substitute for that boundary measurement. The
+record format and operating procedure live in [drills/README.md](drills/README.md).
 
-   ## 0.7.1 — 2026-07-19
+`drills/<version>.md` and [`drill/RUNS.md`](drill/RUNS.md) are deliberately
+different artifacts. The former is per-release evidence read by the release
+guard; the latter is the harness’s ongoing run log and lore. Updating one
+never satisfies the purpose of the other.
 
-   ### Fixed
-   ...
-   ```
+The family drills are independent and may run in any order. Each pins the
+same fixed candidate refs: rig’s drill uses the candidate box ref, while
+box’s drill mints with the candidate rig ref. Static refs dissolve the
+box↔rig runtime recursion; no repository needs to release first.
 
-   Not cosmetic, and not deferrable to the next PR that happens to need it.
-   Between the stamp and the next re-creation of that heading, `main` has no
-   `## Unreleased`. A PR authored *before* the release wrote its entry under
-   that heading; with the heading gone, git lands the entry under whatever
-   now occupies the position — **the section that just shipped** — and it
-   merges **cleanly**, no conflict, no signal. The changelog then credits a
-   released version with a change it does not contain, and nothing but a
-   human reading the file will ever say so
-   ([#108](https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/issues/108); confirmed in the
-   sibling repo as
-   [heavy-duty/rig#66](https://github.com/heavy-duty/rig/issues/66)).
+A known gap remains from box#81: released box templates still default
+`RIG_REF` to `main`, so a later mint may consume a rig revision other than
+the one drilled. This conversion does not change that behavior or claim the
+gap is closed.
 
-   CI enforces the arming rule with
-   [.github/scripts/changelog-armed.sh](.github/scripts/changelog-armed.sh),
-   keyed on `VERSION`: a `-dev` tree must carry `## Unreleased` on top; a
-   bare-`VERSION` tree (the ceremony PR, and the merge that publishes it) may
-   carry either `## Unreleased` or its own stamped section. That is why the
-   guard cannot simply demand `## Unreleased` unconditionally — the
-   unconditional form is false on the ceremony PR's own tree and makes the
-   release unshippable, which is why rig and cast both reverted it. The
-   practical consequence: forgetting to re-arm does **not** block the release
-   PR, it turns `main` red on the very next push — the automatic `-dev` bump
-   the release itself makes. Do it in the ceremony PR and main is never
-   disarmed at all.
+## Scope labels
 
-   **Release headings are append-only.** When you add your entry under
-   `## Unreleased`, *insert above* the heading below it — never type over
-   that line. Replacing `## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19` with your own `## Unreleased`
-   block deletes a shipped section: its prose is absorbed into `Unreleased`,
-   `release-notes.sh` can no longer find the version it extracts by heading,
-   and the next release republishes the absorbed prose as if it were new. git
-   merges that edit cleanly and `changelog-armed.sh` stays green on it — the
-   top section is still the right one — so
-   [.github/scripts/changelog-monotonic.sh](.github/scripts/changelog-monotonic.sh)
-   asserts the other half on every PR: the set of `## X.Y.Z` headings on your
-   branch must be a **superset** of the set at the merge base
-   ([#122](https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/issues/122), caught in review of
-   [#118](https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/pull/118)). The ceremony's own
-   stamp passes it by construction — rewriting `## Unreleased` into
-   `## X.Y.Z — DATE` adds a heading and removes none.
-
-   **The drill gates the release, and CI enforces it.** The release PR's
-   flow is: draft → ready → bot round → **drill** → `state:needs-human` →
-   maintainer merge (which *is* the release). CI proves the tier's semantics
-   on every PR; the drill is what proves the VM trust boundary, and it wants
-   real hardware and the better part of an hour, so it runs on the release
-   PR's branch and nowhere else.
-
-   Record it in its own file, named exactly for the version:
-
-   ```
-   drills/X.Y.Z.md
-   ```
-
-   ...with the run in it — what it measured, what it found, what it cost.
-   See [drills/README.md](drills/README.md) for the shape.
-   [.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh](.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh)
-   asserts exactly that on every tree with a bare `VERSION`, which is every
-   `release` PR and the merge that publishes it; a `-dev` tree passes with
-   nothing to assert. It is **no longer a thing a reviewer has to remember**.
-
-   **`drills/` is release evidence; [`drill/RUNS.md`](drill/RUNS.md) is the
-   harness's own log.** Two artifacts, two purposes. `drill/RUNS.md` keeps
-   being what it has always been — every run of the harness, the traps table,
-   the lore — and is not release-scoped. `drills/X.Y.Z.md` is the per-release
-   record the gate reads. Appending to `drill/RUNS.md` does not satisfy the
-   gate, and is not meant to.
-
-   One file per version is also why the guard is short. When records shared a
-   file it had to match em-dash heading fields, tolerate an optional date
-   tail, and compare versions *whole* so `0.9.0-rc1` could not satisfy
-   `0.9.0` — and two separate defects were found in review because of that
-   complexity. Now `0.9.0.md` and `0.9.0-rc1.md` are simply different files
-   and none of it is representable.
-
-   It became CI's job because remembering did not work. The sentence this
-   paragraph replaces described a step **no release had ever performed** —
-   there was no drill record anywhere in the repo — and #95, #114 and #148
-   all shipped through the gap as a `VERSION` bump plus a `CHANGELOG.md`
-   stamp. The one time it was caught was the one time somebody happened to
-   look, which is not a gate.
-
-   **The three drills are INDEPENDENT — there is no fixed order.** box, rig
-   and cast each drill separately, in any order, on any schedule, in separate
-   sittings if you like. What makes that safe is not sequencing, it is that
-   every drill **pins the same fixed set of candidate refs**: rig's drill
-   runs `--host yes` with `BOX_REF=release/<box-version>`, so it exercises the
-   box that will actually ship; box's drill mints with
-   `RIG_REF=release/<rig-version>`, so it exercises the rig that will actually
-   ship. Both measure the same pair.
-
-   That is what dissolves the box↔rig recursion. box and rig really are
-   **mutually recursive** — rig sits *below* box as the host-builder
-   (`rig bootstrap --host yes` installs box and runs `setup-host`) and
-   *above* it as the guest-converger (a `box new` seed's cloud-init curls
-   rig's installer and runs `rig bootstrap <tenant>-box`); box's own source
-   says as much, the seeds "invert the rig→box install edge (rig#28: rig
-   installs box on hosts; now box guests install rig)". A cycle at *runtime*
-   becomes two independent tests against one fixed pair, because the refs are
-   **static identifiers that exist as soon as the release branches do**, long
-   before any drill runs. Nothing has to be released, or drilled, first.
-
-   Within a single drill you of course bring the substrate up before probing
-   it — a host before a guest. That is how you run a drill; it is not an
-   ordering rule between repos.
-
-   Each repo drills in a **different way** and asserts a different thing: box
-   asserts the **isolation contract** (the 85-probe VM trust boundary), rig
-   asserts **convergence** (a machine reaches its role, idempotently), cast
-   asserts **promotion** (A→B reproduces, the diff is idempotent). Three
-   different exercises sharing a substrate — not three phases of one script,
-   which is exactly why the records are per-repo.
-
-   It drills **candidate refs, not released artifacts.** `RIG_REPO` and
-   `RIG_REF` are mint-time environment variables (defaults
-   `heavy-duty/rig` and `main`, `bin/box`), so a run pins the exact commits
-   under test. That dissolves the chicken-and-egg: **no repo has to be
-   released before another can be drilled.** And drilling the candidate *is*
-   drilling the release — a release PR's diff is `VERSION` plus
-   `CHANGELOG.md` and nothing else, so no executable byte differs between
-   the tree that was drilled and the tree that ships.
-
-   The drills of a release set share **one run ID**. Each repo records its own
-   legs in its own `drills/X.Y.Z.md`, citing that run ID and the other two
-   repos' commit SHAs, so the three records reconcile afterwards. The guard
-   reads only this repo's file — it asserts box's record exists, never the
-   other two.
-
-   If a defect shows up only in the combination: **patch, re-drill,
-   re-record.** The three releases converge on a set that holds together;
-   they are not required to be right in one pass.
-
-   **A known gap, and box is where it belongs.** A *released* box still
-   defaults `RIG_REF` to `main`, so what a user mints a week after a drill is
-   not the combination that was drilled — the guest converges against
-   whatever rig's main has become since. Pinning `RIG_REF` to a released rig
-   tag in the templates is the outstanding step from
-   [#81](https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/issues/81) (rig#32 step 5), and it
-   is what would make a drilled combination reproducible for users. This PR
-   does not fix it; box's source already says the two directions "track main
-   unpinned today, said honestly ... until a release flow exists".
-
-   A maintainer **waiver** is possible, and it is still written down. The
-   guard requires a *record*, not a passing result, so a release that must
-   ship without a full drill creates `drills/X.Y.Z.md` anyway and says plainly
-   that the drill was waived and why. Skipping then costs a deliberate,
-   reviewable file in the diff — which is precisely what the three silent
-   skips above did not.
-2. **The maintainer's merge IS the release.**
-   [release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml) fires on the merged,
-   `release`-labeled PR and asserts before creating anything: `VERSION` at
-   the merge commit is non-`-dev` **and changed in this PR** (the `-dev`
-   interlock — a mislabeled ordinary PR fails loudly and creates nothing),
-   the version's `CHANGELOG.md` section extracts non-empty, and no tag or
-   release exists for it yet. Then, in the same job, it tags the merge
-   commit bare `X.Y.Z` (no `v` prefix, the `0.6.0` precedent) and publishes
-   the GitHub release with that section as the body. No assets — the source
-   tarball for the tag is the package, and `install.sh` downloads exactly
-   that.
-
-   *Manual fallback/backfill*: the tag-push path stays. Tagging the merge
-   commit bare `X.Y.Z` by hand and pushing the tag still publishes the same
-   way (release.yml asserts the tag names the tree's own `VERSION`) — for
-   backfills, or the day the merge path is red.
-3. **The release re-arms main itself**: the same workflow run bumps
-   `VERSION` to `X.Y.(Z+1)-dev` and pushes the commit straight to main —
-   no follow-up PR (it opens one only if branch protection refuses the
-   direct push, and says so loudly). Not cosmetic — the versioned layout
-   names install trees after `VERSION`, so a `main` install without the
-   bump would land in `versions/X.Y.Z` and impersonate the release just
-   cut. On the *manual* tag path the bump stays yours: open the one-line
-   PR after publishing.
-
-## Labels — who sets what
-
-The full taxonomy lives in [LABELS.md](LABELS.md). What matters day to day is
-who sets each kind — most of it is machinery, and hand-moving a
-machine-owned label just gets corrected on the next pass:
-
-| Labels | Set by |
-|---|---|
-| `state:*` | the labels workflow ([.github/workflows/labels.yml](.github/workflows/labels.yml)) — recomputed from GitHub's own facts on PR events (label changes included) and every 15 minutes. Machine-owned, with one exception: the author sets `state:needs-human` at handoff (step 6) and the workflow reconciles it. Otherwise never by hand. Exactly one per PR: *whose ball is it.* |
-| `blocker:*` | the same workflow, from the same facts — *what is in the way.* Any number per PR, or none. Never by hand: applying one does not stop a merge, and removing one does not unblock anything. Fix the thing and the next sweep drops the label. |
-| `stale` | the same workflow — 48h without commits, comments, or reviews. `blocked` PRs are exempt: they are quiet legitimately. |
-| `scope:*` on PRs | actions/labeler, from the changed paths ([.github/labeler.yml](.github/labeler.yml)). Additive — you may add more, the machine won't remove them. |
-| `scope:*` on issues | you, when opening or triaging — issues have no paths to derive from. |
-| `blocked`, `release` | you — automation never guesses intent. |
-| `merge-next` | you or the agent owning the queue. Which PR lands first is a judgement about how they conflict, so the workflow never sets it — it only **clears** it, the moment the PR stops being something a human could merge. |
-| `bug` / `enhancement` / `documentation` | you, on issues only — a PR's type already lives in its title. |
-
-## Issues
-
-Give issues the same care as PR titles: say the surface in the title, apply a
-`scope:` label and a type label (`bug` / `enhancement` / `documentation`) when
-you open one, and `blocked` when it waits on something — that is what keeps
-the board navigable as the issue count grows.
+- `scope:cli` — `bin/box`, the command surface
+- `scope:installer` — `install.sh`, versioned installs, upgrade/uninstall
+- `scope:host` — host setup, teardown, firewall, and isolation stack
+- `scope:tiers` — grant/revoke and multi-user boundaries
+- `scope:templates` — template and profile seeds
+- `scope:drill` — rehearsals, doctor, and run evidence

LABELS.md

@@ -1,181 +0,0 @@
-# Labels
-
-How this repo uses GitHub labels. The taxonomy is shared across the
-heavy-duty repos (box, rig, cast) — only the `scope:` set differs per repo,
-because it names this repo's actual surfaces.
-
-## State — who is the ball with? (PRs, exactly one)
-
-Every open PR carries exactly one `state:` label, and it answers the only
-question a board scan actually asks: *who is this PR waiting on?* The states
-mirror the review loop this repo runs — PRs open as drafts, three reviewer
-bots pick up ready PRs with reviews requested, each round is answered in a
-single reply, and a human takes the final review.
-
-| Label | Color | Waiting on | Enters when | Leaves when |
-|---|---|---|---|---|
-| `state:building` | `#FBCA04` | the coding agent, still building | PR opened as draft | marked ready + bot reviews requested |
-| `state:bots-reviewing` | `#1D76DB` | the reviewer bots to finish the round | ready with reviews requested, or fixes pushed and reviews re-requested | all three bots have reviewed the round |
-| `state:addressing` | `#D93F0B` | the coding agent to reply, fix, or ask | all bots reviewed and not all approved; or nobody was asked; or a blocker is up | the round-reply is posted and fixes pushed — and any blocker named alongside is cleared |
-| `state:needs-human` | `#8250DF` | the human reviewer | the PR **could be merged right now**: no blockers, three formal head-current approvals — and the human review is requested | merged — or changes requested, which cycles back to `state:addressing` |
-
-`bots-reviewing` and `addressing` are deliberately distinct: staleness in the
-first means *poke the bots*, staleness in the second means *the agent dropped
-the ball*. Collapsing them loses exactly the information a sweep needs.
-`bots-reviewing` therefore means strictly *a request is live and an answer is
-coming* — a PR nobody was asked to review is the agent's ball, not the bots'.
-
-## The second axis: `blocker:*`
-
-State answers *whose ball is it*. Blockers answer *what is in the way*, and
-unlike states they are *facts about the branch* — mutually independent, so a
-PR carries as many as apply.
-
-| Label | Color | Means | Clears when |
-|---|---|---|---|
-| `blocker:conflict` | `#B60205` | GitHub says `CONFLICTING` — the agent owes a **rebase** | it merges cleanly |
-| `blocker:ci-red` | `#B60205` | a check failed — the agent owes a **fix**, which a rebase will not provide | checks are green |
-| `blocker:unrequested` | `#E99695` | this head has no verdict from somebody — never reviewed, or staled by a push — and **nobody was asked** for one | reviews are requested |
-| `blocker:drill-pending` | `#B60205` | a `release` PR whose version has no drill record at [`drills/X.Y.Z.md`](drills/README.md) — the ceremony is **correct but unevidenced** | the drill is run and recorded (or a waiver is recorded) at `drills/X.Y.Z.md` |
-
-`blocker:drill-pending` is the one blocker that says the diff is *fine*. The
-version is stamped, the changelog is right, CI's other guards are green — what
-is missing is the evidence that the release was proven on real hardware, which
-[.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh](.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh) refuses
-to let a release ship without (CONTRIBUTING.md, "Releases"). Naming it
-separately from `blocker:ci-red` matters because the two owe different work: a
-red check is a fix in the branch, a pending drill is an hour on a real host.
-
-It must be **created by a maintainer account** — the bot account gets a `403`
-creating labels, so the labels workflow's bootstrap dispatch cannot mint it.
-Until it exists in the repo, `blocked` stands in: it is the closest true thing
-(the PR is waiting on something outside itself) and, usefully, the staleness
-sweep already skips it, so a release parked overnight on a drill does not
-collect a `stale`.
-
-One rule joins the axes: **`state:needs-human` requires zero blockers.** Any
-blocker means the work is the agent's, whatever the review round says.
-
-This split exists because the single-label version kept lying. Independent
-facts were projected onto one totally-ordered label, so one always had to win
-and the losers vanished off the board: a PR that was *both* conflicted and red
-could only say one of them, and `needs-rebase` told an agent to rebase when
-what it actually owed was a bug fix. Precedence between two blockers is not a
-question a set has to answer, which is why every ordering bug this machine has
-had — `needs-human` surviving a conflict, `MISSING` swallowing `STALE` — lived
-on the axis that had to be totally ordered.
-
-`state:needs-rebase` was the first attempt at this and is **retired**; the
-reconciler strips it on sight so no PR is left carrying a label nothing
-recomputes.
-
-**`state:needs-human` means one thing: a human could merge this right now.**
-The label is the only signal a maintainer scanning the board (or a phone)
-actually reads, and one that says "your turn" on an unmergeable PR is worse
-than no label at all. So beyond the blockers, one review fact also outranks an
-explicit human request:
-
-- **nobody reviewed *this* head** — every approval staled by a push → `state:addressing`,
-  because the agent owes a re-request
-
-That case is more dangerous than any blocker: a blocked PR at least shows an X
-or a disabled merge button, while a staled-approval PR reads green, mergeable
-and "waiting on the human" over code no reviewer has seen.
-
-`UNKNOWN` mergeability is deliberately **not** treated as a conflict. GitHub
-reports it for about a minute after every merge while it recomputes, and
-flapping every open PR through `blocker:conflict` on each merge would be worse
-than the bug this fixes. A failed read of either branch fact degrades to the
-same "do not know" value, for the same reason.
-
-An *unfinished* round still yields to an explicit human request — a maintainer
-pulling a PR to themselves early is a deliberate act. `MISSING` (nobody has
-reviewed yet) and `STALE` (everyone reviewed something else) are different
-facts and are treated differently.
-
-## Cross-cutting (PRs and issues)
-
-| Label | Color | Meaning |
-|---|---|---|
-| `stale` | `#B60205` | No activity for 48h. Sweep-managed, never hand-applied. `state:building` + `stale` is precisely a forgotten draft. |
-| `blocked` | `#6A737D` | Waiting on another PR or issue to land first. Quiet *legitimately* — the staleness sweep skips it. |
-| `release` | `#0E8A16` | Release flow, versioning, and packaging work. |
-| `merge-next` | `#0E8A16` | Head of the merge queue — **merge this one next**. Queue order is *intent* (which PR lands first, given how they conflict), so the reconciler never sets it: you or the agent maintaining the queue do. The reconciler only **clears** it, the moment the PR stops being something a human could merge — so it cannot go stale the way `state:needs-human` did. |
-
-## Scope — which surface? (PRs and issues, any number)
-
-All scopes share one calm color, `#C5DEF5` — scopes locate, states alert.
-
-| Label | Covers |
-|---|---|
-| `scope:cli` | `bin/box` — the command surface itself |
-| `scope:installer` | `install.sh`, the versioned install layout, upgrade/uninstall |
-| `scope:host` | `host/` — setup-host, teardown, the firewall and isolation stack |
-| `scope:tiers` | the restricted tier — grant/revoke, multi-user semantics |
-| `scope:templates` | `templates/` — the box seeds |
-| `scope:drill` | `drill/` — the rehearsals, doctor, RUNS.md |
-
-## Issue types
-
-`bug`, `enhancement`, `documentation` — issues only. PRs carry their type in
-the conventional title (`feat:`, `fix:`, `docs:`), so typing a PR with a label
-would just say the same thing twice, drifting apart eventually.
-
-## Maintenance
-
-State labels are machine-owned, with exactly one exception. Every state above
-is derivable from GitHub's own facts — the draft flag, requested reviewers,
-review states, push timestamps — so the labels workflow
-([.github/workflows/labels.yml](.github/workflows/labels.yml)) recomputes the
-state and reconciles labels statelessly, on PR events (label changes included)
-plus a 15-minute cron. A hand-moved label is a lie waiting to happen; the
-workflow asserts the effective state instead.
-
-The exception is `state:needs-human`, which the author sets at handoff
-([CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md), step 6). That is an optimistic write, not
-a transfer of ownership: because `pull_request_target: labeled` wakes the
-workflow, the author's own label write fires the sweep that validates it, and
-a handoff that had not earned the label is corrected within seconds.
-
-It exists because the wake signal was missing. There is no
-`pull_request_review_target` — on fork PRs, which is all of them here,
-`pull_request_review` runs read-only and cannot label anything — so the moment
-the label becomes true, the third approval landing, fired nothing at all. What
-was left was the `*/15` cron, and GitHub deprioritises short intervals hard
-enough that the delivered rate is closer to hourly. The label could therefore
-lag the round it described by hours, worst on the quietest repo: every sweep
-reconciles the whole board, so a busy repo stays fresh by piggybacking on
-unrelated PR events, while a quiet one depends on the cron most and receives
-it least. `scope:` labels on PRs are applied from the changed
-paths by actions/labeler ([.github/labeler.yml](.github/labeler.yml));
-[CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) says who sets what.
-
-The same workflow bootstraps the taxonomy: a manual dispatch creates any
-missing label idempotently. To create them by hand (needs push access):
-
-```sh
-gh label create "state:building"       --color FBCA04 --description "PR is a draft — the coding agent is still building" --force
-gh label create "state:bots-reviewing" --color 1D76DB --description "Waiting on the bot reviewers to finish the round" --force
-gh label create "state:addressing"     --color D93F0B --description "All bots reviewed — coding agent owes the single reply + fixes" --force
-gh label create "blocker:conflict"     --color B60205 --description "Does not merge — the branch conflicts and the agent owes a rebase" --force
-gh label create "blocker:ci-red"       --color B60205 --description "A check is failing — the agent owes a fix (not a rebase)" --force
-gh label create "blocker:unrequested"  --color E99695 --description "Somebody still owes a verdict and nobody was asked for one" --force
-# retired — the reconciler strips it; delete it once no PR carries it
-# gh label delete "state:needs-rebase"
-gh label create "state:needs-human"    --color 8250DF --description "No blockers, all bots approve — waiting on the human reviewer" --force
-gh label create "merge-next"           --color 0E8A16 --description "Head of the merge queue — merge this one next (set by hand/agent, cleared here)" --force
-gh label create "stale"                --color B60205 --description "No activity for 48h — needs a poke (sweep-managed)" --force
-gh label create "blocked"              --color 6A737D --description "Waiting on another PR or issue to land first" --force
-gh label create "release"              --color 0E8A16 --description "Release flow and version/packaging work" --force
-gh label create "scope:cli"            --color C5DEF5 --description "bin/box — the command surface" --force
-gh label create "scope:installer"      --color C5DEF5 --description "install.sh, versioned installs, upgrade/uninstall" --force
-gh label create "scope:host"           --color C5DEF5 --description "host/ — setup, teardown, firewall, isolation stack" --force
-gh label create "scope:tiers"          --color C5DEF5 --description "restricted tier — grant/revoke, multi-user" --force
-gh label create "scope:templates"      --color C5DEF5 --description "templates/ — the box seeds" --force
-gh label create "scope:drill"          --color C5DEF5 --description "drill/ — rehearsals, doctor, RUNS.md" --force
-# delete is not an upsert: a label that is already gone exits non-zero. Swallow
-# that, so this block converges on re-run instead of erroring after first success.
-for L in duplicate invalid question wontfix "help wanted" "good first issue"; do
-  gh label delete "$L" --yes 2>/dev/null || true
-done
-```

README.md

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 **Headless, trust-less, throwaway dev VMs.** One command mints a fresh,
 network-isolated Incus box from a **template**; the coding-agent templates
 hand you a CLI agent on Debian 13 — `claude-box` (Claude Code), `codex-box`
-(OpenAI Codex), `grok-box` (xAI Grok) — **box mints, [rig](https://github.com/heavy-duty/rig)
+(OpenAI Codex), `grok-box` (xAI Grok), `kimi-box` (Moonshot Kimi) — **box mints, [rig](https://github.com/heavy-duty/rig)
 converges**: the template is a thin seed, and the agent tooling lands via a
 creds-free `rig bootstrap` role auto-run at mint
 ([#81](https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/issues/81)). The box is the product
@@ -222,7 +222,7 @@ box shell work                              # enter as the template's user
 ```
 
 Pick whichever coding-agent template you like — `claude-box`, `codex-box`,
-`grok-box` — or `blank` for none. Inside the box, authenticate as needed. The
+`grok-box`, `kimi-box` — or `blank` for none. Inside the box, authenticate as needed. The
 `claude-box` template looks like this; the others follow the same shape with
 their own login step:
 
@@ -245,6 +245,7 @@ another is just another directory. What ships today:
 | `claude-box`  | Claude Code, creds-free — where this project started               |
 | `codex-box`   | OpenAI Codex CLI, creds-free                                       |
 | `grok-box`    | xAI Grok CLI, creds-free                                           |
+| `kimi-box`    | Moonshot Kimi CLI, creds-free                                      |
 | `staging-box` | Server-class: docker + sshd hardening via rig; VM-only, autostarts |
 
 **Templates are thin seeds; rig does the becoming**
@@ -256,7 +257,7 @@ pin tokens below). The seed is deliberately small — the tenant user, tmux,
 and [rig](https://github.com/heavy-duty/rig) preinstalled, nothing that
 joins a tailnet or admits credentials — and after cloud-init settles, box
 auto-runs the template's **creds-free** tenant role inside the guest
-(`rig bootstrap claude-box` / `codex-box` / `grok-box` / `staging-box`,
+(`rig bootstrap claude-box` / `codex-box` / `grok-box` / `kimi-box` / `staging-box`,
 [rig#31](https://github.com/heavy-duty/rig/issues/31); the roles carry a
 family suffix — `-box` for box tenants, `-server` for fleet machines — and a
 template is named for the role it converges,

VERSION

@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.9.0
+0.9.1-dev

bin/box

@@ -265,7 +265,7 @@ one of its snapshots — login state, git creds and clones carry over,
 isolation is preserved, and the clone knows its template's user without
 being told.
 
-A tenant template (claude-box, codex-box, grok-box, staging-box) is a THIN seed — the user,
+A tenant template (claude-box, codex-box, grok-box, kimi-box, staging-box) is a THIN seed — the user,
 tmux, rig (#81) — and after cloud-init box auto-runs the creds-free tenant
 role inside it ('rig bootstrap <role>', rig#31): that role installs the
 agent CLI / server posture and the agent-context file. rig is preinstalled
@@ -1845,13 +1845,18 @@ box_user() {
 }
 
 cmd_shell() { incus exec "$inst" -- sudo -u "$(box_user "$inst")" -i; }
-cmd_exec()  { incus exec "$inst" -- sudo -u "$(box_user "$inst")" -i "${args[@]:1}"; }
+# sudo -i joins its command argv into one shell string. In that join, a
+# backslash-newline becomes a shell continuation and silently deletes the
+# newline from a multi-line `box exec` payload (#169). Keep the login
+# environment explicitly, but let the inner shell exec the original argv.
+cmd_exec()  { incus exec "$inst" -- sudo -u "$(box_user "$inst")" -H bash -lc 'cd ~ && exec "$@"' _ "${args[@]:1}"; }
 
 # A shell is a child of the exec connection: drop the terminal and everything
 # in it is SIGHUP'd — a long Claude run dies with it. tmux 'new-session -A'
 # attaches when the session exists and creates it when it doesn't, so starting
 # work and reattaching after a disconnect are the same command. 'shell' stays
-# bare on purpose — two verbs, two contracts.
+# bare on purpose — two verbs, two contracts. Unlike cmd_exec, tmux has no
+# caller-supplied command payload; its session name is validated below.
 cmd_tmux() {
   local session="${args[1]:-main}"
   case "$session" in

docs/box-design.md

@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 # box design
 
 `box` is a CLI that mints and manages **trust-less, network-isolated VMs
-with a coding agent installed** (`claude-box`, `codex-box`, `grok-box`, or
-`blank` for none). It is infrastructure, not a project provisioner.
+with a coding agent installed** (`claude-box`, `codex-box`, `grok-box`,
+`kimi-box`, or `blank` for none). It is infrastructure, not a project provisioner.
 
 See issue #3 for the full reframe and rationale. This doc captures the durable
 design decisions.
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ A template is a **thin, creds-free seed** — base image, the tenant user,
 tmux, and [rig](https://github.com/heavy-duty/rig) preinstalled — and what
 the box *becomes* lives in rig's bootstrap roles (rig#31): box auto-runs the
 template's creds-free tenant role after cloud-init (`rig bootstrap claude-box`
-/ `codex-box` / `grok-box` / `staging-box` — the roles carry a family suffix,
+/ `codex-box` / `grok-box` / `kimi-box` / `staging-box` — the roles carry a family suffix,
 `-box` for box tenants and `-server` for fleet machines, and the templates are
 named for the roles they converge, rig#76), which installs the agent CLI or
 server posture. The split is deliberate: cloud-init is a first-boot one-shot —

docs/box-recipe.md

@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@
 
 `box` mints trust-less, creds-free, isolated VMs with a coding agent already
 installed (`box new/shell/snapshot/restore/exec/down/start/rm/status`) — the
-`claude-box`, `codex-box`, and `grok-box` templates each ship a CLI agent. The
-tool knows **nothing** about your project. There is no `install` step and no
+`claude-box`, `codex-box`, `grok-box`, and `kimi-box` templates each ship a
+CLI agent. The tool knows **nothing** about your project. There is no `install` step and no
 host-run setup script.
 
 A project makes itself easy to stand up inside a box by shipping an optional

drill/drill.sh

@@ -71,8 +71,8 @@ wait_box() {   # poll until exec answers (the VM agent can take a while), ~4 min
 # Read from inside a box WITHOUT ever hanging the drill.
 #
 # Two traps, both hit for real:
-#   · 'box exec' becomes 'sudo -u <template user> -i' — a LOGIN zsh (oh-my-zsh and
-#     all). Fine for a person, needless machinery for a probe.
+#   · 'box exec' crosses a login-user shell boundary. Fine for a person,
+#     needless machinery for a probe.
 #   · $( ) waits for stdout to CLOSE, not for the command to exit. A grandchild
 #     inheriting the exec session's stdout keeps the substitution open forever,
 #     and 'timeout' does not save you: it kills the wrapper, not the holder of
@@ -492,10 +492,10 @@ fi
 
 # --- templates: the mint surface is itself a surface to test ----------------
 tpl_missing=""
-for t in blank claude-box codex-box grok-box; do
+for t in blank claude-box codex-box grok-box kimi-box; do
   box templates 2>/dev/null | grep -q "^  $t" || tpl_missing="$tpl_missing $t"
 done
-[ -z "$tpl_missing" ] && ok "templates: lists blank, claude-box, codex-box, grok-box" \
+[ -z "$tpl_missing" ] && ok "templates: lists blank, claude-box, codex-box, grok-box, kimi-box" \
                       || no "templates listing is missing:$tpl_missing"
 box new --name tpl --template nosuch 2>&1 | grep -q 'no such template' \
   && ok "unknown template refused, points at 'box templates'" || no "an unknown template was not refused"

drill/multiuser.sh

@@ -202,6 +202,31 @@ fi
 rm -f "$mintlog"
 as_u "$U1" box list 2>/dev/null | grep -q '^mine ' && ok "(b) box list shows mine" || no "(b) box list does not show mine"
 as_u "$U1" box exec mine -- true >/dev/null 2>&1 && ok "(b) box exec mine -- true" || no "(b) box exec failed"
+
+# #169: compare the new explicit login-user boundary with sudo -i while the
+# latter is still safe (one fixed `env` argv), then exercise the exact
+# silent-success multiline shape that sudo -i used to corrupt.
+target_user="$(as_u "$U1" incus config get mine user.box.user)"
+legacy_env="$(as_u "$U1" incus exec mine -- sudo -u "$target_user" -i env \
+  | grep -E '^(USER|LOGNAME|SHELL|HOME|PWD|PATH)=' | sort)"
+exec_env="$(as_u "$U1" box exec mine -- env \
+  | grep -E '^(USER|LOGNAME|SHELL|HOME|PWD|PATH)=' | sort)"
+[ "$exec_env" = "$legacy_env" ] \
+  && ok "(b) box exec preserves cross-user login environment (USER/LOGNAME/SHELL/HOME/PWD/PATH)" \
+  || {
+    no "(b) box exec changed the cross-user login environment (#169)"
+    diff -u <(printf '%s\n' "$legacy_env") <(printf '%s\n' "$exec_env") | sed 's/^/        /' || true
+  }
+as_u "$U1" box exec mine -- bash -lc '
+  set -o errexit -o nounset -o pipefail
+  touch /tmp/box-169-step-one
+  touch /tmp/box-169-step-two
+' >/dev/null 2>&1 \
+  && as_u "$U1" box exec mine -- test -f /tmp/box-169-step-one \
+  && as_u "$U1" box exec mine -- test -f /tmp/box-169-step-two \
+  && ok "(b) box exec preserves multiline commands, including the silent-success set shape" \
+  || no "(b) box exec corrupted a multiline command (#169)"
+
 as_u "$U1" box info mine 2>/dev/null | grep -qF "$(boxnet_pfx)" \
   && ok "(g) box info shows a boxnet ($(boxnet_pfx)x) address — placed on the hardened network" \
   || no "(g) mine has no boxnet address in box info"

drills/README.md

@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ drills/0.9.0-rc1.md
 ```
 
 The name must match the contents of `VERSION` exactly.
-[.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh](../.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh)
+[the pinned ceremony drill-recorded action](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony/tree/0.1.0/actions/drill-recorded)
 refuses any tree with a bare `VERSION` that has no such file, or whose file is
 blank. A `-dev` tree passes with nothing to assert.
 

templates/kimi-box/box.env

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# The kimi-box template — a thin, creds-free seed (#81): Debian 13, the
+# 'kimi' user, tmux and rig. What the box BECOMES — the Moonshot Kimi CLI,
+# docker, the agent-context file with its #80 guard — is rig's job:
+# box auto-runs 'rig bootstrap kimi-box' after mint (heavy-duty/rig#31,
+# the role itself: heavy-duty/rig#109).
+# The template is named for the role it converges, suffix and all
+# (heavy-duty/rig#76): rig's roles carry a family suffix — '-server' for
+# fleet machines, '-box' for box tenants — and a seed that named the bare
+# 'kimi' would ask a post-rename rig for a role that no longer exists.
+# KEY="value" only. Parsed against an allowlist, never sourced; there is no
+# key for a network or a security flag, on purpose — the shared box-net
+# profile is the placement contract and no template can weaken it.
+# BOX_USER must match the user user-data.yaml creates (the duplication is
+# deliberate and by hand) — and it is the tenant user the rig role converges
+# (rig dies loudly if the seed did not create it).
+BOX_DESCRIPTION="Moonshot Kimi CLI on Debian 13, creds-free — box mints, rig converges"
+BOX_IMAGE="images:debian/13/cloud"
+BOX_USER="kimi"
+BOX_CPU="4"
+BOX_MEMORY="8GiB"
+BOX_DISK="60GiB"
+BOX_BOOTSTRAP_ROLE="kimi-box"

templates/kimi-box/user-data.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+#cloud-config
+# A thin, creds-free seed (#81): the tenant user, tmux (#65), and rig —
+# nothing that joins a tailnet or admits credentials, no agent CLI, no
+# docker, no context-file heredoc. Everything this box becomes comes from
+# 'rig bootstrap kimi-box' (heavy-duty/rig#31), which box auto-runs after
+# mint; the agent-context file — including the #80 guard (never run
+# 'box setup-host' or the drill inside a box) — is rendered by that role,
+# once, instead of being copy-pasted per template.
+users:
+  - name: kimi
+    shell: /bin/bash
+    sudo: "ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL"
+    lock_passwd: true
+package_update: true
+# tmux: 'box tmux' runs 'tmux new-session' INSIDE the box (#65).
+# curl + ca-certificates: the rig installer below rides them, and a bare
+# cloud image is not guaranteed to ship either.
+packages:
+  - tmux
+  - curl
+  - ca-certificates
+runcmd:
+  # Preinstall rig so the box can converge — and re-converge — via
+  # 'rig bootstrap kimi-box'. @RIG_REPO@/@RIG_REF@ are the pin point (#81):
+  # box substitutes them at mint from the RIG_REPO/RIG_REF environment
+  # (default heavy-duty/rig @ main — unpinned, tracking main, the same
+  # honest edge as rig's own unpinned box install, until rig#32 ships a
+  # release flow). The pin covers both the installer fetched AND the tree
+  # it installs, so a branch under review is testable end to end.
+  # HOME=/root: cloud-init runs runcmd as root but with NO $HOME in the
+  # environment, and the rig installer (set -u) reads $HOME for its DEST —
+  # measured live: the mint died with "HOME: unbound variable" without it.
+  - curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/@RIG_REPO@/@RIG_REF@/install.sh | HOME=/root RIG_REPO="@RIG_REPO@" RIG_REF="@RIG_REF@" bash

test/cli.sh

@@ -68,6 +68,55 @@ check "unknown flag on list exits 2"           2 "unknown option"   "$BOX" list
 # A flag that needs a value and gets none.
 check "--name with no value exits 2"           2 "--name needs a value" "$BOX" new --name
 
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# box exec — preserve command argv across the login-environment boundary
+# (#169). `sudo -i <command...>` joins argv into one shell string; its escaped
+# newline becomes a continuation, so a multi-line body can fuse into a
+# different valid command and still return 0. Drive cmd_exec through a fake
+# incus boundary that validates the wrapper shape and then executes it. This
+# test therefore fails against the old -i implementation before trusting the
+# marker files.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+EXECFN="$(mktemp)"
+grep '^cmd_exec()' "$BOX" > "$EXECFN"
+check "box exec: cmd_exec extracted (guards the grep)" 0 "exec \"\$@\"" cat "$EXECFN"
+check "box exec: extracted function is valid bash" 0 "" bash -n "$EXECFN"
+check "box exec: command argv never rides sudo -i" 1 "" grep -q -- ' -i ' "$EXECFN"
+
+exec_fixture() { # exec_fixture <command> [arg...]
+  bash -c '
+    set -e
+    . "$0"
+    box_user() { printf "%s\n" fixture-user; }
+    incus() {
+      [ "$1" = exec ] && [ "$2" = fixture ] && [ "$3" = -- ]
+      shift 3
+      [ "$1" = sudo ] && [ "$2" = -u ] && [ "$3" = fixture-user ] &&
+        [ "$4" = -H ]
+      shift 4
+      "$@"
+    }
+    inst=fixture
+    args=(fixture "$@")
+    cmd_exec
+  ' "$EXECFN" "$@"
+}
+
+EXEC_STATE="$(mktemp -d)"
+exec_body="set -euo pipefail
+touch '$EXEC_STATE/step-one'
+touch '$EXEC_STATE/step-two'"
+check "box exec: silent-success multiline body executes each statement" 0 "" \
+  exec_fixture bash -lc "$exec_body"
+check "box exec: multiline step one was not fused into set argv" 0 "" \
+  test -f "$EXEC_STATE/step-one"
+check "box exec: multiline step two was not fused into set argv" 0 "" \
+  test -f "$EXEC_STATE/step-two"
+check "box exec: plain argv remains separate" 0 "one argument" \
+  exec_fixture printf '%s\n' "one argument"
+rm -rf "$EXEC_STATE"
+rm -f "$EXECFN"
+
 # ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # A shim `id` on PATH: lets us drive install.sh's DEST branch with a canned uid +
 # group output, exactly the way rig drives assert_runner_repo against fixtures.

test/labels-reconcile.sh

@@ -1,416 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-set -euo pipefail
-
-# Fixture tests for the labels-reconcile state machine: a comment is a
-# non-verdict whatever its body says (the AUTHOR escalates by requesting the
-# human), a stale approval does not promote unreviewed code, and an explicit
-# human request outranks everything.
-# Dependency-free beyond jq; no network, no daemon — pure decide_state.
-
-cd "$(dirname "$0")/.."
-# shellcheck source=.github/scripts/labels-reconcile.sh
-. .github/scripts/labels-reconcile.sh
-
-# The DRAFT/HEAD_SHA/REQUESTED/REVIEWS_JSON assignments below are the state
-# machine's inputs, consumed inside the sourced decide_state — not unused.
-# shellcheck disable=SC2034
-BOT1="${BOTS[0]}" BOT2="${BOTS[1]}" BOT3="${BOTS[2]}"
-pass=0 fail=0
-
-expect() { # $1 = description, $2 = want, $3 = got
-  if [ "$2" = "$3" ]; then
-    pass=$((pass + 1))
-  else
-    fail=$((fail + 1))
-    printf 'FAIL: %s — want %s, got %s\n' "$1" "$2" "$3"
-  fi
-}
-
-rev() { # $1=login $2=state $3=commit $4=body $5=submitted_at → one review object
-  jq -n --arg u "$1" --arg s "$2" --arg c "$3" --arg b "$4" --arg t "$5" \
-    '{user: {login: $u}, state: $s, commit_id: $c, body: $b, submitted_at: $t}'
-}
-
-reviews() { jq -s '.' <<<"$*"; } # collect review objects into an array
-
-# -- drafts are building, whoever is requested --------------------------------
-DRAFT=true HEAD_SHA=head1 REQUESTED="" REVIEWS_JSON='[]'
-expect "draft PR is building" state:building "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- fresh ready PR with bots requested ---------------------------------------
-DRAFT=false REQUESTED="$BOT1
-$BOT2
-$BOT3" REVIEWS_JSON='[]'
-expect "requested bots mean bots-reviewing" state:bots-reviewing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- a bot that never reviewed keeps the round open ---------------------------
-#    With a live request that is the bots' ball; with NO request outstanding it
-#    is the agent's, because nothing is coming until somebody asks.
-REQUESTED="$BOT3" REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)")"
-expect "a missing bot WITH a live request is bots-reviewing" state:bots-reviewing "$(decide_state)"
-REQUESTED=""
-expect "...but with nobody asked it is the agent's ball" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-expect "...and the blocker names the stall" blocker:unrequested "$(blockers)"
-
-# -- a comment is a non-verdict, agreement body or not: the author escalates --
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" COMMENTED head1 "✅ **Reviewed — I agree with everything.**" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED  head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED  head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "comment-only agreement still parks on the author" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-# ...and the author's escalation — requesting the human — flips it
-REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-expect "author escalation flips to needs-human" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-REQUESTED=""
-
-# -- three formal approvals need no author judgment ---------------------------
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "three formal approvals reach needs-human" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- a comment WITHOUT a verdict parks the PR on the agent --------------------
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" COMMENTED head1 "🔧 Reviewed — I agree with most; feedback below." t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED  head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED  head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "comment without verdict is addressing" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- changes requested blocks, at any head ------------------------------------
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" CHANGES_REQUESTED old1 "blockers below" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "changes-requested blocks even from an old head" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- a stale approval must not promote unreviewed code ------------------------
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED old1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "stale approval is addressing (agent owes re-request)" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- a re-requested bot reopens the round even with an old approval on file ---
-REQUESTED="$BOT1"
-expect "re-requested bot means bots-reviewing" state:bots-reviewing "$(decide_state)"
-REQUESTED=""
-
-# -- only the LATEST review per bot counts ------------------------------------
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" CHANGES_REQUESTED head1 "blockers" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t3)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t4)")"
-expect "later approval supersedes earlier block" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- an explicit human request outranks the bot rounds ------------------------
-REQUESTED="$HUMAN" REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" COMMENTED head1 "feedback, no verdict" t1)")"
-expect "human requested outranks bots" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-REQUESTED=""
-
-# -- human CHANGES_REQUESTED puts the ball back on the agent ------------------
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)" \
-  "$(rev "$HUMAN" CHANGES_REQUESTED head1 "not yet" t4)")"
-expect "human block with bots approving is addressing" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-# ...and re-requesting the human hands it back to them
-REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-expect "re-requested human is needs-human again" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-REQUESTED=""
-
-# -- an old human comment must not wedge the handoff (codex, #85 round 3) -----
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$HUMAN" COMMENTED old1 "early thoughts" t0)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "old human comment + three approvals is needs-human" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-expect "old human comment still needs a fresh request" needed "$(human_request_needed && echo needed || echo not-needed)"
-# ...a stale human APPROVAL likewise needs a re-request for the new head
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$HUMAN" APPROVED old1 "" t0)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "stale human approval needs a fresh request" needed "$(human_request_needed && echo needed || echo not-needed)"
-# ...a HEAD-CURRENT human approval needs nothing more
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$HUMAN" APPROVED head1 "" t0)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)")"
-expect "head-current human approval needs no request" not-needed "$(human_request_needed && echo needed || echo not-needed)"
-# ...and a live request suppresses re-requesting
-REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-expect "live human request suppresses re-request" not-needed "$(human_request_needed && echo needed || echo not-needed)"
-REQUESTED=""
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# #136: state:needs-human must mean "a human could merge this RIGHT NOW".
-# Both cases below were observed live in this repo on 2026-07-20, and both
-# showed state:needs-human while being unmergeable in different ways.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-ALL_APPROVE="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED head1 "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED head1 "" t3)")"
-
-# -- flavour 1: not mergeable. The merge button is disabled, yet the board
-#    said "your turn" on #119/#120/#127 for hours. The branch fact now rides
-#    the blocker axis; the state says whose ball it is, which is the agent's.
-DRAFT=false HEAD_SHA=head1 REQUESTED="" REVIEWS_JSON="$ALL_APPROVE" MERGEABLE=CONFLICTING CHECKS=SUCCESS
-expect "a CONFLICTING PR is the agent's, not the human's" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-expect "...and says WHY on the blocker axis" blocker:conflict "$(blockers)"
-REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-expect "...even with the human explicitly requested" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- red CI is the same claim, but NOT the same work: a rebase does not fix a
-#    failing test. Collapsing both into one needs-rebase label told the agent
-#    to do the wrong thing, which is why the axis split exists.
-REQUESTED="" MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=FAILURE
-expect "a red PR is the agent's" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-expect "...and is distinguishable from a conflict" blocker:ci-red "$(blockers)"
-REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-expect "...and a human request does not override red CI" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- both at once. The single-axis design could not say this at all: one label
-#    had to win, and the loser silently vanished off the board.
-REQUESTED="" MERGEABLE=CONFLICTING CHECKS=FAILURE
-expect "a conflicted AND red PR reports both blockers" "blocker:conflict
-blocker:ci-red" "$(blockers)"
-expect "...and is still just the agent's ball" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- UNKNOWN is NOT unmergeable. GitHub reports it for ~a minute after every
-#    merge while it recomputes; treating it as broken would flap every open PR
-#    on each merge — worse than the bug being fixed.
-REQUESTED="" MERGEABLE=UNKNOWN CHECKS=PENDING
-expect "UNKNOWN mergeability blocks nothing" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-expect "...and raises no blocker" "" "$(blockers)"
-
-# -- blocker:unrequested — the stalled round. Nobody owes an answer because
-#    nobody was ever asked, yet the board read "waiting on the bots" until
-#    `stale` noticed 48h later.
-MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=SUCCESS REQUESTED="" REVIEWS_JSON='[]'
-expect "ready, nobody asked, nothing reviewed raises unrequested" blocker:unrequested "$(blockers)"
-# ...the partial case is equally stalled: one verdict in, nobody asked for the rest
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)")"
-expect "one bot in, none requested is still unrequested" blocker:unrequested "$(blockers)"
-# ...a STALE round with nobody asked is the same debt, and arguably worse: the
-#    page carries approvals that no longer describe the tree. Guarding on
-#    MISSING alone let this one through with no blocker at all.
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED oldhead "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED oldhead "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED oldhead "" t3)")"
-expect "a stale round with nobody asked is unrequested too" blocker:unrequested "$(blockers)"
-expect "...and is still the agent's ball" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-# ...but a live request means an answer IS coming
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)")"
-REQUESTED="$BOT2"
-expect "a live bot request is not a stalled round" "" "$(blockers)"
-# ...and a draft is exempt: the bots ignore drafts by design
-DRAFT=true REQUESTED="" REVIEWS_JSON='[]'
-expect "a draft with nobody asked is not stalled" "" "$(blockers)"
-# ...as is an explicit human request — claiming a PR early is deliberate
-DRAFT=false REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-expect "an early human claim is not a stalled round" "" "$(blockers)"
-REQUESTED="" REVIEWS_JSON="$ALL_APPROVE" MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=SUCCESS
-
-# -- flavour 2 (the dangerous one): mergeable, green, human requested, and
-#    NOBODY has reviewed this head. Observed on #119 after a rebase: every
-#    signal read "merge me" and nothing on the page contradicted it.
-MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=SUCCESS REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED oldhead "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED oldhead "" t2)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED oldhead "" t3)")"
-expect "stale approvals outrank the human request (nobody reviewed this tree)" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- ...and a round that is BOTH unfinished and staled is still the agent's.
-#    Deciding inside the bot loop made this depend on BOTS order: the MISSING
-#    returned before any later bot's STALE was read, so the mixed round came
-#    out needs-human with nothing bound to the head. Pinned at both ends of
-#    the array, because the whole failure was one of ordering.
-MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=SUCCESS REQUESTED="$HUMAN"
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews \
-  "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED oldhead "" t1)" \
-  "$(rev "$BOT2" APPROVED oldhead "" t2)")"
-expect "stale approvals + a bot yet to review is addressing, not needs-human" \
-  state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews "$(rev "$BOT3" APPROVED oldhead "" t3)")"
-expect "...and the same when the stale verdict is the LAST bot in BOTS" \
-  state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# -- but an UNFINISHED round still yields to an explicit human request: a
-#    maintainer pulling a PR to themselves early is deliberate, and was the
-#    original precedence. MISSING differs from STALE — nobody has reviewed
-#    YET, versus everyone reviewed something else.
-REVIEWS_JSON="$(reviews "$(rev "$BOT1" APPROVED head1 "" t1)")"
-expect "an unfinished round still yields to an explicit human request" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-REQUESTED=""
-expect "...and without that request the agent owes the ask" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# checks_state: the rollup classifier. It lived inline in main() for the first
-# round of this PR, which is why nothing here caught it calling ERROR,
-# CANCELLED and STALE green. Extracted so the enum can be pinned down.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-rollup() { jq -n --argjson c "$1" '{statusCheckRollup: $c}'; }
-run_() { jq -n --arg n "$1" --arg o "$2" --arg t "${3:-2026-07-20T15:00:00Z}" \
-  '{__typename:"CheckRun", workflowName:"ci", name:$n, conclusion:$o, completedAt:$t}'; }
-ctx_() { jq -n --arg n "$1" --arg s "$2" --arg t "${3:-2026-07-20T15:00:00Z}" \
-  '{__typename:"StatusContext", context:$n, state:$s, createdAt:$t}'; }
-
-expect "no checks at all is NONE" NONE "$(rollup '[]' | checks_state)"
-# A failed fetch leaves no rollup KEY; a PR with no checks leaves an empty
-# ARRAY. Collapsing the two let an API hiccup read as "nothing is failing" —
-# the same unknown-certified-as-green shape as #136, in the one place that
-# fix did not look. The caller skips an UNREADABLE PR rather than relabelling.
-expect "a failed read is UNREADABLE, not NONE" UNREADABLE "$(echo '{}' | checks_state)"
-expect "...and a real empty rollup is still NONE" NONE \
-  "$(echo '{"mergeable":"MERGEABLE","statusCheckRollup":[]}' | checks_state)"
-expect "all green is SUCCESS" SUCCESS \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b SUCCESS)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "a queued run is PENDING" PENDING \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b QUEUED)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "a plain failure is FAILURE" FAILURE \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b FAILURE)]" | checks_state)"
-
-# -- the round-1 gap: outcomes that are neither success nor pending, and that
-#    leave a required check unsatisfied. All three reached the old `else`.
-expect "a commit status ERROR blocks" FAILURE \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(ctx_ lint ERROR)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "a CANCELLED run blocks" FAILURE \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b CANCELLED)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "a STALE run blocks" FAILURE \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b STALE)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "an outcome the enum does not know blocks, it does not pass" FAILURE \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b SOME_FUTURE_STATE)]" | checks_state)"
-
-# -- NEUTRAL and SKIPPED satisfy branch protection; path-filtered jobs skip
-#    constantly, and calling that red would park every PR on the agent.
-expect "NEUTRAL and SKIPPED are not failures" SUCCESS \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b NEUTRAL),$(run_ c SKIPPED)]" | checks_state)"
-
-# -- latest-wins. The rollup keeps superseded runs, so this PR's own tip
-#    carried a CANCELLED `scope` beside the SUCCESS `scope` that replaced it.
-#    Without collapsing, making CANCELLED block would strand it forever.
-expect "a re-run supersedes the cancelled original" SUCCESS \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ scope CANCELLED 2026-07-20T15:19:39Z),\
-              $(run_ scope SUCCESS   2026-07-20T15:19:45Z)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "...and the reverse order is not a re-run passing, it is one failing" FAILURE \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ scope SUCCESS   2026-07-20T15:19:39Z),\
-              $(run_ scope CANCELLED 2026-07-20T15:19:45Z)]" | checks_state)"
-# same job name in a different workflow is a different context, not a re-run
-expect "same name in another workflow does not supersede" FAILURE \
-  "$(rollup "[$(jq -n '{__typename:"CheckRun",workflowName:"labels",name:"scope",conclusion:"FAILURE",completedAt:"2026-07-20T15:00:00Z"}'),\
-              $(run_ scope SUCCESS 2026-07-20T15:19:45Z)]" | checks_state)"
-
-# -- a run still IN FLIGHT. `run_()` cannot express this: it always carries a
-#    real completedAt, which is exactly why the supersede rule shipped dating
-#    runs by completion and nothing caught it. Both spellings of "no
-#    completion" are pinned, because `gh` emits the zero sentinel (a string,
-#    which `//` does not fall through) while the API emits null.
-inflight_() { jq -n --arg n "$1" --arg t "$2" --arg c "${3:-0001-01-01T00:00:00Z}" \
-  '{__typename:"CheckRun", workflowName:"ci", name:$n, status:"IN_PROGRESS",
-    conclusion:"", startedAt:$t, completedAt:(if $c == "null" then null else $c end)}'; }
-
-expect "a re-run in flight beats the success it superseded (zero sentinel)" PENDING \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ build SUCCESS 2026-07-20T15:00:00Z),\
-              $(inflight_ build 2026-07-20T15:10:00Z)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "...and the same when the absent completion is null" PENDING \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ build SUCCESS 2026-07-20T15:00:00Z),\
-              $(inflight_ build 2026-07-20T15:10:00Z null)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "a replacement in flight for a CANCELLED run is pending, not failed" PENDING \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ build CANCELLED 2026-07-20T15:00:00Z),\
-              $(inflight_ build 2026-07-20T15:10:00Z)]" | checks_state)"
-# an entry carrying no usable timestamp is treated as newest, not oldest —
-# ambiguity resolves toward "not settled" rather than toward a stale success.
-# Guarded by the sort tiebreak rather than the dating expression: reverting
-# only `at:` leaves this passing, so the two changes are separately pinned.
-expect "an undateable in-flight run is not discarded for a stale success" PENDING \
-  "$(rollup "[$(run_ build SUCCESS 2026-07-20T15:00:00Z),\
-              $(jq -n '{__typename:"CheckRun",workflowName:"ci",name:"build",conclusion:"",startedAt:null,completedAt:null}')]" \
-     | checks_state)"
-# ...and the reverse direction, which stops "in flight sorts last" being
-# widened into "in flight always wins": a run that FINISHED after an earlier
-# in-flight entry is the newer word, and the context is settled.
-expect "a finished re-run supersedes an earlier in-flight run" SUCCESS \
-  "$(rollup "[$(inflight_ build 2026-07-20T15:19:00Z),\
-              $(run_ build SUCCESS 2026-07-20T15:19:45Z)]" | checks_state)"
-
-# -- the wind-down window. A predecessor cancelled by the concurrency group
-#    does not stop the instant its replacement starts, so its completion
-#    routinely lands AFTER the successor's start — on box's aa5a6ba the
-#    replacement started 15:19:38 and the run it cancelled finished 15:19:51.
-#    Dating by "newest stamp of any kind" compares the dead run's completion
-#    against the live run's start, which is not an ordering on runs, and the
-#    predecessor wins. Every fixture above spaces completion before start, so
-#    none of them can see it. run_() cannot express the overlap either — it
-#    carries no startedAt — hence the explicit payloads.
-overlap_() { jq -n --arg n "$1" --arg o "$2" --arg s "$3" --arg c "$4" \
-  '{__typename:"CheckRun", workflowName:"ci", name:$n, conclusion:$o,
-    startedAt:$s, completedAt:$c}'; }
-expect "a predecessor finishing after its replacement started is still older (CANCELLED)" PENDING \
-  "$(rollup "[$(overlap_ scope CANCELLED 2026-07-20T15:19:00Z 2026-07-20T15:19:51Z),\
-              $(inflight_ scope 2026-07-20T15:19:38Z)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "...and the same when it finished green — mid-flight is not mergeable" PENDING \
-  "$(rollup "[$(overlap_ build SUCCESS 2026-07-20T15:19:00Z 2026-07-20T15:19:51Z),\
-              $(inflight_ build 2026-07-20T15:19:38Z)]" | checks_state)"
-
-# -- the classifier feeds the state machine: a cancelled required check must
-#    take the PR off the human's plate, which is the whole point of #136.
-DRAFT=false HEAD_SHA=head1 REQUESTED="$HUMAN" REVIEWS_JSON="$ALL_APPROVE" MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE
-CHECKS="$(rollup "[$(run_ a SUCCESS),$(run_ b CANCELLED)]" | checks_state)"
-expect "a cancelled check reaches decide_state as the agent's ball" state:addressing "$(decide_state)"
-expect "...via blocker:ci-red, not a conflict" blocker:ci-red "$(blockers)"
-
-# -- the happy path survives all of the above.
-REVIEWS_JSON="$ALL_APPROVE" MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=SUCCESS REQUESTED=""
-expect "mergeable + green + three head-current approvals is needs-human" state:needs-human "$(decide_state)"
-# -- and a draft outranks everything, including a conflict.
-DRAFT=true MERGEABLE=CONFLICTING
-expect "a draft is building even when conflicted" state:building "$(decide_state)"
-DRAFT=false MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=SUCCESS REQUESTED="" REVIEWS_JSON='[]'
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# reconcile_pr's cold-start path. Everything above tests pure functions, which
-# is exactly why a per-PR `return` in the label pre-flight got through review:
-# the fixtures could not reach it. A missing state:* label must skip the label
-# EDIT only — merge-next clearing and the stale sweep are independent of the
-# taxonomy, and stranding them reintroduced the false-invitation bug (a
-# `merge-next` claim surviving on a PR the board had moved to the agent).
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-reconcile_probe() { # $1 = REPO_LABELS content → the log lines reconcile_pr emits
-  (
-    REPO_LABELS="$1" REPO=owner/repo NOW="$(date +%s)"
-    LABELS="merge-next"                      # the PR carries a queue claim
-    DRAFT=false HEAD_SHA=head1 REQUESTED="" REVIEWS_JSON='[]'
-    MERGEABLE=MERGEABLE CHECKS=SUCCESS
-    PR_JSON='{"created_at":"2020-01-01T00:00:00Z"}'
-    run() { :; }                              # swallow mutations
-    gh() { :; }                               # no network
-    reconcile_pr 777 2>&1
-  )
-}
-
-cold="$(reconcile_probe "merge-next")"        # state:* labels absent entirely
-expect "a cold-start repo still clears merge-next" \
-  yes "$(grep -q 'cleared merge-next' <<<"$cold" && echo yes || echo no)"
-expect "...and still runs the stale sweep" \
-  yes "$(grep -q 'stale (' <<<"$cold" && echo yes || echo no)"
-expect "...while warning that the state label is missing" \
-  yes "$(grep -q "state label 'state:addressing' does not exist" <<<"$cold" && echo yes || echo no)"
-
-warm="$(reconcile_probe "$(printf 'state:addressing\nmerge-next\nstale\nblocker:unrequested')")"
-expect "a bootstrapped repo converges the state as well" \
-  yes "$(grep -q 'state -> state:addressing' <<<"$warm" && echo yes || echo no)"
-
-printf 'labels-reconcile tests: %d passed, %d failed\n' "$pass" "$fail"
-[ "$fail" -eq 0 ]

test/release.sh

@@ -1,22 +1,10 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env bash
-# The release flow (#83), proven offline. Run: bash test/release.sh
-#
-# Three surfaces: the changelog-section extraction release.yml publishes
-# (.github/scripts/release-notes.sh, driven against fixtures AND the real
-# CHANGELOG.md so the header format cannot drift under it), the
-# latest-release tag resolution install.sh defaults to (the extracted
-# function, driven against a shim curl serving canned redirects), and the
-# three install channels — REAL install.sh runs against throwaway roots,
-# with the shim curl standing in for GitHub. Nothing here touches the
-# network; the same discipline as test/cli.sh. Deliberately no `set -e` —
-# the harness asserts on failing commands.
+# Box-specific release-channel coverage. Shared release/guard machinery lives
+# in heavy-duty/ceremony and is tested there; this file drives real install.sh.
 set -u
 ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")/.." && pwd)"
 PASS=0 FAIL=0
 
-# check <desc> <want_exit> <want_substr> <cmd...>
-# Runs cmd, asserts exit code and (if non-empty) that combined output
-# contains want_substr.
 check() {
   local desc="$1" want="$2" substr="$3"; shift 3
   local out rc
@@ -34,734 +22,10 @@ check() {
   echo "ok: $desc"; PASS=$((PASS + 1))
 }
 
-NOTES="$ROOT/.github/scripts/release-notes.sh"
 WORK="$(mktemp -d)"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# release-notes.sh — the extraction, against a fixture changelog that carries
-# every boundary: an Unreleased section that must never leak into a release,
-# two adjacent versions, a version that prefixes another (0.7.0 vs
-# 0.7.0-rc1), and a stamped-but-empty section that must refuse.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-check "release-notes: runnable bash" 0 "" bash -n "$NOTES"
-
-FIX="$WORK/CHANGELOG.md"
-cat > "$FIX" <<'EOF'
-# Changelog
-
-Intro prose that belongs to no section.
-
-## Unreleased
-
-- **Not yet released** — must never appear in a release body.
-
-## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-20
-
-### Added
-
-- **The seven-oh entry** — prose for 0.7.0, and only 0.7.0.
-
-## 0.7.0-rc1 — 2026-07-19
-
-- **The rc entry** — must not ride along with 0.7.0.
-
-## 0.6.0 — 2026-07-18
-
-- **The six-oh entry** — the previous release's prose.
-
-## 0.5.0 — 2026-07-15
-
-EOF
-
-check "extract: prints the asked-for version's prose"   0 "The seven-oh entry" bash "$NOTES" 0.7.0 "$FIX"
-check "extract: keeps the section's own subheaders"     0 "### Added"          bash "$NOTES" 0.7.0 "$FIX"
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # $1/$2 expand in the child shell, by design
-check "extract: stops at the NEXT section"              1 ""                    bash -c 'bash "$1" 0.7.0 "$2" | grep -q "rc entry"' _ "$NOTES" "$FIX"
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # $1/$2 expand in the child shell, by design
-check "extract: never leaks Unreleased into a release"  1 ""                    bash -c 'bash "$1" 0.7.0 "$2" | grep -q "Not yet released"' _ "$NOTES" "$FIX"
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # $1/$2 expand in the child shell, by design
-check "extract: never prints the header itself"         1 ""                    bash -c 'bash "$1" 0.7.0 "$2" | grep -q "^## "' _ "$NOTES" "$FIX"
-check "extract: the version is matched WHOLE (rc1 is its own section)" \
-                                                        0 "The rc entry"       bash "$NOTES" 0.7.0-rc1 "$FIX"
-check "extract: an adjacent older version still resolves" 0 "six-oh"           bash "$NOTES" 0.6.0 "$FIX"
-check "extract: a missing version refuses by name"      1 "no section for '9.9.9'" bash "$NOTES" 9.9.9 "$FIX"
-check "extract: ...and names the ritual that was skipped" 1 "#83"              bash "$NOTES" 9.9.9 "$FIX"
-check "extract: a stamped-but-EMPTY section refuses"    1 "no section for '0.5.0'" bash "$NOTES" 0.5.0 "$FIX"
-check "extract: no version argument is a usage error"   2 "usage:"             bash "$NOTES"
-check "extract: a missing changelog refuses by path"    1 "no such file"       bash "$NOTES" 1.0.0 "$WORK/nope.md"
-
-# The REAL changelog: released sections must keep extracting, or release.yml
-# breaks the day it runs — this is the guard against header-format drift.
-check "extract: the real 0.6.0 section extracts"        0 "restricted tier"    bash "$NOTES" 0.6.0 "$ROOT/CHANGELOG.md"
-check "extract: the real 0.5.0 section extracts"        0 ""                   bash "$NOTES" 0.5.0 "$ROOT/CHANGELOG.md"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# release.yml — a daemon-free run cannot push a tag, so the wiring is
-# grepped, fail-closed (the house discipline): the VERSION assertion, the
-# shared extraction script, and that the tag is verified before creation.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-RY="$ROOT/.github/workflows/release.yml"
-check "release.yml: exists" 0 "" test -f "$RY"
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # the $-string is a literal in the target file
-check "release.yml: asserts tag == VERSION before creating anything" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'GITHUB_REF_NAME" != "$ver"' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: the mismatch creates NOTHING (exit 1)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'creating nothing' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: the body comes from the shared extraction script" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF '.github/scripts/release-notes.sh' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: the release is bound to the pushed tag (--verify-tag)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF -- '--verify-tag' "$RY"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# release.yml, the merge door (#96) — merging the release-labeled PR IS the
-# release. Same daemon-free discipline: the gate, the four asserts, and the
-# same-job tag+publish are grep-pinned, fail-closed.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-check "release.yml: the tag-push trigger is still present (manual fallback)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'tags: ["**"]' "$RY"
-# The merge door rides pushes to MAIN, not pull_request events: a fork PR
-# run gets a read-only GITHUB_TOKEN (permissions: cannot raise it), and
-# every ceremony PR this org merges is cross-repo from the bot fork — the
-# tag create would 403 after green asserts (#97 round 1). The label — the
-# operator's intent — is read via the API off the merge commit's PR.
-check "release.yml: the merge door rides pushes to main (fork-token-proof)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'branches: [main]' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: the doors split on the ref — tags to the tag door..." 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/')" "$RY"
-check "release.yml: ...main to the merge door" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'" "$RY"
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # the $-string is a literal in the target file
-check "release.yml: the release label is read via the API off the merge commit" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'commits/$GITHUB_SHA/pulls' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: a transition without a labeled PR refuses" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "no merged, release-labeled PR is behind this commit" "$RY"
-check "release.yml: assert — VERSION at the merge commit is non--dev" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF '*-dev)' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: assert — VERSION changed IN THIS PR (first parent vs merge)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'git show HEAD^1:VERSION' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: assert — no existing tag for the version" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'git/ref/tags/' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: assert — no existing release for the version" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'gh release view' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: BOTH doors extract notes via the shared script" 0 "2" \
-  grep -cF 'bash .github/scripts/release-notes.sh' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: every failing assert creates NOTHING (both doors)" 0 "5" \
-  grep -cF 'creating nothing' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: the merge door creates the tag ref via the API..." 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'ref=refs/tags/' "$RY"
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # the $-string is a literal in the target file
-check "release.yml: ...at the MERGE commit" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'sha=$MERGE_SHA' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: BOTH doors publish bound to an existing tag (--verify-tag)" 0 "2" \
-  grep -cF -- '--verify-tag' "$RY"
-check "release.yml: tag + publish share one job (the anti-recursion shape)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'anti-recursion' "$RY"
-# The decide step tells the label's two meanings apart (LABELS.md gives
-# `release` to release-flow WORK as well as to the ceremony PR — the PR
-# that added the merge door included): work under the label no-ops GREEN —
-# in the -dev steady state and in the post-release window (bare, unchanged,
-# already released) — while every half-ceremony refuses. Pin each verdict
-# and the gating output.
-check "release.yml: decide — dev-tree work no-ops green (not a red run per infra PR)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "release-flow work under the release label, not a ceremony" "$RY"
-check "release.yml: decide — a -dev endstate is always work (the bump PR no-ops green)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "a dev tree is by definition not a release" "$RY"
-check "release.yml: decide — post-release-window work no-ops green" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "release-flow work merged in the post-release window" "$RY"
-check "release.yml: decide — bare, unchanged, never released refuses to guess" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "Refusing to guess" "$RY"
-check "release.yml: decide gates every later merge-door step on ceremony=yes" 0 "4" \
-  grep -cF "if: steps.decide.outputs.ceremony == 'yes'" "$RY"
-# The release re-arms main itself: the post-release -dev bump is arithmetic,
-# not judgment, so it rides the same job — direct push, PR fallback.
-check "release.yml: the release bumps main to the next -dev itself" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "bump main to the next -dev" "$RY"
-check "release.yml: ...with a PR fallback when the direct push is refused" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "opening the bump PR instead" "$RY"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# changelog-armed.sh (#108) — the changelog has a heading for the NEXT entry.
-#
-# The drift this catches produces no conflict and no error: the ceremony
-# stamps '## Unreleased' away, and a PR authored before the release merges its
-# entry cleanly into the section that just shipped. box has no top-section
-# guard at all today — the two checks above pin only that the 0.6.0 and 0.5.0
-# sections still extract, which a disarmed main passes happily.
-#
-# BOTH states are constructed as real trees and the real script is run against
-# them, because the failure mode of the naive fix is precisely a state
-# mismatch: an unconditional '## Unreleased' requirement is green on main and
-# false on the ceremony PR's own tree, which is why rig#44 and
-# heavy-duty/cast#108 both had to revert one. A test that only drives the
-# -dev state would have shipped that bug again.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-ARMED="$ROOT/.github/scripts/changelog-armed.sh"
-check "changelog-armed: runnable bash" 0 "" bash -n "$ARMED"
-
-# tree <dir> <version> <changelog-body...> — a two-file tree to run against
-tree() {
-  local d="$WORK/$1" v="$2"; shift 2
-  mkdir -p "$d"
-  printf '%s\n' "$v" > "$d/VERSION"
-  { echo "# Changelog"; echo; printf '%s\n' "$@"; } > "$d/CHANGELOG.md"
-  echo "$d"
-}
-armed() { bash "$ARMED" "$1/CHANGELOG.md" "$1/VERSION"; }
-
-# --- the -dev steady state: armed is the only legal shape ------------------
-T="$(tree dev-armed 0.7.1-dev '## Unreleased' '' '- **A pending entry**' '' '## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-check "armed: a -dev tree with '## Unreleased' on top passes" 0 "agrees" armed "$T"
-T="$(tree dev-disarmed 0.7.1-dev '## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-check "armed: a -dev tree WITHOUT it fails — the #108 drift, caught" 1 "MUST carry" armed "$T"
-check "armed: ...and the failure says how to fix it (re-arm)" 1 "re-arm" armed "$T"
-check "armed: ...naming the issue and its origin" 1 "heavy-duty/rig#66" armed "$T"
-
-# --- the ceremony PR: bare VERSION, BOTH arrangements legal ----------------
-# This is the pair that the reverted guards got wrong. Neither may fail, or
-# the release PR cannot go green and the ceremony is unshippable.
-T="$(tree rel-stamped 0.7.1 '## 0.7.1 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **This release**')"
-check "armed: a bare VERSION with its OWN stamped section on top passes" 0 "agrees" armed "$T"
-T="$(tree rel-rearmed 0.7.1 '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.7.1 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **This release**')"
-check "armed: ...and so does the RE-ARMED ceremony tree (the shape #108 asks for)" \
-  0 "agrees" armed "$T"
-# The one bare-VERSION arrangement that is wrong: a stamp naming another
-# version. release.yml would publish a body that is not this release's.
-T="$(tree rel-wrong 0.7.1 '## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Some other release**')"
-check "armed: a bare VERSION under someone ELSE's stamped section fails" 1 "wrong number" armed "$T"
-
-# --- the HALF-ceremony: the gap the two bare-VERSION clauses leave ---------
-# VERSION bumped to the release, '## Unreleased' still populated on top, and
-# the section for that version never stamped at all. The wrong-number test
-# above is false on its FIRST clause here and short-circuits, so before
-# heavy-duty/rig#67's rule this tree passed the guard and was refused instead
-# by release.yml — at publish time, after the merge, on main, with the release
-# already half-shipped. Caught here one step earlier, by running the same
-# extraction release.yml runs.
-T="$(tree rel-half 0.8.0 '## Unreleased' '' '- **A pending entry**' '' '## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-check "armed: a bare VERSION whose section was never stamped fails (half-ceremony)" \
-  1 "no non-empty section" armed "$T"
-check "armed: ...and names the stamp as MISSING, not misnumbered" \
-  1 "MISSING, not misnumbered" armed "$T"
-# The wording is the whole point of the separate branch: an operator sent to
-# fix a version number that is already correct will not find the real problem.
-not_wrong_number() { ! armed "$1" 2>&1 | grep -qF 'wrong number'; }
-check "armed: ...and not as the wrong-number case, which has a different fix" \
-  0 "" not_wrong_number "$T"
-# A section that exists but carries no prose is the same failure: release.yml
-# would publish an empty body, which is what release-notes.sh already refuses.
-T="$(tree rel-empty 0.7.1 '## 0.7.1 — 2026-07-19' '' '## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-check "armed: a bare VERSION whose section is stamped but EMPTY fails" \
-  1 "no non-empty section" armed "$T"
-
-# --- degenerate trees refuse rather than pass by accident ------------------
-T="$(tree no-sections 0.7.1-dev 'Prose and no headings at all.')"
-check "armed: a changelog with no '## ' section at all fails" 1 "no '## ' section at all" armed "$T"
-check "armed: a missing changelog refuses by path" 1 "no such file" \
-  bash "$ARMED" "$WORK/nope.md" "$ROOT/VERSION"
-check "armed: a missing VERSION refuses by path" 1 "no such file" \
-  bash "$ARMED" "$ROOT/CHANGELOG.md" "$WORK/nope-version"
-mkdir -p "$WORK/empty-ver"; : > "$WORK/empty-ver/VERSION"
-check "armed: an empty VERSION refuses" 1 "is empty" \
-  bash "$ARMED" "$ROOT/CHANGELOG.md" "$WORK/empty-ver/VERSION"
-
-# --- and the tree under test, which is the assertion that actually fires ---
-check "armed: THIS tree's VERSION and CHANGELOG.md agree" 0 "agrees" \
-  bash "$ARMED" "$ROOT/CHANGELOG.md" "$ROOT/VERSION"
-
-# The guard is only a guard if CI runs it, and the ceremony is only re-armed
-# if the ceremony step says so. Fail-closed pins on both, since a guard nobody
-# invokes and a step nobody wrote are the two ways this reverts silently.
-check "ci.yml: runs the changelog-armed guard" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'changelog-armed.sh' "$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: the ceremony re-arms '## Unreleased' after stamping" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'Stamping is two edits, not one' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...and names the guard that enforces it" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'changelog-armed.sh' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# drill-recorded.sh — a RELEASE tree has a drill record at drills/<ver>.md.
-#
-# The gap this closes is not a drift or a race; it is a rule that was only
-# ever a sentence. CONTRIBUTING.md has said since #96 that the release PR is
-# where the full real-hardware drill hangs — and #95, #114 and #148 all
-# shipped without one, because nothing but a reviewer's memory stood on it.
-#
-# Both states are constructed as real trees, same discipline as the armed
-# block above, and for a sharper reason here: the -dev pass is not a
-# convenience, it is what keeps the guard installable. A version of this rule
-# that fired on every tree would be red on every ordinary PR in the repo and
-# would be switched off inside a day.
-#
-# Every fixture carries its OWN VERSION and its OWN drills/ dir. Reaching for
-# $ROOT/VERSION instead is exactly the coupling #146 had to fix: the suite
-# then passes or fails on whichever state the repo happens to be in, so it
-# goes red on the ceremony tree — the one tree where the release suite most
-# needs to be trustworthy.
-#
-# Records are now ONE FILE PER VERSION, which is why this block is shorter
-# than the one it replaces. The heading-parsing cases are gone because there
-# is no heading to parse: em-dash fields, the optional ' — DATE' tail, and
-# "an empty section must not borrow a neighbour's prose" were all artifacts
-# of records sharing drill/RUNS.md. Deleting a test is only safe when the
-# failure it described became unrepresentable, and that is the case here —
-# except for the whitespace rule, which was never about headings and is
-# pinned harder below.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-DRILLED="$ROOT/.github/scripts/drill-recorded.sh"
-check "drill-recorded: runnable bash" 0 "" bash -n "$DRILLED"
-check "drill-recorded: executable" 0 "" test -x "$DRILLED"
-
-# dtree <dir> <version> [<record-version> <record-body...>] — a self-contained
-# tree: its own VERSION, and its own drills/ dir created only when asked for.
-# With 2 args there is NO drills/ dir at all, which is a case in its own right.
-dtree() {
-  local d="$WORK/$1" v="$2"; shift 2
-  mkdir -p "$d"
-  printf '%s\n' "$v" > "$d/VERSION"
-  if [ "$#" -gt 0 ]; then
-    local rec="$1"; shift
-    mkdir -p "$d/drills"
-    printf '%s\n' "$@" > "$d/drills/$rec.md"
-  fi
-  echo "$d"
-}
-drilled() { bash "$DRILLED" "$1/drills" "$1/VERSION"; }
-
-# --- the -dev steady state: nothing to assert ------------------------------
-# No record at all, and that must PASS. This is the case that makes the guard
-# survivable on an ordinary PR.
-T="$(dtree drill-dev 0.8.1-dev)"
-check "drill-recorded: a -dev tree with NO drills dir at all passes" 0 "nothing to assert" drilled "$T"
-check "drill-recorded: ...and says why it declined to judge" 0 "development tree" drilled "$T"
-
-# --- the ceremony tree: a record is required and must not be blank ---------
-T="$(dtree drill-ok 0.9.0 0.9.0 '# Release drill — 0.9.0' '' '- 47/47 on real hardware')"
-check "drill-recorded: a bare VERSION with a non-empty record for it passes" \
-  0 "has a drill record" drilled "$T"
-
-# No drills/ dir AT ALL is the commonest way to fail this: the release branch
-# was cut and nobody ran anything. It must fail loudly, not error out on a
-# missing directory in some way that reads like a broken guard.
-T="$(dtree drill-nodir 0.9.0)"
-check "drill-recorded: a bare VERSION with NO drills dir fails" 1 "no drill record" drilled "$T"
-check "drill-recorded: ...and the failure names the version" 1 "VERSION is '0.9.0'" drilled "$T"
-
-# The dir exists — some other release left its record here — but this version
-# has none. A directory listing is not evidence about a particular version.
-T="$(dtree drill-otherver 0.9.0 0.8.0 '# Release drill — 0.8.0' '' '- the previous release')"
-check "drill-recorded: a drills dir with no file for THIS version fails" \
-  1 "no drill record" drilled "$T"
-
-check "drill-recorded: ...and names the unblock — run the drill and record it" \
-  1 "RUN THE DRILL" drilled "$T"
-check "drill-recorded: ...and names the path it wanted" 1 "drills/0.9.0.md" drilled "$T"
-check "drill-recorded: ...and offers the recorded maintainer waiver as the other way out" \
-  1 "WAIVED" drilled "$T"
-check "drill-recorded: ...and names the three releases that shipped through the gap" \
-  1 "#95, #114 and #148" drilled "$T"
-
-# A file that exists and says nothing is the same failure as no file: the
-# ceremony created the shape and never wrote the evidence. `touch` must not
-# be able to satisfy a gate whose entire job is to demand evidence.
-mkdir -p "$WORK/drill-emptyfile/drills"
-printf '0.9.0\n' > "$WORK/drill-emptyfile/VERSION"
-: > "$WORK/drill-emptyfile/drills/0.9.0.md"
-check "drill-recorded: a record file that is present but EMPTY fails" \
-  1 "no drill record" drilled "$WORK/drill-emptyfile"
-
-# ...and WHITESPACE is not evidence either. This is the ONE rule carried over
-# from the heading-parsing guard, because it was never a heading problem. The
-# first cut extracted with `sed '/./,$!d'`, where `.` matches a space — so a
-# record whose body was one tab passed a guard that promised "at least one
-# non-blank line". An evidence-free release for the price of an invisible
-# character. All three reviewers on #149 found it independently, which is the
-# level of scrutiny it deserved and not a level it should ever need again.
-# Splitting the file per version removed the parsing; it did not remove this.
-mkdir -p "$WORK/drill-blank/drills"
-printf '0.9.0\n' > "$WORK/drill-blank/VERSION"
-printf '   \n\t\n\n' > "$WORK/drill-blank/drills/0.9.0.md"
-check "drill-recorded: a record of only spaces, tabs and newlines fails (#149)" \
-  1 "no drill record" drilled "$WORK/drill-blank"
-
-# --- the version is matched WHOLE, both directions -------------------------
-# Under the old scheme this took deliberate field-matching against a heading,
-# and getting it wrong would have let a release-candidate drill stand in for
-# the release it was a candidate for — the one thing an rc drill by
-# definition did not measure. One file per version makes it free: these are
-# simply different paths. Pinned anyway, in both directions, so that a future
-# rewrite reaching for a prefix or glob match cannot quietly reintroduce it.
-T="$(dtree drill-rc-only 0.9.0 0.9.0-rc1 '# Release drill — 0.9.0-rc1' '' '- the rc drill')"
-check "drill-recorded: a 0.9.0-rc1.md record does NOT satisfy 0.9.0" 1 "no drill record" drilled "$T"
-T="$(dtree drill-rel-only 0.9.0-rc1 0.9.0 '# Release drill — 0.9.0' '' '- the release drill')"
-check "drill-recorded: ...and a 0.9.0.md record does NOT satisfy 0.9.0-rc1" 1 "no drill record" drilled "$T"
-
-# --- degenerate trees refuse rather than pass by accident ------------------
-# A guard that cannot read the version cannot know whether this tree is its
-# business, and "could not tell" must never resolve to "allowed".
-check "drill-recorded: a missing VERSION refuses by path" 1 "no such file" \
-  bash "$DRILLED" "$WORK/drill-ok/drills" "$WORK/nope-version"
-mkdir -p "$WORK/drill-empty-ver"; : > "$WORK/drill-empty-ver/VERSION"
-check "drill-recorded: an empty VERSION refuses" 1 "is empty" \
-  bash "$DRILLED" "$WORK/drill-ok/drills" "$WORK/drill-empty-ver/VERSION"
-# The drills dir is only consulted once the tree is a release — a -dev tree
-# must not be refused for a directory it has no business reading.
-check "drill-recorded: a -dev tree does not even look for the drills dir" 0 "nothing to assert" \
-  bash "$DRILLED" "$WORK/nope-drills" "$WORK/drill-dev/VERSION"
-
-# --- and the tree under test ----------------------------------------------
-# The property is that the guard's VERDICT IS CORRECT FOR THIS TREE — not that
-# it always passes. Those come apart on a ceremony tree, and demanding success
-# is wrong there in a way that took a red release PR to notice.
-#
-# A -dev tree is vacuous, so it must pass. A ceremony tree passes only once a
-# human has run the drill and written the record — which is the entire point of
-# the gate. Asserting exit 0 unconditionally therefore made test/release.sh
-# UN-GREENABLE on every release branch before its drill, and reported it as a
-# `release-flow tests` failure rather than as the gate doing its job: the same
-# noise-and-misattribution shape as #146, where a fixture read the repo's real
-# VERSION and only misbehaved on the ceremony tree.
-#
-# So: assert the verdict that this tree's own state entails. Green in all three
-# states — dev, ceremony-without-record, ceremony-with-record — and still red if
-# the guard ever disagrees with the tree in front of it.
-THIS_VER="$(tr -d '[:space:]' < "$ROOT/VERSION")"
-case "$THIS_VER" in
-  *-dev)
-    check "drill-recorded: THIS tree is -dev, and the guard is vacuous on it" 0 "nothing to assert" \
-      bash "$DRILLED" "$ROOT/drills" "$ROOT/VERSION" ;;
-  *)
-    if [ -s "$ROOT/drills/$THIS_VER.md" ]; then
-      check "drill-recorded: THIS ceremony tree HAS its record, and the guard accepts it" 0 "" \
-        bash "$DRILLED" "$ROOT/drills" "$ROOT/VERSION"
-    else
-      check "drill-recorded: THIS ceremony tree has NO record yet, and the guard refuses it" 1 "no drill record" \
-        bash "$DRILLED" "$ROOT/drills" "$ROOT/VERSION"
-    fi ;;
-esac
-
-# drills/ is release evidence and drill/RUNS.md is the harness's own log. The
-# rewrite is only coherent if both keep existing and the docs say which is
-# which; a reader who appends to the wrong one gets a red gate and no clue.
-check "drills/: the directory documents itself" 0 "" test -f "$ROOT/drills/README.md"
-check "drills/: ...and is plain, not a dot-directory invisible to globs (#116)" 1 "" \
-  test -d "$ROOT/.drills"
-check "drills/: ...and distinguishes itself from the harness log" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'drill/RUNS.md' "$ROOT/drills/README.md"
-check "drills/: ...and its worked example uses a version that can never ship" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF '9.9.9' "$ROOT/drills/README.md"
-check "drill/RUNS.md: the harness log is untouched and still present" 0 "" \
-  test -f "$ROOT/drill/RUNS.md"
-# No real record may be invented to make the suite green. The repo is
-# 0.8.1-dev; fabricating drills/0.8.1.md would defeat the whole gate.
-check "drills/: no fabricated record for an unshipped version" 1 "" \
-  test -f "$ROOT/drills/0.8.1.md"
-
-# The guard is only a guard if CI runs it, and only a rule if the document
-# that used to carry the rule now points at it.
-check "ci.yml: runs the drill-recorded guard" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'drill-recorded.sh' "$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: names the guard that enforces the drill" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'drill-recorded.sh' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: documents the drill record's path" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'drills/X.Y.Z.md' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...and distinguishes it from the harness's own log" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF "harness's own log" "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-# The three drills are INDEPENDENT. An earlier draft of this section said the
-# drill was "ONE orchestrated run over the whole stack", which over-constrains
-# it into a fixed sequence the repos cannot satisfy. Pinning the corrected
-# claim, and negatively pinning the fixed-order language, because "surely you
-# drill rig before box" is exactly the simplification a future editor makes.
-check "CONTRIBUTING: the three drills are independent, in any order" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'The three drills are INDEPENDENT' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...and no fixed-order framing survives" 1 "" \
-  grep -qF 'ONE orchestrated run' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-# The load-bearing correction: box and rig are mutually recursive, so a
-# "release A before you can drill B" rule is not merely bureaucratic, it is
-# unsatisfiable in principle. What dissolves it is that every drill pins the
-# same fixed candidate refs — static identifiers that exist as soon as the
-# release branches do — turning a runtime cycle into two independent tests.
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...drilling candidate refs, not released artifacts" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'candidate refs, not released artifacts' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...and the same fixed refs are what dissolve the recursion" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'pins the same fixed set of candidate refs' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...and each repo asserts a different thing" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'isolation contract' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...and a combination defect means patch, re-drill, re-record" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 're-drill' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: ...and the RIG_REF gap is stated as outstanding (#81)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'RIG_REF' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "LABELS: documents blocker:drill-pending" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'blocker:drill-pending' "$ROOT/LABELS.md"
-check "LABELS: ...and points at the per-version record, not the harness log" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'drills/X.Y.Z.md' "$ROOT/LABELS.md"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# changelog-monotonic.sh (#122) — no SHIPPED release heading may be DELETED.
-#
-# The complement of the guard above, and the reason it is a separate script:
-# changelog-armed.sh asks about ONE tree ("does the top section agree with
-# VERSION?"), which is exactly why it was green on #118's broken branch — the
-# top section was still '## Unreleased'. "A heading disappeared" is not a
-# property of a tree at all; it is a property of a DIFF. So these cases are
-# driven against real, constructed GIT REPOS with a base commit and a branch
-# commit, not the two-file trees above — a fixture without history cannot
-# express the failure being guarded.
-#
-# The #118 shape is reconstructed verbatim as the first case: the line
-# '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' replaced by an entry written under '## Unreleased'.
-# The ceremony's own stamp is driven right beside it, because a rule that
-# fires on the stamp is unshippable for the same reason rig#44 and cast#108
-# were — that pair, not the failing case alone, is what makes this a design.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-MONO="$ROOT/.github/scripts/changelog-monotonic.sh"
-check "changelog-monotonic: runnable bash" 0 "" bash -n "$MONO"
-
-# grepo <name> <base-changelog-lines...> — a git repo whose `main` carries the
-# given changelog, left checked out on a branch `pr` off it. Prints the dir.
-#
-# It carries its own VERSION, like tree() above, so the checks that run
-# changelog-armed.sh against these fixtures read a version that belongs to the
-# FIXTURE. Reaching for the repo's real VERSION instead makes those checks pass
-# or fail on what box happens to be versioned at today: bare (the release
-# ceremony's own tree) sends changelog-armed.sh down its bare branch, where it
-# demands a section for THAT version in a fixture changelog that has never
-# heard of it. `-dev` here because every one of these fixtures tops out at
-# '## Unreleased', which is what a development tree is required to carry.
-grepo() {
-  local d="$WORK/$1"; shift
-  mkdir -p "$d"
-  git -C "$d" init -q -b main
-  git -C "$d" config user.email test@example.invalid
-  git -C "$d" config user.name test
-  printf '%s\n' '0.8.1-dev' > "$d/VERSION"
-  { echo "# Changelog"; echo; printf '%s\n' "$@"; } > "$d/CHANGELOG.md"
-  git -C "$d" add CHANGELOG.md VERSION
-  git -C "$d" commit -qm base
-  git -C "$d" checkout -q -b pr
-  echo "$d"
-}
-# head_changelog <dir> <lines...> — the PR branch's version of the file
-head_changelog() {
-  local d="$1"; shift
-  { echo "# Changelog"; echo; printf '%s\n' "$@"; } > "$d/CHANGELOG.md"
-  git -C "$d" commit -qam head
-}
-mono()        { local d="$1"; shift; ( cd "$d" && bash "$MONO" "$@" ); }
-mono_strict() { local d="$1"; shift; ( cd "$d" && CHANGELOG_MONOTONIC_STRICT=1 bash "$MONO" "$@" ); }
-
-# --- the #118 incident, reconstructed --------------------------------------
-G="$(grepo mono-118 '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '### Added' '' '- **Shipped prose**')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## Unreleased' '' '### Fixed' '' '- **An entry**' '' '### Added' '' '- **Shipped prose**'
-check "monotonic: a DELETED release heading fails (the #118 near-miss)" 1 "DELETES release heading" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...and names the heading that vanished" 1 "## 0.8.0" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...and the shape of the mistake (replaced, not inserted)" 1 "instead of being" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...and why nothing else says so (git merges it cleanly)" 1 "git merges that edit cleanly" mono "$G" main
-# The whole point of the issue: the OTHER guard is green on this same tree.
-# Pinned here so a future 'just widen changelog-armed.sh' cannot quietly
-# delete the reason this script exists.
-check "monotonic: ...on a tree changelog-armed.sh calls FINE (the #122 gap)" 0 "agrees" \
-  bash "$ARMED" "$G/CHANGELOG.md" "$G/VERSION"
-
-# --- the #118 incident as it ACTUALLY happened: a DUPLICATED heading -------
-# The deletion case above is the near-miss. What the bad rebase really produced
-# was two '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' headings with the incoming entry stranded
-# between them. Containment cannot see this: the duplicate is head-side
-# SURPLUS, and `comm -23` (base minus head) is blind to extras on the head side
-# — with or without `sort -u`, and multiset comparison does not close it for
-# the same reason. Uniqueness on HEAD is the assert that does.
-G="$(grepo mono-dup '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '### Added' '' '- **Shipped prose**')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '### Fixed' '' '- **An entry**' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '### Added' '' '- **Shipped prose**'
-check "monotonic: a DUPLICATED release heading fails (the #118 shape)" 1 "DUPLICATE release heading" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...and names the repeated heading" 1 "## 0.8.0" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...and says what a repeat does to release-notes extraction" 1 "re-arms its extraction" mono "$G" main
-# Containment alone is green on this exact tree — nothing was deleted. Pinned
-# so a future simplification cannot collapse the two asserts into one.
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # $1/$2 are the inner shell's positionals, not ours
-check "monotonic: ...on a tree where NOTHING was deleted (containment is blind)" 1 "" \
-  bash -c 'cd "$1" && bash "$2" main 2>&1 | grep -q "DELETES release heading"' _ "$G" "$MONO"
-# And, as with the deletion case, the other guard calls this tree fine.
-check "monotonic: ...on a tree changelog-armed.sh calls FINE" 0 "agrees" \
-  bash "$ARMED" "$G/CHANGELOG.md" "$G/VERSION"
-
-# --- the release ceremony's stamp: an ADD, never a removal -----------------
-# '## Unreleased' -> '## 0.8.1 — DATE' adds 0.8.1 and removes no X.Y.Z
-# heading, because 'Unreleased' is not one. A false positive here would make
-# every release unshippable — the rig#44 / cast#108 failure, one guard over.
-G="$(grepo mono-stamp '## Unreleased' '' '- **Pending**' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.8.1 — 2026-07-20' '' '- **Pending**' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**'
-check "monotonic: the ceremony stamp passes (adds a heading, removes none)" 0 "still present" mono "$G" main
-
-# --- the ordinary entry, done right ----------------------------------------
-G="$(grepo mono-ok '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## Unreleased' '' '### Fixed' '' '- **An entry**' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**'
-check "monotonic: an entry INSERTED above the top section passes" 0 "still present" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...and counts what it actually checked" 0 "all 1 release heading" mono "$G" main
-
-# --- deletion is caught anywhere in the file, not just at the top ----------
-G="$(grepo mono-mid '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **a**' '' '## 0.7.0 — 2026-07-18' '' '- **b**' '' '## 0.6.0 — 2026-07-17' '' '- **c**')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **a**' '' '- **b**' '' '## 0.6.0 — 2026-07-17' '' '- **c**'
-check "monotonic: a heading deleted MID-FILE is caught too" 1 "## 0.7.0" mono "$G" main
-# ...and only the deleted one is named, so the message points at the edit.
-notes_only_070() { ! mono "$1" main 2>&1 | grep -qE '^    ## 0\.(6|8)\.0$'; }
-check "monotonic: ...naming only the heading that went missing" 0 "" notes_only_070 "$G"
-
-# --- a rewritten Unreleased is NOT a violation (changelog-armed owns it) ---
-G="$(grepo mono-unrel '## Unreleased' '' '- **Pending**' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**'
-check "monotonic: a deleted '## Unreleased' is NOT this guard's business" 0 "still present" mono "$G" main
-
-# --- a changelog that did not exist at the base ----------------------------
-G="$(grepo mono-new 'No sections yet.')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## 0.1.0 — 2026-07-20' '' '- **First**'
-check "monotonic: a base with no release headings passes (nothing to delete)" 0 "all 0 release heading" mono "$G" main
-
-# --- degradation: no base to compare against -------------------------------
-# A local run may genuinely have no base ref. That must SKIP loudly, not fail
-# spuriously (which would make the script un-runnable off CI) and not pass
-# silently (which is the failure shape this repo keeps refusing). CI closes
-# the hole from the other side with STRICT.
-G="$(grepo mono-nobase '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-check "monotonic: an unresolvable base ref SKIPS containment" 0 "containment SKIPPED" mono "$G" no-such-ref
-check "monotonic: ...and says uniqueness already ran, not that nothing did" 0 "already ran" mono "$G" no-such-ref
-check "monotonic: ...naming the base ref it could not resolve" 0 "no-such-ref" mono "$G" no-such-ref
-check "monotonic: ...and warning that CI treats it as a failure" 0 "hard failure" mono "$G" no-such-ref
-check "monotonic: STRICT turns that skip into a red run" 1 "is a FAILURE, not a skip" mono_strict "$G" no-such-ref
-check "monotonic: ...and points at the checkout, not the script" 1 "fetch-depth: 0" mono_strict "$G" no-such-ref
-# Outside a work tree at all (a tarball, an unpacked release).
-mkdir -p "$WORK/mono-nogit"
-printf '%s\n' '# Changelog' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' > "$WORK/mono-nogit/CHANGELOG.md"
-check "monotonic: outside a git work tree it skips containment, not everything" 0 "containment SKIPPED" \
-  mono "$WORK/mono-nogit" main
-check "monotonic: a missing changelog refuses by path (never a skip)" 1 "no such file" \
-  bash "$MONO" main "$WORK/nope.md"
-
-# --- #143: uniqueness is a property of HEAD, so nothing base-side may gate it -
-# Containment needs the merge base. Uniqueness needs only the file in front of
-# it. Before #143 the duplicate check sat downstream of the base-ref, merge-base
-# and base-blob conditions, so each of the three degradation paths below exited
-# 0 on a tree with a duplicate in plain sight — the base-blob one not even via
-# skip(), but a bare `exit 0` that STRICT could not reach. These cases pin the
-# ORDER, which is the actual invariant; asserting the exit code alone is what
-# let the original ship (the base-absent case below was green before and after).
-grepo_nocl() { # a repo whose main has NO changelog at all
-  local d="$WORK/$1"
-  mkdir -p "$d"
-  git -C "$d" init -q -b main
-  git -C "$d" config user.email test@example.invalid
-  git -C "$d" config user.name test
-  echo seed > "$d/README.md"
-  git -C "$d" add README.md
-  git -C "$d" commit -qm base
-  git -C "$d" checkout -q -b pr
-  echo "$d"
-}
-add_changelog() { # <dir> <lines...> — the PR introduces the file
-  local d="$1"; shift
-  { echo "# Changelog"; echo; printf '%s\n' "$@"; } > "$d/CHANGELOG.md"
-  git -C "$d" add CHANGELOG.md
-  git -C "$d" commit -qm head
-}
-
-# The changelog is absent at the merge base AND the PR introduces a duplicate.
-G="$(grepo_nocl mono-143-newdup)"
-add_changelog "$G" '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **a**' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **stranded**'
-check "monotonic: a duplicate introduced where the base had no changelog is CAUGHT (#143)" 1 "DUPLICATE release heading" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...and STRICT does not change that (it was never a skip)" 1 "DUPLICATE release heading" mono_strict "$G" main
-# ...and the clean counterpart still exits 0, now saying uniqueness did run.
-G="$(grepo_nocl mono-143-newok)"
-add_changelog "$G" '## Unreleased' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **a**'
-check "monotonic: ...while a CLEAN introduced changelog still passes" 0 "nothing could have been deleted" mono "$G" main
-check "monotonic: ...saying uniqueness was checked, not that nothing was" 0 "uniqueness on HEAD already passed" mono "$G" main
-
-# No git at all: uniqueness still has everything it needs.
-mkdir -p "$WORK/mono-143-nogit"
-printf '%s\n' '# Changelog' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' > "$WORK/mono-143-nogit/CHANGELOG.md"
-check "monotonic: a duplicate OUTSIDE a git work tree is caught (#143)" 1 "DUPLICATE release heading" \
-  mono "$WORK/mono-143-nogit" main
-
-# Unresolvable base ref: same — the skip is containment's, not the script's.
-G="$(grepo mono-143-nobase '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-head_changelog "$G" '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **a**' '' '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **b**'
-check "monotonic: a duplicate is caught even when the base ref will not resolve (#143)" 1 "DUPLICATE release heading" mono "$G" no-such-ref
-
-# --- the push-to-main shape: containment vacuous, uniqueness real ----------
-# With the pull_request gate gone (#143), merge_base == HEAD is a ROUTINE path,
-# not a degradation. Containment compares the file against itself and asserts
-# nothing, so a line reading "all N still present" would claim a check that did
-# no work — the same dishonesty the skip messages were fixed for. The success
-# line therefore has two forms, and this pins which one each event gets.
-G="$(grepo mono-vacuous '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**')"
-check "monotonic: HEAD as its own base reports containment VACUOUS, not verified" 0 "containment vacuous" mono "$G" HEAD
-check "monotonic: ...and names uniqueness as the half that actually ran" 0 "uniqueness on HEAD checked" mono "$G" HEAD
-# shellcheck disable=SC2016  # $1/$2 expand in the child shell, by design
-check "monotonic: ...and does NOT claim headings were still present" 1 "" \
-  bash -c 'cd "$1" && bash "$2" HEAD | grep -q "are still present"' _ "$G" "$MONO"
-# The PR shape keeps the containment wording — the two must not collapse.
-head_changelog "$G" '## 0.8.0 — 2026-07-19' '' '- **Shipped**' '' '## 0.9.0 — 2026-07-20' '' '- **New**'
-check "monotonic: a real base still reports containment, naming the count" 0 "still present" mono "$G" main
-
-# --- and the real tree, through the real script ----------------------------
-# HEAD as its own base: the merge base is HEAD, so the sets are identical by
-# construction. Proves the script runs against the actual CHANGELOG.md and
-# parses its real headings, without depending on an `origin/main` that a
-# fresh clone or a detached CI checkout may not have.
-# HEAD as its own base is now the VACUOUS-containment path (#143), so the
-# assertion moved to uniqueness's count — which is the stronger proof of the
-# original intent anyway: it says the parser read the REAL CHANGELOG.md and
-# found real headings in it, rather than that a self-comparison came out equal.
-check "monotonic: THIS tree passes against itself (the parser meets reality)" 0 "uniqueness on HEAD checked" \
-  mono "$ROOT" HEAD
-
-# The guard is only a guard if CI runs it — and only if CI runs it with the
-# history it needs. Fail-closed pins on all three, since a depth-1 checkout
-# would silently downgrade every run to the SKIP path.
-check "ci.yml: runs the changelog-monotonic guard" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'changelog-monotonic.sh' "$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
-check "ci.yml: ...with full history, or the merge base is unreachable" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'fetch-depth: 0' "$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
-check "ci.yml: ...and STRICT, so a skip is a red run and not a green one" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'CHANGELOG_MONOTONIC_STRICT' "$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
-# #143: the step must NOT be pull-request-only — duplication is vacuous on no
-# tree — and dropping that gate is only safe with the base-ref fallback, since
-# `github.base_ref` is empty on a push and a bare `origin/` under STRICT is a
-# hard failure on every push to main.
-# Scoped to the step's OWN block, deliberately. A file-wide negative would
-# forbid any FUTURE step in ci.yml from being pull_request-gated and would fail
-# citing #143 when one legitimately is — #143 constrains this step, not the file.
-# Terminates on a new STEP or a new JOB. The job boundary is not optional: the
-# monotonic step is the LAST step of `check`, so stopping only at the next
-# `- name:` runs the block into the `rehearsal` job below and swallows its
-# job-level `if:`. That reintroduces the very bug the scoping fixed — an
-# unrelated edit failing while citing #143 — just moved from "any step in the
-# file" to "this step plus the head of the next job".
-mono_step_block() {
-  awk '/^      - name: no shipped changelog heading/ {f=1; print; next}
-       f && (/^      - / || /^  [^ ]/) {exit}
-       f {print}' "$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
-}
-# Anchored: an `if:` appearing inside a `run:` line is not a step condition.
-mono_step_gated() { mono_step_block | grep -q '^        if:'; }
-check "ci.yml: the monotonic step itself is not pull_request-gated (#143)" 1 "" mono_step_gated
-check "ci.yml: ...and the block was actually found (guards the awk above)" 0 "changelog-monotonic" mono_step_block
-check "ci.yml: ...and falls back to ref_name, so a push has a base to resolve" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'github.base_ref || github.ref_name' "$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
-check "CONTRIBUTING: names the append-only rule for release headings" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'changelog-monotonic.sh' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# latest_release_tag — extracted from install.sh (the source-the-pure-function
-# trick) and driven against a shim curl. The shim serves the ONE seam the
-# function uses: -w '%{redirect_url}' on the releases/latest probe.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 SHIMDIR="$WORK/shim"; mkdir -p "$SHIMDIR"
 cat > "$SHIMDIR/curl" <<'SHIM'
 #!/usr/bin/env bash
-# Fake curl for the release drills: answers the releases/latest probe with
-# $FAKE_REDIRECT on stdout (the -w '%{redirect_url}' seam) — or fails with
-# $FAKE_CURL_RC (network down) — and serves downloads (-o <file>) by copying
-# $FAKE_TARBALL when the URL is $FAKE_SERVE_URL, else exit 22 (curl's own
-# 404-under--f code). Every URL is appended to $FAKE_CURL_LOG so a test can
-# assert exactly what was asked for, and in what order.
 url="" out=""
 while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
   case "$1" in
@@ -787,105 +51,77 @@ chmod +x "$SHIMDIR/curl"
 
 TAGFN="$(mktemp)"
 awk '/^latest_release_tag\(\) \{/,/^\}/' "$ROOT/install.sh" > "$TAGFN"
-check "latest_release_tag: extracted from install.sh (guards the awk)" 0 "releases/latest" cat "$TAGFN"
-check "latest_release_tag: the extracted function is valid bash" 0 "" bash -n "$TAGFN"
+check "latest_release_tag: extracted from install.sh" 0 "releases/latest" cat "$TAGFN"
+check "latest_release_tag: extracted function is valid bash" 0 "" bash -n "$TAGFN"
 
-ltag() { # ltag <redirect_url> [curl_rc]
+ltag() {
   FAKE_REDIRECT="$1" FAKE_CURL_RC="${2:-0}" REPO=heavy-duty/box \
     PATH="$SHIMDIR:$PATH" bash -c ". '$TAGFN'; latest_release_tag"
 }
 check "resolve: reads the tag off the redirect" 0 "0.6.0" \
   ltag "https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/releases/tag/0.6.0"
-check "resolve: a -dev-style tag survives verbatim" 0 "0.7.0-rc1" \
+check "resolve: a pre-release tag survives verbatim" 0 "0.7.0-rc1" \
   ltag "https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/releases/tag/0.7.0-rc1"
-check "resolve: a repo with NO releases (redirect to /releases) fails" 1 "" \
+check "resolve: a repo with no releases fails" 1 "" \
   ltag "https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/releases"
-check "resolve: no redirect at all fails" 1 "" ltag ""
-check "resolve: a curl failure (network down) fails, never hangs on prose" 1 "" \
+check "resolve: no redirect fails" 1 "" ltag ""
+check "resolve: a curl failure fails" 1 "" \
   ltag "https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/releases/tag/0.6.0" 6
-rm -f "$TAGFN"
 
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# The three channels, driven through REAL install.sh runs (#83): default =
-# latest release, BOX_REF=<tag> = pinned, BOX_REF=<branch> = dev. The shim
-# curl serves a fabricated release tarball shaped exactly like GitHub's (one
-# top-level directory), and its log proves WHICH URLs the installer asked
-# for. FAKE_TARBALL carries VERSION 9.9.9 so nothing collides with the tree
-# under test.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 FAKEHOME="$WORK/home"; mkdir -p "$FAKEHOME"
 SRC="$WORK/box-9.9.9"; mkdir -p "$SRC/bin"
 cp "$ROOT/bin/box" "$SRC/bin/box"; chmod +x "$SRC/bin/box"
-echo "9.9.9" > "$SRC/VERSION"
+printf '9.9.9\n' > "$SRC/VERSION"
 tar -C "$WORK" -czf "$WORK/gh.tar.gz" box-9.9.9
 
-ninst() { # ninst <box_home> <box_bin> [VAR=val ...] — install.sh, shim network
+ninst() {
   local h="$1" b="$2"; shift 2
   env HOME="$FAKEHOME" PATH="$SHIMDIR:$PATH" \
       BOX_HOME="$h" BOX_BIN="$b" BOX_YES=1 BOX_SKIP_SETUP_HOST=1 \
       FAKE_TARBALL="$WORK/gh.tar.gz" "$@" bash "$ROOT/install.sh"
 }
 
-# --- channel 1: the default is the latest RELEASE ---------------------------
 H1="$WORK/h1"; B1="$WORK/b1"; L1="$WORK/c1.log"
-check "default channel: resolves and installs the latest release" 0 "latest release: 9.9.9" \
+check "default channel: installs the latest release" 0 "latest release: 9.9.9" \
   ninst "$H1" "$B1" FAKE_CURL_LOG="$L1" \
     FAKE_REDIRECT="https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/releases/tag/9.9.9" \
     FAKE_SERVE_URL="https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/archive/refs/tags/9.9.9.tar.gz"
-check "default channel: the download is the TAG tarball" 0 "" \
+check "default channel: downloads the tag tarball" 0 "" \
   grep -qF "archive/refs/tags/9.9.9.tar.gz" "$L1"
-check "default channel: it never asked for a branch" 1 "" \
-  grep -q "refs/heads" "$L1"
-check "default channel: INSTALLED_FROM records the RESOLVED tag" 0 "heavy-duty/box@9.9.9" \
+check "default channel: never asks for a branch" 1 "" grep -q "refs/heads" "$L1"
+check "default channel: records the resolved tag" 0 "heavy-duty/box@9.9.9" \
   cat "$H1/versions/9.9.9/INSTALLED_FROM"
-check "default channel: the install answers through the chain" 0 "box 9.9.9" \
+check "default channel: installed binary answers" 0 "box 9.9.9" \
   env HOME="$FAKEHOME" "$B1/box" --version
 
-# --- channel 2: BOX_REF=<tag> pins a release --------------------------------
 H2="$WORK/h2"; B2="$WORK/b2"; L2="$WORK/c2.log"
-check "pinned channel: BOX_REF=<tag> installs that tag" 0 "done" \
+check "pinned channel: installs the requested tag" 0 "done" \
   ninst "$H2" "$B2" BOX_REF=9.9.9 FAKE_CURL_LOG="$L2" \
     FAKE_SERVE_URL="https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/archive/refs/tags/9.9.9.tar.gz"
-check "pinned channel: no releases/latest probe (a pin resolves nothing)" 1 "" \
+check "pinned channel: skips latest-release resolution" 1 "" \
   grep -q "releases/latest" "$L2"
 
-# --- channel 3: BOX_REF=<branch> is the dev channel -------------------------
 H3="$WORK/h3"; B3="$WORK/b3"; L3="$WORK/c3.log"
-check "dev channel: BOX_REF=main falls back tag -> branch" 0 "trying it as a branch" \
+check "dev channel: falls back from tag to branch" 0 "trying it as a branch" \
   ninst "$H3" "$B3" BOX_REF=main FAKE_CURL_LOG="$L3" \
     FAKE_SERVE_URL="https://github.com/heavy-duty/box/archive/refs/heads/main.tar.gz"
-check "dev channel: the tag was tried FIRST" 0 "refs/tags/main.tar.gz" \
-  head -1 "$L3"
-check "dev channel: then the branch" 0 "" \
+check "dev channel: tries the tag first" 0 "refs/tags/main.tar.gz" head -1 "$L3"
+check "dev channel: then downloads the branch" 0 "" \
   grep -qF "archive/refs/heads/main.tar.gz" "$L3"
 
-# --- the failure is LOUD, never a silent fall-through to main ---------------
 H4="$WORK/h4"; B4="$WORK/b4"; L4="$WORK/c4.log"
-check "resolution failure: REFUSES, naming the probe URL" 1 "could not resolve the latest release" \
+check "resolution failure: names the latest-release probe" 1 "could not resolve the latest release" \
   ninst "$H4" "$B4" FAKE_CURL_RC=6 FAKE_CURL_LOG="$L4"
-check "resolution failure: ...and the way out (BOX_REF)" 1 "BOX_REF" \
+check "resolution failure: names BOX_REF as the override" 1 "BOX_REF" \
   ninst "$H4" "$B4" FAKE_CURL_RC=6
-check "resolution failure: downloaded NOTHING (no silent main)" 1 "" \
-  grep -q "archive/" "$L4"
-check "resolution failure: nothing was installed" 1 "" test -e "$H4/versions"
-check "a ref that is neither tag nor branch dies naming both" 1 "neither a tag nor a branch" \
+check "resolution failure: downloads nothing" 1 "" grep -q "archive/" "$L4"
+check "resolution failure: installs nothing" 1 "" test -e "$H4/versions"
+check "unknown ref names both attempted channels" 1 "neither a tag nor a branch" \
   ninst "$H4" "$B4" BOX_REF=no-such-ref
 
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# The -dev convention (#83): main's VERSION carries -dev between releases, so
-# a dev install lands beside releases in versions/ instead of impersonating
-# one — and the docs keep the promises this PR makes.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-check "CONTRIBUTING documents the post-release -dev bump" 0 "" \
-  grep -q -- '-dev' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "CONTRIBUTING documents the release ritual (tag == VERSION)" 0 "" \
-  grep -qi 'release' "$ROOT/CONTRIBUTING.md"
-check "README documents the default (latest release) channel" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'latest release' "$ROOT/README.md"
-check "README documents the pinned channel" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'BOX_REF=0.6.0' "$ROOT/README.md"
-check "README documents the dev channel" 0 "" \
-  grep -qF 'BOX_REF=main' "$ROOT/README.md"
+check "README documents the latest-release channel" 0 "" grep -qF 'latest release' "$ROOT/README.md"
+check "README documents the pinned channel" 0 "" grep -qF 'BOX_REF=0.6.0' "$ROOT/README.md"
+check "README documents the dev channel" 0 "" grep -qF 'BOX_REF=main' "$ROOT/README.md"
 
 echo "---"
 echo "$PASS passed, $FAIL failed"