BUILDER.md

@@ -33,7 +33,10 @@ triage bug, and the move is to say so on the issue, not to guess.
      re-requests posted, by head and not by verdict (steps 1–2). A red check
      at the head takes it out of this shape: the next move is yours;
   3. every remaining acceptance criterion is operator-owned, stated so by
-     triage on the issue;
+     triage on the issue. **An operator-owned remainder parks the claim and
+     never the handoff**: this shape is reached only from the far side of
+     shape 4, because it is the state finishing the work puts you in and
+     would otherwise excuse the handoff it should follow (#336);
   4. it is **handed off** — round passed, no `blocker:*` standing,
      `state:needs-human` set per Handoff, the merge the human's. Shapes 2
      and 4 are sequential and never overlap;
@@ -174,7 +177,9 @@ such as the panel roster live in that repo's own CONTRIBUTING.)
    blocking (#139, #276). **Then classify that entry by `conclusion`, never
    `status`**, which can disagree with it (#259). No conclusion is not
    green: a configured run in progress is waited on, and waiting is
-   compliance, not a stall. Cancelled or stale is not green, *stale* being a
+   compliance, not a stall — the wait is the **request's**, and never a
+   reason to withhold the declaration that a round was answered (step 2).
+   Cancelled or stale is not green, *stale* being a
    superseded head's check, which a head-scoped rollup never shows. Skipped
    or neutral is green, those being deliberate "passed / not applicable"
    conclusions. No checks configured is green — the third ruled case, not an
@@ -200,8 +205,19 @@ such as the panel roster live in that repo's own CONTRIBUTING.)
    head, and its mechanism is crew's to describe (#94). **The re-request
    carries the same green-check-at-head precondition**, argued exception
    included: a fix push whose check comes up red is your next fix, not the
-   panel's. Prefer verification over argument — add the test that settles
-   the doubt.
+   panel's. **Where an engine mediates the request, that precondition binds
+   the engine's act and not yours**: declaring a round answered is not
+   requesting the panel, so declare it as soon as the round's fixes are
+   pushed and stop. The engine holds the request while the head is pending
+   or red, so an early declaration cannot produce an early request while a
+   withheld one is indistinguishable from a session that died (#330).
+   **Never wait on an event you have no wake for** — where the engine is
+   what observes the check settling, the wait is the engine's to keep
+   (#330). **Never block on a producer you cannot prove alive either**:
+   where a job signals its own completion, that signal is the wake and the
+   finished output is read afterwards, because a follow on a file nothing is
+   writing cannot tell *not yet* from *never* (#336). Prefer verification
+   over argument — add the test that settles the doubt.
 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; silence and force-forward are not options, and a panel
@@ -218,8 +234,9 @@ may draft a PR but only the builder undrafts it. **Where a draft suppressed
 the checks, green is proven at the flip and the request still follows it** —
 marking ready runs the checks the draft held back, so the order is flip, let
 the head answer, then request, step 1's precondition and not a second one.
-Waiting there is compliance, and `blocker:unrequested` does not fire while a
-head's checks are pending or red (#236).
+Waiting there is compliance — again the request's wait, not the
+declaration's — and `blocker:unrequested` does not fire while a head's
+checks are pending or red (#236).
 
 ## The ruling ask
 

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -97,14 +97,13 @@ table repeats it (#104).
 
 ## Doctrine conventions
 
-The vendored role files — `AGENTS.md`, `TRIAGE.md`, `BUILDER.md`,
-`REVIEWER.md`, `LABELS.md`, and `RELEASES.md` — state each normative rule
-completely, keep at most one sentence of why, and cite its record only with a
-bare parenthetical such as `(#N)`, `(#N D3)`, or `(#N, #M)`. Incident
-narrative — timestamps, actors, quoted comments, measured counts, and links to
-specific comments — belongs in that record. If a rule cannot be followed
-without chasing its cite, the rule is under-stated: fix the statement, not the
-citation. (#280)
+The vendored role files — the set [`docs/VENDORED.txt`](docs/VENDORED.txt)
+declares — state each normative rule completely, keep at most one sentence of
+why, and cite its record only with a bare parenthetical such as `(#N)`,
+`(#N D3)`, or `(#N, #M)`. Incident narrative — timestamps, actors, quoted
+comments, measured counts, and links to specific comments — belongs in that
+record. If a rule cannot be followed without chasing its cite, the rule is
+under-stated: fix the statement, not the citation. (#280)
 
 Normative text in those files does not cite issues from other repositories.
 Consumers read the vendored bytes outside this organization's context, and a
@@ -119,21 +118,12 @@ every session. (#280)
 
 ## How the other repos use this
 
-Two consumption modes, split by what has a runtime:
-
-- **Machinery is consumed by reference.** Workflows and actions are fetched
-  by GitHub at run time from the ref the caller pins — no copy exists in the
-  consumer.
-- **Doctrine is consumed as a machine-verified mirror.** A document's only
-  "runtime" is an agent reading the working tree of the repo it stands in —
-  a doc that requires a cross-repo fetch before it governs is a doc that
-  sometimes goes unread. So the agent-facing set — **AGENTS.md, TRIAGE.md,
-  BUILDER.md, REVIEWER.md, LABELS.md, RELEASES.md** — is vendored into each governed
-  repo at **`.ceremony/`**, byte-identical to this repo at the pinned ref,
-  by the sync tool (issue #19). A CI guard diffs the mirror against the pin
-  on every PR: hand-editing a vendored file, or bumping the pin without
-  re-syncing, goes red. It is a copy that cannot drift — which is the only
-  kind of copy this org allows.
+Two consumption modes, split by what has a runtime: **machinery by
+reference**, fetched at run time from the ref a caller pins, and **doctrine
+as a mirror** — the set [`docs/VENDORED.txt`](docs/VENDORED.txt) declares,
+vendored at `.ceremony/` and held to the pin by a guard (issue #19). The
+[README](README.md) states both modes in full, and why they differ; what
+follows is only what they leave a governed repo to carry.
 
 A governed repo (box, rig, cast, incubator, …) therefore carries:
 

RELEASES.md

@@ -86,6 +86,37 @@ edges rather than merely appending membership at the sink. It follows that
 every `ready` issue is a gate member. `epic` and `post-merge` issues are exempt
 because neither is claimable (#292).
 
+A member that lands `post-merge` releases nothing: that exemption is about
+claimability, while a `post-merge` issue is still open and an open predecessor
+holds its successors, so every successor declaring on it stays held and the
+window stops advancing along that edge (#329).
+
+**When a member reaches `post-merge` and any open declaration names it, triage
+splits the remainder**: mint a fresh issue carrying the outstanding criteria
+verbatim, naming its owner and its wake condition and citing the original, then
+close the original on what it delivered. Triage owns this because only triage
+mints issues and `post-merge` is its completion queue (#329).
+
+**The release edge is the original's close, never the remainder's.** Each
+successor's declaration names the original's number, so closing the new issue
+releases nothing (#329).
+
+**Split only when an open declaration names the issue.** The trigger is a check
+rather than a judgement — run the blocker parse over every open `blocked` body
+and see whether this number appears — because an issue that strands nothing is
+`post-merge` working as intended (#329).
+
+**Never close work out from under a builder.** Where the original is assigned,
+`claimed`, or carrying an open PR, amend its body to hand the outstanding
+criteria to the new issue and let its holder close it, so the release edge above
+is reached without taking the work from them (#329).
+
+**Do not instead teach the blocker parse that `post-merge` counts as landed.**
+That promotes a successor while its predecessor still owes acceptance criteria,
+inverts a parser whose deliberate error direction is to hold or flag a reference
+it cannot read rather than release it, and needs label data a reference-state
+lookup does not carry (#329).
+
 The operator may declare a parallel track at init when its footprint is
 disjoint from the primary window: another repository, another artifact, or
 provably non-overlapping clusters. The declaration names the boundary and any

changelog.d/229.md

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+### Changed
+
+- Forge consumers now receive the upstream 0.6.1 and 0.6.2 doctrine for vendored-set routing, review-round signalling, operator-owned remainders, producer liveness, and post-merge release edges (#229).