ceremony/docs/CONSUMERS.md

Consumer setup

How a repo adopts the ceremony — bootstrap for a greenfield repo, a conversion checklist for a repo carrying its own copy of the machinery, and the policies that keep either honest afterwards. The doctrine (what a release is, the doors, the guards, the drill) lives in ../README.md; this guide is the how-to. It is meant to be sufficient on its own: a conversion executed from this guide should need zero out-of-band knowledge, and gaps found while converting are filed as edits to this guide (#12).

Prerequisites

• Repo shape: work lands on a main default branch by PR; fork PRs are fine — the merge door rides push to main, never pull_request (release.yml, box#97), and the label read goes through the API (lib/facts.sh), so the ceremony never needs the PR's own context. No PAT, no secrets: every permission the flow uses is the caller-declared GITHUB_TOKEN grant.

• Pick the version backend: file (a VERSION file — box, rig, incubator) or package-json (the version field, lockfile kept in sync on the post-release bump — cast). This is the workflow's one input; the full configuration surface of the ceremony is enumerated in #1 ("The configuration axes").

• The release label must exist before the first ceremony PR — it is the merge door's declared-intent read (lib/facts.sh). Bootstrap it via the labels sweep caller's workflow_dispatch (Labels automation), or create it by hand, matching the core table (actions/labels-reconcile/labels-reconcile.sh):

  gh label create release --color 0E8A16 \
    --description "Release flow and version/packaging work"
  

Bootstrap a new repo

The greenfield path (incubator's, #16) — the repo never owns a copy of the machinery at all:

1. VERSION at X.Y.Z-dev — never bare. A first version that never carried -dev hits the decide table's refuse row and has to ship by the tag door (the known first-release edge, cast#111; lib/decide.sh). Bootstrapping at -dev keeps the repo clear of it entirely. (package-json backend: the version field, same rule.)

2. An armed changelog: a CHANGELOG.md preamble plus changelog.d/. The changelog file starts as preamble only — no section; the first release writes the first one. The fragments directory beside it is the arming (#112): it carries a README.md marker naming the assembler and the doctrine — take ceremony's own changelog.d/README.md at the pin — which is what keeps the directory tracked while it holds no fragments and what changelog-armed asserts. Every behavior-change PR then writes changelog.d/<issue>.md (The changelog rule); the release PR assembles the section (Assembling a release section).

   Fragment mode is available at 0.2.0 and later, and not in 0.1.0. A consumer pinned to 0.1.0 bootstraps the legacy shape instead — the preamble plus an empty ## Unreleased section for entries to land under — and converts on the pin bump to 0.2.0 or later; never mix refs to adopt it early.

3. drills/README.md defining what a drill means in this repo — each repo names its own (the drill doctrine). Plain drills, not a dot-directory (drill-recorded.sh).

4. .github/workflows/release.yml — the caller, verbatim from Release workflow below.

5. CI guard steps in the repo's ci.yml:

       - uses: actions/checkout@v4
         with:
           # changelog-monotonic and changelog-assembled compare HEAD
           # against the merge base; a checkout that cannot resolve it is
           # a hard failure in CI, not a skip (a guard that can quietly
           # stop guarding is the failure shape these checks exist to
           # refuse).
           fetch-depth: 0
       - uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/changelog-armed@<pinned-tag>
       - uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/changelog-monotonic@<pinned-tag>
       # changelog-assembled is available at 0.2.0 and later, not in
       # 0.1.0. Adopt this step with the pin bump to 0.2.0 or later;
       # never mix refs. Green NOTICE on every non-release PR; on a
       # release PR it asserts the stamped section is exactly the
       # fragments it consumed.
       - uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/changelog-assembled@<pinned-tag>
       - uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/drill-recorded@<pinned-tag>
       # runner-isolated is available at 0.2.0 and later, not in 0.1.0.
       # Adopt this step with the pin bump to 0.2.0 or later; never mix
       # refs.
       - uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/runner-isolated@<pinned-tag>
   

   changelog-armed and drill-recorded take version-source: package-json where that is the backend; every guard's inputs and defaults are in its action.yml (actions/). Adopting the agent team flow adds the docs-sync step (below).

   runner-isolated asserts that no pull_request-triggered workflow names a self-hosted runner — a PR workflow runs the branch's code, and unreviewed fork code must never execute on your own hardware (#58). It fires on the PR that first mixes a PR trigger and a self-hosted runs-on in one file; the unblock is splitting the workflow. A repo with no self-hosted runner still wants it: the guard's value is the day somebody adds one.

   This guide documents main. New machinery is marked unreleased here until a release tag ships it — and the release PR that ships the machinery clears, in that same PR, every marker its own assembled section makes false: the section cites its issues, each marker cites the same issue, and the release PR's diff is the one place both halves are visible at once (#221). If an action does not exist at the consumer's pinned tag, adopt it with the pin bump to the first tag that carries it; never mix a moving or newer ref into an otherwise exact-pin consumer. In particular, 0.1.0 carries changelog-armed, changelog-monotonic and drill-recorded plus docs-sync, but not changelog-assembled or runner-isolated.

6. Labels automation (optional but recommended): the two callers from Labels automation — the event-facing labels caller and the sweep caller (#209) — plus .github/labels.conf (panel + the repo's scope:* rows) and .github/labeler.yml (the path→scope globs). Run the sweep caller's workflow_dispatch once — this bootstraps the taxonomy, release label included — and use it again whenever an operator needs a full-board sweep immediately.

7. The artifact hook (optional): .github/actions/release-artifact/ per The artifact hook. No hook → the source tarball is the package.

From there the flow is the doctrine: ordinary PRs write their fragment, the ceremony PR makes the three stamps, a human merges, the machine transcribes.

Convert an existing repo

The box/rig/cast path — the repo carries its own copy of the machinery and hands it over. The conversion PR is release-flow work: label it release if the repo's conventions ask for that, and either way it lands as a green NOTICE no-op on main — the decide table's green rows exist precisely so the machinery is safe to work on (lib/decide.sh).

• Replace .github/workflows/release.yml with the caller from Release workflow — whole file, keeping its load-bearing comments. Check the result has one push: key carrying both filters: YAML maps are last-key-wins, and a second sibling push: silently kills a door (rig's review catch).
• Swap the guard script steps in ci.yml for the uses: steps in the bootstrap list above (with fetch-depth: 0 on the checkout).
• Replace labels.yml with the caller from Labels automation and add the sweep caller labels-sweep.yml beside it (#209); extract .github/labels.conf from the old reconciler's embedded config — the panel= roster line and the repo's scope:* rows (the format). .github/labeler.yml stays as it is (path globs are inherently repo-specific).
• Convert the changelog to fragments (requires a pin at the first tag carrying fragment mode — not 0.1.0): move every entry under ## Unreleased to changelog.d/<issue>.md, verbatim — the filename is derivable from the entry's own (#N); an entry citing several issues goes to the file for the first cited — delete the ## Unreleased heading, and add the changelog.d/README.md marker (bootstrap step 2). Published sections stay byte-identical; changelog-monotonic proves that on the conversion PR, and changelog-armed refuses a surviving ## Unreleased the moment the directory exists. Rewrite the repo's own contributor docs that say "add a line under ## Unreleased" in the same PR — split either way, main lies for as long as the split lasts.
• Delete the now-shadowed copies — zero shared scripts remain: .github/scripts/release-notes.sh (box, cast) or release-lib.sh (rig), changelog-armed.sh (box), changelog-monotonic.sh, drill-recorded.sh, labels-reconcile.sh.
• Trim the repo's test suite to repo-specific tests: the machinery tests go — they live in this repo's test/ now, run by its CI — while the repo's own surfaces stay (box/rig's install-channel halves of test/release.sh, cast's install-sh tests). A machinery test file goes whole when its subject moved (rig's test/labels-reconcile.sh sourced the deleted reconciler), and so do tests that pin the old workflow's shape — a grep or awk against release.yml/ci.yml internals fails against the caller stub, not because the stub is wrong (rig #13's conversion).
• Sweep the repo's other docs for pointers at the deleted paths — drills/README.md and any labels doc typically cite the old .github/scripts/*.sh by path; repoint them at the pinned actions. A repo carrying its own copy of a doc the mirror vendors (rig's root LABELS.md) retires it in the same PR: a hand-maintained copy beside a machine-verified mirror is the drift the mirror exists to end.
• Shrink CONTRIBUTING's release section to a pointer at this repo's README plus what is genuinely per-repo: the drill meaning (drills/README.md), artifact notes, the changelog house style if it differs from the portable rule.
• What stays, per repo, forever: VERSION (or the package.json version), CHANGELOG.md, changelog.d/, drills/, .github/labeler.yml, .github/labels.conf, the optional .github/actions/release-artifact/ — the full kept-vs-moved table is in #1.

Release workflow

The reusable release workflow implements both doors of the ceremony — the merge door (merging the release-labeled ceremony PR ships it) and the tag door (a bare X.Y.Z tag push as the manual fallback and backfill). The design essay lives in the workflow's own header comment; the doctrine in issue #1.

The consumer's entire release.yml:

name: release
# 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:
    tags: ["**"]      # every tag — a wrong tag must FAIL the assert loudly,
                      # never be skipped by a shape filter that didn't match
    branches: [main]
permissions:
  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:
  release:
    uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/.github/workflows/release.yml@<pinned-tag>
    with:
      version-source: file   # or: package-json

version-source is the only input: file (a VERSION file — box, rig, incubator) or package-json (the version field, lockfile kept in sync on the post-release bump — cast). Everything else a repo might vary is a change to the ceremony itself, made in this repo, once.

Keep the merge door on push to main — never pull_request: a pull_request run from a public fork gets a read-only GITHUB_TOKEN that permissions: cannot raise (box#97), and every ceremony PR in this org is cross-repo from a bot fork.

Bootstrap the version at X.Y.Z-dev, not bare: a first version that never carried -dev hits the decide table's refuse row and has to ship by the tag door instead (the known first-release edge, cast#111).

The artifact hook

If the repository contains .github/actions/release-artifact/action.yml, both doors invoke it — after the tag exists, before gh release create — with the release version as input and RELEASE_ASSETS_DIR exported. Contract for hook authors:

• Drop finished files into $RELEASE_ASSETS_DIR; every file there is uploaded as a release asset.
• Exit non-zero to abort the release.
• The hook owns its own toolchain (checkout is done; install node, docker, whatever it needs, itself).

A failed hook leaves the tag created but no release published. Recovery is the tag door's semantics: fix the cause, then delete and re-push the same tag (the tag door publishes for it), or run gh release create by hand from a fixed tree. The merge door's nothing-exists assert will refuse a re-run of the completed merge, by design.

No hook → no assets: for a pure-bash tree, GitHub's source tarball for the tag IS the package. Worked examples land with the conversions: cast's tgz build (#15) and incubator's GHCR image push (#16).

Labels automation

The labels automation is two reusable workflows since #209, adopted together at the same pin:

• labels.yml — the event-facing half, called on PR and issue events. Two jobs: additive path-based scope:* labels, and a few-seconds trigger job that wakes the sweep by dispatching the consumer's sweep caller (gh workflow run, plain GITHUB_TOKEN — workflow_dispatch is one of the two documented exemptions from the token's no-retrigger rule, so no PAT anywhere in the path and no loop: the sweep dispatches nothing).
• labels-sweep.yml — the reconcile sweep: PR state, blockers, handoff, stale status, the issue work queue, and the needs-ruling invariants on both surfaces — the bare-flag check and the 7-day comment-only nudge (#52; the sweep reads that flag and never writes it). Detached from PR-triggered runs on purpose: all sweeps serialize through one shared concurrency group, and GitHub records every queue-displaced run as CANCELLED — harmless (the surviving sweep does its work) until it rode a pull_request_target run and the ❌ landed on that PR's checks as fake red CI that GitHub refuses to rerun (crew#250: gh run rerun and its --failed/--job forms all decline a queue-displaced run). Behind its own caller, a displaced sweep cancels on the Actions tab, attached to no PR; PR checks show scope and the green trigger only.

The consumer keeps its path mapping in .github/labeler.yml and its review panel plus scope taxonomy in .github/labels.conf.

Additive means additive (available at 0.3.0 and later — #130): the scope job's only label write is POST /issues/{n}/labels, which adds the derived scopes and removes nothing, so a label applied while the job runs survives it. Earlier tags used actions/labeler@v5, which — even under sync-labels: false — replaces the whole label set and silently drops a label written mid-job (ceremony#128 lost its release that way). With the same pin bump, .github/labeler.yml keeps its format but the accepted shape becomes exactly the one this guide has always shown: label → changed-files → any-glob-to-any-file, block or flow style, globs over **, * and ? (** crosses /, the others do not; the whole path must match). Any other labeler key — all-globs-to-all-files, branch matchers, negations — fails the run loudly instead of being half-honoured. The reconcile sweep also warns (never sets) when a non-draft PR carries a bare X.Y.Z version differing from its base but no release label — the merge door would refuse that merge, and the sweep says so first.

The complete event-facing caller is:

name: labels
on:
  pull_request_target:
    # Fork PRs; these carry the head/draft/review facts state:* derives from.
    # labeled/unlabeled are the handoff wake (state:needs-human confirmed here);
    # synchronize re-derives on every push. review_requested/review_request_removed
    # (shipped in 0.3.0, ceremony#137) wake the sweep that clears
    # blocker:unrequested when the panel is asked.
    types: [opened, reopened, ready_for_review, converted_to_draft, synchronize, labeled, unlabeled, review_requested, review_request_removed]
  # Available at 0.2.0 and later (the first tag carrying ceremony#32); a
  # consumer pinned to 0.1.0 omits this block.
  issues:
    # Narrowed (#199) to the actions carrying a queue-state change the hourly
    # cron cannot wait one cadence for: opened → the mint→needs-triage check,
    # closed → the blocker-closes→ready self-heal, edited → a body rewrite of the
    # `Blocked by #N` declaration the sweep parses, reopened → a closed issue
    # re-entering the queue. Dropped: labeled/unlabeled/assigned/unassigned —
    # validation + the 48h claim clock, caught within one cadence, and
    # labeled/unlabeled were the issues-churn source. The handoff wake is
    # pull_request_target:labeled, not issues, so this leaves it intact.
    types: [opened, closed, edited, reopened]
permissions:
  contents: read
  checks: read          # mergeability/check-rollup read for PR state
  statuses: read        # commit-status rollup read for PR state
  actions: write        # the trigger job's `gh workflow run` dispatch of the sweep caller (#209)
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write
jobs:
  labels:
    uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/.github/workflows/labels.yml@<pinned-tag>
    # If the sweep caller below is named anything but labels-sweep.yml,
    # say so: `with: { sweep_workflow: <filename> }`. Ceremony's own
    # dogfood does (self-labels-sweep.yml).

And the complete sweep caller, labels-sweep.yml beside it — the hourly cron lives HERE since #209, not on the labels caller:

name: labels-sweep
on:
  # The consumer owns this cadence (#203). Hourly is the recommended default
  # when no other engine drives board state: the cron is then the sweep's only
  # wake for four transition classes — a review verdict landing (no
  # pull_request_review trigger on the labels caller), blocker:ci-red
  # set/cleared, blocker:conflict when another PR merges under this one, and
  # time-based stale / 48h claim-reclaim. The labels caller's events carry the
  # rest in seconds, one trigger-job dispatch away. Hourly trades ≤1h of
  # latency on those four while cutting nominal scheduled sweeps from four an
  # hour to one at GitHub's 1-minute floor. Do not delete the cron: it is their
  # discovery path. If another engine writes some of those transitions, only
  # the classes with no other writer bound the cadence; relax it only as that
  # list shrinks.
  schedule: [{cron: "0 * * * *"}]
  # A manual full-board sweep. A bare dispatch (input default "yes") also
  # bootstraps the taxonomy on a fresh repo. The labels caller's trigger job
  # wakes this workflow with bootstrap=no on every board event, so the
  # declared input is part of the contract: a dispatch naming an undeclared
  # input is refused, and the trigger job goes loudly red.
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      bootstrap:
        description: Bootstrap the label taxonomy before sweeping
        type: choice
        options: ["yes", "no"]
        default: "yes"
permissions:
  contents: read
  checks: read          # mergeability/check-rollup read for PR state
  statuses: read        # commit-status rollup read for PR state
  actions: read         # workflow-run nodes inside the check rollup — private repos do not imply it (incubator#60)
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write
jobs:
  sweep:
    uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/.github/workflows/labels-sweep.yml@<pinned-tag>
    # If this repo's PR-facing labels caller is named anything but `labels`,
    # pass that name: `with: { pr_workflow_name: <name> }`. The sweep exports
    # it as SELF_WORKFLOW so the label machinery's own check entries (scope,
    # trigger) never count toward blocker:ci-red — a red trigger means "fix
    # the caller", which no PR edit can do (#208 reads it).

Naming any permission sets every unnamed permission to none. Public repositories allow check data to be read regardless, but a private consumer needs the explicit reads above; without them the failure appears as an empty state:* axis on the board rather than a red workflow run. The labels caller's actions: write is different — it is required everywhere, public repos included: the trigger job's gh workflow run is a write, and without it every event run goes red at the trigger.

The failure mode to know before bumping: a consumer that bumps its pin to a #209-carrying tag without adding the sweep caller keeps green-looking silence nowhere — the trigger job goes red on every PR and issue event (workflow-not-found; likewise on a sweep caller missing its bootstrap input, or a labels caller missing actions: write), and event-woken sweeps stop until the caller lands. That loudness is deliberate: never read silence, or a green scope alone, as health. Make the adoption one atomic PR — pin bump, sweep caller file, actions: write line together.

The issues: trigger is available at 0.2.0 and later — 0.2.0 is the first tag carrying ceremony#32. A consumer pinned to 0.1.0 omits it. Adopt it only by bumping every ceremony reference to 0.2.0 or later; never mix refs to adopt it early. The type list has grown then narrowed across tags: 0.2.0 (ceremony#32) shipped [opened, labeled, unlabeled, assigned, unassigned, closed]; 0.3.0 (ceremony#144) added edited and reopened; ceremony#199 narrows it to [opened, closed, edited, reopened] and relaxes the cron to hourly, so a consumer picks up the smaller trigger surface at the pin bump to the first tag carrying ceremony#199. The narrowing drops labeled/unlabeled/assigned/unassigned — validation and the 48h claim clock, which the hourly cron catches within one cadence, and labeled/ unlabeled were the issues-churn source — while keeping #144's edited/ reopened: those carry a queue-state change an event uniquely carries (a body rewrite of Blocked by #N, and a closed issue re-entering the queue), so the must-fail in ceremony#199 keeps them on events. opened drives the mint→needs-triage check and closed the blocker-closes→ready self-heal; the stub and ceremony's own caller stay byte-for-byte identical, the parity #144 established.

The two-caller split (ceremony#209) is available at 0.4.1 and later. A consumer pinned to 0.4.0 or earlier keeps the previous single-caller shape — the labels caller carrying the cron, workflow_dispatch, and actions: read — and adopts the split at the pin bump to 0.4.1 or later. Never mix refs to adopt it early.

The migration is one atomic PR with exactly four edits — crew, the consumer whose displaced-check evidence drove #209 (crew#227, crew#250), is the worked example; written here against 0.4.1, the first tag carrying the split:

1. Pin bump, every reference together (Version pinning): 0.4.0 → 0.4.1 in the labels caller's uses: line and in every other ceremony uses: in the repo — crew also pins in release.yml and its ci.yml guard steps. A repo on the doctrine mirror re-runs docs-sync --fix in the same PR.
2. New file .github/workflows/labels-sweep.yml — the sweep caller stub above, verbatim, bootstrap input included (the trigger's -f bootstrap=no dispatch is refused if the input is undeclared).
3. The hourly cron RELOCATES — it is moved, never copied. Delete the schedule: block (and the bare workflow_dispatch:) from the labels caller in the same edit that adds the sweep caller. Warning: a consumer that copies the sweep caller and leaves the old schedule on the labels caller gets DOUBLE sweeps — every cron tick fires both callers into the one shared labels-reconcile group — so displacement goes up, and the fix reads as the bug getting worse.
4. actions: write on the labels caller — consumers carry actions: read today (crew does); the trigger job's gh workflow run is a write. The sweep caller keeps actions: read.

Bump without the sweep caller and the trigger job goes red on every PR and issue event — the loud failure mode above — so never split these four edits across PRs.

pull_request_target is intentional: fork PRs need the base repository's token to write labels. The reusable workflows execute no PR code. They check out only the consumer's base branch and the pinned ceremony implementation. The #52 ruling invariants ride exactly these triggers — but the caller above is no longer the #18 shape, so adopting current triggers is a stub edit, not a bare pin bump. review_requested and review_request_removed on pull_request_target: shipped in 0.3.0 (ceremony#137) — the wake that clears blocker:unrequested the moment the panel is asked, without which a quiet repo wears that flag until the backstop cron; a consumer picks them up by pinning 0.3.0 or later, never through mixed refs.

.github/labels.conf has one mandatory panel setting, one mandatory triage-actors setting, zero or more optional per-author panel rows, and then zero or more scope rows:

panel=claude-bot example-codex-bot example-grok-bot
panel[example-builder]=example-codex-bot example-grok-bot
triage-actors=example-triage-bot
scope:cli|C5DEF5|The command-line surface
scope:docs|C5DEF5|Documentation

The mandatory triage-actors= setting is likewise accepted at 0.2.0 and later, and not by 0.1.0. At that tag the file contains panel= plus scope rows only; adding triage-actors= is a parse failure, not an ignored setting. Add it at the same pin bump as the issues: trigger — 0.2.0 or later — never before it and never through mixed refs.

The optional panel[<login>]= rows are unreleased (#224). A row names the effective panel for PRs authored by exactly that login — the reconciler computes that PR's required set from the row, minus the author as always — and every other author keeps the base panel=, which stays mandatory. The panel is configured or it is the base one: ceremony never infers a reviewer set from the model behind a login. On any earlier pin a bracketed row is a parse failure, not an ignored setting — the same shape triage-actors= bought at 0.2.0, but harsher in practice: the reconcile job dies on every PR event and every sweep until the row is removed, so the whole label board goes down. Add the row only at or after the pin bump that carries it, never before it and never through mixed refs.

Both actor lists are whitespace-separated. triage-actors names the identities allowed to mint issues without the sweep applying needs-triage. Label rows use exactly name|color|description; blank lines are ignored and extra pipes are refused. There are no comment lines: every non-blank line must be the panel= setting, a panel[<login>]= row, the triage-actors= setting, or a label row, so #-prefixed prose is a parse failure, not a comment (rig #13's conversion found this the hard way — keep the file data only). Core state, blocker, work-queue, and release labels come from ceremony. Scope rows remain consumer-owned because paths and surfaces differ by repository.

After adding the callers and configuration, dispatch the sweep caller once to bootstrap labels on a fresh repository. A bare dispatch is also the operator's general manual full-board sweep — the answer when the board looks wrong now rather than after the next scheduled cadence:

gh workflow run labels-sweep.yml -R <owner>/<repo>

Ceremony dogfoods the callers under the filenames self-labels.yml and self-labels-sweep.yml, so the equivalent command in this repository substitutes that filename. Scheduled and trigger-driven runs only reconcile; they do not repeatedly upsert the taxonomy (the trigger's dispatch carries bootstrap=no). When a ceremony pin bump adds a core label, bump the pin first and then re-dispatch; the scheduled sweep warns when the pinned taxonomy declares a core label the repository lacks.

Doctrine mirror

Machinery is consumed by reference — GitHub fetches the workflows and actions above from the pin at run time — but documents have no runtime: an agent reads the working tree it stands in. So the agent-facing doc set (ceremony's docs/VENDORED.txt: AGENTS.md, TRIAGE.md, BUILDER.md, REVIEWER.md, LABELS.md) is vendored into each consumer at .ceremony/, byte-identical to ceremony at the pin, plus a generated .ceremony/README.md marking the directory machine-managed. actions/docs-sync owns the copy: --fix writes it (and deletes what the manifest dropped — mirror means mirror), --check re-diffs it in CI on every PR, so a hand edit or a stale pin goes red instead of quietly governing.

The consumer's ci.yml gains the guard alongside the others:

      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/docs-sync@<pinned-tag>

mode defaults to check. There is no ref input: the action reads the pin from the consumer's own .github/workflows/release.yml — the same single uses: …/release.yml@<ref> line that pins the machinery, so one pin governs machinery and doctrine alike, and a second pin cannot fall out of sync.

Bootstrap on adoption: add the release and labels callers first (the pin must exist — the mirror is verified against it), then run --fix once from the repo root and commit .ceremony/ together with the callers:

curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/heavy-duty/ceremony/<pinned-tag>/actions/docs-sync/docs-sync.sh" \
  | bash -s -- --fix

If the repo has no root AGENTS.md, --fix also scaffolds the thin stub that routes agents to .ceremony/AGENTS.md — created once, never overwritten; it is per-repo content the moment you edit it, so --check asserts only that it exists.

Bumping the pin re-syncs the mirror in the same PR — the pin-bump procedure.

Version pinning

• Pin an exact ceremony release tag — @0.1.0, never a branch and never a moving major pointer: the family pins things and reviews updates (#1 D2). Every uses: of this repo in the consumer — the two workflow callers and the guard steps — names the same tag.
• Bump by PR, every reference together. Before bumping, read the ceremony's own CHANGELOG.md section for the new version (the release body on its releases page is that section, verbatim). One bump PR updates every ceremony uses: reference in the repo to the new tag — the workflow callers and each guard step. The exact count is tag-dependent: it is the workflow caller or callers plus the guards that the pinned tag carries. Changing only one line leaves the consumer split across ceremony versions, which the same-tag rule above forbids. A repo that has adopted the agent team flow additionally bumps the mirror in the same PR — the pin-bump procedure.
• One pin governs machinery and doctrine. The ref in the consumer's release.yml uses: line is the single pin: docs-sync reads it from exactly there and verifies the .ceremony/ mirror against it — there is no second pin to fall out of sync (#19).

The changelog rule

The portable version of the family's contributor rule — the repo's own CONTRIBUTING may sharpen it, but this is the floor the guards assume:

• Every PR that changes behavior writes one fragment: changelog.d/<issue>.md, named for the authorizing issue — <repo>-<issue>.md for cross-repo work carrying Part of <repo>#N — so the name is known at claim time and two builders can only collide by working the same issue (#112 D2). Never an edit to CHANGELOG.md: the release PR assembles the section (below).

  The sole exception is the release PR: it writes no fragment. It consumes the directory and stamps the section, so a fragment it created would be absent from changelog-assembled's merge-base replay if consumed, or refused by changelog-armed if left to survive into the next release. A change that must ship inside the release PR therefore ships without an entry. If it can wait and wants an entry, land it as an ordinary PR before the release PR, then rebase and re-assemble the release.

• The fragment is the prose, not a description of it (#112 D3): the exact lines that will be published — no front-matter, no ## heading (that one is the assembler's to write). changelog-armed refuses a malformed fragment on the PR that wrote it.

• Grouped repos group inside the fragment: ### Added, ### Changed, ### Fixed headings with bullets under them; create Deprecated, Removed, or Security only when a change genuinely needs that rarer kind. A repo is grouped or flat, never both (#112 D4). The assembler merges groups in canonical order — Added, Changed, Fixed, Removed, Deprecated, Security, then anything else first-seen — and inside a group entries read newest issue first (#112 D5). Which shape binds is inferred from the newest published section, unless an optional sentinel changelog.d/shape — one line, exactly flat or grouped — declares it and outranks the inference (#182). To flip a repo's shape, land one PR that adds the sentinel and converts every pending fragment to the declared shape, bullets byte-identical; the sentinel stays after the release, as the declaration a reader in the directory finds.

• One line: say what changed, and stop. Lead with the surface, not the mechanism — "state:needs-human is set at handoff" beats "the labels workflow now also wakes on labeled". The why and the how belong in the PR body, where anyone chasing the reasoning already goes.

• Cite the issue or PR — (#141).

• Mark a breaking change with a leading BREAKING:.

• A repo not yet on fragment mode — no changelog.d/ — keeps the legacy floor until its conversion: one line under ## Unreleased, inserted above the heading below it, never over it (replacing a shipped heading deletes that release's section silently — box#122, why the monotonic guard exists), appended under a standing ### heading where the repo groups.

Assembling a release section

The ceremony PR's changelog stamp is one command, run by hand, never in CI — the assembled section must land in the release PR's diff, where the panel reads it (#112 D12). A consumer runs the tool from a ceremony checkout at its own pin:

git clone --depth 1 --branch <pinned-tag> https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony /tmp/ceremony
/tmp/ceremony/bin/changelog-assemble <X.Y.Z>

Run it at the repo root. It folds every changelog.d/ fragment into a new ## X.Y.Z — DATE section on top of CHANGELOG.md (DATE is today's UTC date; pass one as a second argument to choose it) and deletes the fragments it consumed — commit both halves together. --check prints the would-be section body without touching anything; read it before running the real thing. In CI, changelog-assembled replays the run from the merge base and refuses a stamp that is not byte-for-byte what the fragments assemble to — a mis-run hand step fails the PR, not the published release.

Adopting the agent team flow

The team flow (discussion → triage → issue → build → review → human merge) is optional per repo and separable from the release ceremony: a repo can adopt release-only and take the team flow later — incubator's initial posture (#16). The model is this repo's own CONTRIBUTING ("How the other repos use this"); this is the checklist:

• Enable Discussions — the triage door exists or the pipeline has no intake.

• Vendor the doctrine: run docs-sync --fix (#19) to materialize .ceremony/{AGENTS,TRIAGE,BUILDER,REVIEWER,LABELS}.md — byte-identical to this repo at the pinned ref — plus the generated .ceremony/README.md (machine-managed marker) and, if the repo has none, the thin root AGENTS.md stub ("governed by heavy-duty/ceremony; read .ceremony/AGENTS.md first; repo specifics in CONTRIBUTING"). The stub is scaffolded once and never overwritten; the mirror is machine-written and never hand-edited. Commit .ceremony/ together with the workflow callers.

• Guard the mirror in CI: add the docs-sync check step alongside the other guards —

  ```yaml
      - uses: heavy-duty/ceremony/actions/docs-sync@<pinned-tag>
  ```
  
  (`mode: check` is the default.) Hand-editing a vendored file, or
  bumping the pin without re-syncing, goes red (#19).
  

• Reduce tool-specific files (CLAUDE.md, …) to one pointer line at the root AGENTS.md, so every harness converges on the same router.

• Point CONTRIBUTING at the mirror: a short header telling agents to read .ceremony/ first — agents never leave the working tree to read the rules — followed by only what is genuinely per-repo: the review panel roster, the scope:* set, the drill meaning, the repo's code conventions.

• Name the review panel: the roster table in CONTRIBUTING and the panel= line in .github/labels.conf — the required verdicts for any PR are the panel minus its author (#10).

• Bootstrap the issue-flow labels: the labels workflow_dispatch once (above), or the hand commands in LABELS.md.

• State the single-writer rule in the repo's own docs: only triage mints issues; everyone else opens discussions.

The pin-bump procedure

Bumping the ceremony pin is one PR carrying both halves: every ceremony uses: reference — the workflow callers and each guard step, all to the same new tag — and the re-synced .ceremony/ mirror — run docs-sync --fix locally, or let the red --check on the bump PR tell you what is stale. The CI guard is what makes a half-done bump — pin without mirror, or mirror without pin — unmergeable (#19). This is how a process change rolls out to a governed repo: deliberately, per repo, reviewed.