From 4c0587b0e9f3c7c897de6f55999f72c277aceda6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ayla Croft Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2026 20:26:22 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] A brief names what it supersedes; a lane that cannot spawn says so A coordinator was told to spawn subagents and run two review lanes. Both lane briefs it wrote still carried an earlier "do not spawn further subagents", copied forward from a message already superseded, and neither brief said which instruction won. Both lanes then ran as two scoped passes by one reader. The instruction was STALE, not conflicting, which is why nobody caught it while writing the brief: a superseded sentence sitting beside a current one reads exactly like a current one. That is the same defect class as a superseded claim surviving into a record -- and worse in one respect, because an instruction is acted on rather than merely read. Second half, and it is what made the first visible: both lanes reported the limitation in their own verdicts, unprompted, rather than letting "two lanes" imply independence they did not have. Independence is the entire content of a second lane; a second pass by the same reader shares its assumptions, its blind spots and whatever the first pass concluded. So the verdict names the condition it was produced under. The failure cost nothing this time, and that is the argument for writing it down rather than against it. The phrase that would have shipped -- "two lanes, three rounds" -- reads the same whether it is true or not. Documentation only. No behaviour changes and no test moves with it. Gate green, every step line reading pass: format, compile, test, credo, optional deps, docs, reuse (168 tracked; 55 in scope, 53 headered + 2 sidecar), licence files Gate OK. GATE_EXIT=0 Signed-off-by: Ayla Croft --- CONVENTIONS.md | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 32 insertions(+) diff --git a/CONVENTIONS.md b/CONVENTIONS.md index b5cd1df..7f7d289 100644 --- a/CONVENTIONS.md +++ b/CONVENTIONS.md @@ -204,3 +204,35 @@ controls and the client cannot influence. The test to apply: The same question applies to any set built from headers, query parameters, body keys, filenames or metadata: derive from the schema, the manifest, the catalog, the code — the authority — and use the request only as the thing measured against it. + +## A brief names the instruction it supersedes, and a lane that cannot spawn says so + +Two halves of one failure, and the second is what made the first visible. + +**A brief states which instruction it replaces.** A coordinator was told to spawn subagents and +run two review lanes. Both lane briefs it wrote still carried an earlier *"do not spawn further +subagents"*, copied forward from a message that had already been superseded, and nothing in +either brief said which instruction won. Both lanes then ran as two scoped passes by one reader. + +This is the same defect class as a superseded claim surviving into a record. The rule that +corrections are appended rather than rewritten exists because a stale sentence sitting beside a +true one is indistinguishable from a current one; a stale *instruction* sitting in a brief is +worse, because it is acted on rather than merely read. **The brief is a record, and it is subject +to the same rule: say what it supersedes, or it is not a correction, it is a contradiction the +reader has to resolve alone.** + +**A lane that cannot spawn says so in its verdict.** Both lanes here did, unprompted, and that is +the only reason the defect was caught before the record shipped: each wrote plainly that it was +one reader making two passes rather than two readers. Had they written "two lanes" and stopped, +the record would have claimed independence it did not have — and *independence is the entire +content of a second lane*. A second pass by the same reader shares its assumptions, its blind +spots, and whatever the first pass concluded. + +So the verdict names the condition it was produced under. "Two lanes" is a claim about how many +parties looked, and a run that cannot make it true says which it was, in the verdict rather than +in a footnote somewhere else. + +**Derivation.** The failure cost nothing here, and that is the argument for the rule rather than +against it: the lanes reported the limitation themselves, so the record is honest. The next one +may not, and the phrase that would have shipped — "two lanes, three rounds" — reads exactly the +same either way.