stack/docs/PRDs/2026-08-31_PRD_rev1/GOV.5-open-questions.md

---
id: GOV.5
status: ratified
ratified: 2026-09-01 (Jason Woltje; PRD rev1 ratification PR)
---

# GOV.5 — Open questions (the grill list)

Every question the corpus could not settle. This is the E5 ms-grill-me input;
ratification is blocked until this list is empty or every remaining row is
explicitly deferred with an owner. IDs are stable; answered questions get their
ruling recorded here and flow into the owning section.

**Frontier status (2026-09-01, grill rounds 3–8 complete): EMPTY.** Every row
is ruled, dissolved, or deferred-with-owner. The operator-side Q-T3 canon
coalescence closed in round 8 and was executed the same day (brain commit
`59d43270`). E6 ratification executed 2026-09-01; this list is frozen with the
bundle.

## Data model

- **Q-D1** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: consolidate.** `launch.env` folds
  into `profile.json` (one seat record). Precondition verified same day:
  `mosaic-core/lib/loader.ts seatRole()` parses profile.json as a generic
  record and reads only `role` — widened files tolerated by construction.
  Migration staged as lane work (ledger B1).
- **Q-D2** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: per-provider map + broker refs.**
  `profile.json` carries a per-provider map whose values are credential-broker
  references (`environment/service/component/secret-name`), never secrets —
  one seat, N providers, zero secrets in the brain tree. Flows to
  [[DATA.1-record-authority]] and [[AUTHN.1-auth-accounts]].
- **Q-D3** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: the projection engine owns.** One
  writer: the role-projection engine (`role apply` path). The launcher seeds
  nothing itself — it invokes the projector; Pi and every harness get
  regenerated files on each role/seat change; hand edits are drift, flagged by
  `validate`. Consistent with L2-D19 + Q-T5. Unblocks the reconciliation
  features (lane ledger B3 → D8).
- **Q-D4** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: role ceiling + seat choice.** The
  Role Revision defines the allowed model set (policy ceiling); the seat
  records preferences within it; effective models = intersection, consistent
  with the L2-D39 intersection chain. Flows to [[HARN.1-harness-config]] and
  role-harness-config DESIGN Q2 (same ruling, both doors).
- **Q-D5** — **DEFERRED with owner (Jason 2026-09-01)**: the mutating
  config-engine half gets its own ruling after v1 read-only `validate`/`plan`
  ships; owner = the mosaic-config workstream. ([[CLI.1-parity]] §v1 subset)

## Sessions

- **Q-S1** — **DEFERRED with owner (Jason 2026-09-01)**: the
  session-id ↔ incarnation-id contract is settled inside the session-lifecycle
  draft before it lands (which now carries the Q-S4 two-path requirement);
  owner = that draft's ratification. ([[SESS.1-session-continuity]])
- **Q-S2** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: step-up re-auth required.** Role
  rebinding is an authority-changing act: fresh principal re-authentication
  ≤10 minutes before the confirmation lands, matching the S2
  identity-lifecycle linking precedent. Flows to [[SEAT.1-seat-profile]]
  §role-binding and the UI.1 seat-page spec.
- **Q-S3** — **DEFERRED with owner (Jason 2026-09-01)**: the measurable
  continuity-degradation bar is settled inside the session-lifecycle draft
  before it lands; owner = that draft's ratification.
- **Q-S4** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: two-path requirement ratified.** The
  session-lifecycle draft may not land with one relaunch path. Role change →
  clean-session path (new incarnation + fencing token, ephemeral context
  discarded, OD-02/OD-03); harness/model/provider change → continuity path (same
  Stack session id, checkpointed context restored, OD-57–OD-61, no noticeable
  degradation). Binding requirement on the draft, recorded in
  [[SESS.1-session-continuity]] §state machine.

## Audit

- **Q-A1** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: mechanical tooling.** The audit is
  deterministic tooling over the grant/assignment record (witness-style, per
  the S2 writer-coverage pattern); its output feeds the audit page read-only.
  Agents may consume audit output but never produce the verdict ("prompt
  adherence is not an enforcement mechanism"). Flows to
  [[AUTHZ.1-capability-authority]] and [[UI.1-webui-surfaces]] §audit.
- **Q-A2** — **DISSOLVED by the Q-A1 ruling**: the auditor is code, audited by
  ordinary review and CI witnesses, not a seat subject to misdirection.
- **Q-A3** — **DEFERRED with owner (Jason 2026-09-01)**: the computable
  misdirection metric is designed inside the mechanical audit tooling ruled by
  Q-A1; owner = the audit-tooling workstream (lane ledger C2).

## Surfaces

- **Q-N1** — **DEFERRED with owner (Jason 2026-09-01)**: technical
  investigation of the in-browser OAuth flow (tmux-bridged terminal vs
  server-side) runs before the auth page builds; owner = the auth-page
  workstream (lane ledger D6). ([[AUTHN.1-auth-accounts]])
- **Q-C1** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: CI witness in the stack repo.** The
  parity matrix becomes a generated artifact with a drift-gate witness
  (contract-9 pattern): CI regenerates the inventory from code and fails on
  divergence from the committed matrix. Flows to [[CLI.1-parity]]; the
  witness itself is E6-return follow-up work.

## Governance

- **Q-G1** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: both ratified.** L2-D52
  (least-privilege Assignment issuance, closes G1+G2) and the G6 WebUI
  surface-scope fix applied per their return procedures after digest
  re-verification; amendment files flipped to ratified; lane ledger A3/A4
  closed.
- **Q-G2** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: distinct prefixes at source.**
  Stack keeps D1–D15; the operator DECISION-REGISTER renames to **OD-01…OD-65**
  with a redirect table at the source doc; file-local D-numbering in drafts is
  prohibited going forward (each decision doc declares a unique registry
  prefix, rule lands in [[GOV.1-prd-lifecycle]]). Applied at E6 return for
  stack references; brain-side rename on next DECISION-REGISTER touch.
- **Q-G3** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: Jason marks; archive in bundle.**
  Graduation is a ratification act — Jason marks it (grill or direct ruling);
  the graduated contract text archives inside the then-current PRD revision
  bundle ([[GOV.4-workstream-contracts]] gains a graduated-set section),
  keeping the frozen-bundle model intact.

## Triage-raised (E2 sweep, 2026-08-31)

- **Q-T1** — **RULED B, Jason 2026-09-01: "shipped but frozen."** Amend D3 to
  acknowledge federation M1–M3 exist (Step-CA, enrollment, grants, mTLS auth
  guard, ScopeService, list/get/capabilities verbs; M3 landed 2026-06-24/25),
  are excluded from the v1 bar, and are frozen; re-home tracking in
  NORTH_STAR.yaml as a dormant workstream; frozen cert/auth code carries a
  **security re-audit gate** before any resumption. Consequences at E6 return:
  supersession/status banners on the three stale docs (root MISSION-MANIFEST,
  federation/MISSION-MANIFEST, scratchpads/mvp-20260312), reconcile
  guides/deployment.md with D15, NORTH_STAR.yaml dormant entry. The P5
  scope ambiguity (governance-federation vs shipped mTLS-query federation)
  stays open inside the future federation PRD, not rev1. Evidence: lane
  `FEDERATION-DOSSIER-2026-08-31.md`.
- **Q-T2** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: all three re-ratified** into the
  rev1 decision map ([[GOV.3-decision-map]] §re-ratified orphans): "No Python"
  in the monorepo; Matrix/MACP exactly-three-install-modes with Mode A
  (split-domain) primary; OpenBrain excluded from consolidation scope. The
  Matrix ruling's open DNS/domain prerequisite gets its own row (Q-T6).
- **Q-T3** — **RULED (partial), Jason 2026-09-01: coalesce under the
  STRUCTURE-CANON name.** MOSAIC-CANON's more comprehensive content is
  authoritative; `STRUCTURE-CANON.md` is the logical surviving document name;
  the two coalesce into one. Conflict report delivered and all six
  decision points ruled (grill round 8, 2026-09-01): per-seat credential
  slots win; doc paths corrected to `fleet/auth/`/`fleet/memory/`;
  ENTITY.md/README.md stay required with a 42-seat backfill task; merge
  executed with the full reference sweep, MOSAIC-CANON reduced to a pointer
  shim. Record: lane `CANON-COALESCENCE-2026-09-01.md`. Operator-side; not a
  rev1 blocker.
- **Q-T4** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01, two parts.**
  **(a) Two independent axes**: "Standalone/Enterprise" in the S2 corpus is a
  multi-tenancy/isolation _mode_ (`platform_mode`, D3/D11); D15's "compose
  standalone tier" is deployment _packaging_. Orthogonal. rev1 text always
  says "standalone mode" vs "compose tier"; mode-conversion.md needs a
  terminology note only, not a rewrite.
  **(b) Own track, rev1 cites**: rev1 ratifies citing the nine contracts as
  DRAFT successor material with status noted; each contract ratifies on its
  own PR when its family lands. Extraction record: lane
  `S2-EXTRACTION-2026-08-31.md`.
- **Q-T5** — **RULED, Jason 2026-09-01: scope to files.** Adopted wording:
  "Generated settings _files_ are projections of the active Role Revision,
  never authority (L2-D19). DB settings records written through audited
  Gateway commands (`platform_mode`, `registration_mode`, `custody_config`,
  `bootstrap.seed-company-name`, and their successors) are records of
  authority like any other SOT row." No corpus conflict remains. Case law:
  contract 1 §5.4, contract 8 §2.4, contract 9 §3.2.
- **Q-T6** — **DEFERRED with owner (Jason 2026-09-01)**: the Matrix/MACP
  Mode A DNS/domain prerequisite (`archive/planning/matrix-macp/rfc-001:428`)
  rules before any Matrix install work resumes; owner = whoever reopens
  Matrix. Until then Mode A is primary-on-paper only.

## Deferred-by-scope (recorded, not blocking rev1)

- Federation design (D3 — roadmap placeholder; nothing in v1 may foreclose it).
  _Q-T1 ruled B (2026-09-01): D3 to be amended — M1–M3 acknowledged, frozen,
  security re-audit gate before resumption; design itself stays deferred._
- OS/kernel-level seat sandboxing (explicit lane non-goal; role-lane
  discipline, not process containment).