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stack/docs/remediation/MISSION.md
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mos-dt-0andClaude Opus 5 4520d2f672 docs(remediation): promote two first-class principles to the charter; dispatch RM-02 round 3
Mos ruled both open questions and promoted the pattern to the charter.

PRINCIPLE 1 — the anchor must live outside the audited party's authority. You cannot fix "the author
controls X" by deriving X from something the author also controls; deriving only MOVES the control
point. Third independent arrival of one conclusion, each reached while shipping something else and each
from a different direction: the manifest certifying its own tree (D-19), the sandbox evaluating code
that enters before the boundary exists (D-25), and now the registry seam derived from a path the author
also places (D-45). Three impossibility-derivations of the same conclusion is the strongest
architectural evidence this mission has produced, and it is what forces Builds 1-2 rather than making
them a preference.

PRINCIPLE 2 — no universally-quantified check may pass over an empty set. "All registered cases ran" is
vacuously true when there are none. Non-emptiness and anchoring are preconditions asserted before the
quantified check runs, not properties hoped for after. The identical vacuity appeared twice at two
levels — seam=HEAD emptied the commit range, an emptied manifest emptied the registry population — and
the first was fixed as an instance, so it returned one level up. Corollary, same disease: a clause
written for the instance that produced it is not a clause.

Q1 ruled: the merge-base anchor IS in scope for f10-coder in this PR. It is git-computable against
main, which the author does not control, so reordering or splitting within the branch cannot move it —
an existing non-author-controlled reference, no new infrastructure. RM-60's execution boundary is a
sibling under the same principle but a different mechanism (where gate-verify runs, not what the anchor
is) and stays with Mos and Jason. Honesty required in both directions: the merge-base anchors to main,
whose integrity rests on the merge discipline this registry enforces — a bootstrap, sound against an
author who cannot rewrite main and NOT sound against an attacker who can, with that residual bound to
the Builds 1-2 dependency rather than implied.

Q2 ruled: state the empty-set principle as a general clause now, and generalize the D-38/D-40 criteria
the same way — quantify over the population instead of relabeling the originating instances.

Round 3 dispatched to f10-coder: merge-base anchor plus delayed-introduction must-fail; empty-set
precondition as a general clause with an emptied-registry must-fail; generalized clauses bound across
the gate inventory; each red-first. Number.isInteger accepting zero/negative/unsafe pipeline numbers
banked as a non-blocking follow-up.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-08-01 12:08:21 -05:00

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# Mosaic Stack Remediation — Mission Charter
**Owner:** project orchestrator `mos-remediation` (Claude, launched in `/src/mosaic-stack`).
**Origin:** 2026-07-16..31 fleet lifecycle postmortem. **Status:** EXECUTING (planning complete; RM-01 in flight).
**HOLD lifted** for this workstream by Jason, 2026-07-31 — "begin full mosaic fleet operation on this."
## Goal
Convert the 15 accepted postmortem remediation proposals into a working, **dogfooded** implementation.
**North star:** anything with a deterministic right answer moves OUT of the LLM into a deterministic
gate/program; the LLM handles only genuine judgment.
### First-class principle — observe the property, not the exit code
> **No write is done until the requested PROPERTY is observed. A success exit code is not evidence.**
>
> **Success output is designed to be believed.** That is the whole reason the inert-gate class exists
> and why P-WRAPPER-001's tri-state (`verified` / `written-unverified` / `failed`) is not optional. The
> failure is not carelessness — a green is _engineered_ to be trusted, so trusting it is the default
> behaviour of a competent operator, not a lapse.
>
> Promoted to the charter by Mos (2026-07-31) after the orchestrator committed this exact error: a
> `--draft` flag was silently dropped by a wrapper fallback that still exited 0, and the PR was reported
> as a draft on the strength of the exit code rather than an observed `draft: true` (D-12). Twelve
> failure instances were banked in that session; **three of them were the orchestrator's own.** That
> ratio is the point — the mechanism must catch the mechanic too, or it is not a mechanism.
>
> Operationally: after any write, read back the property you required. Applies to gates, wrappers, PR
> flags, commit authorship, file installs, and message delivery alike.
### First-class principle — pre-registration prevents retrofitting, and nothing else
> **A pre-registered check set can fail in three distinct ways:**
>
> | mode | the set is… | found as |
> | --------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | -------- |
> | **WRONG** | a check does not test what it claims | D-8 |
> | **INCOMPLETE** | green while a criterion's requirement is untested | D-17 |
> | **INTERNALLY INCONSISTENT** | two criteria cannot both hold | D-18 |
>
> **Pre-registration protects against exactly one thing: retrofitting a check to fit the implementation
> it is supposed to judge.** It confers neither correctness, nor coverage, nor consistency. "We
> pre-registered the checks" has been treated as though it settled the question — it settles one of
> three.
>
> Promoted to the charter by Mos (2026-07-31). All three modes were found on this mission's own **first
> delivery**, by the machinery applied to its own work — not by inspection, and not by looking for them.
>
> **Enforceable form — RM-02's four clauses.** The registry must establish that: (1) each check is
> **right** — proven red for its own stated reason before its green counts; (2) the set **covers** —
> every criterion bound to a case that actually exercises it; (3) no two criteria **conflict** —
> mutual unsatisfiability is a registry defect discoverable by construction; (4) when a criterion's
> meaning changes, the registry **retains original text, restatement, and reason**, so evolution stays
> auditable. A criterion with no case that can fail for its own reason is unregistered in substance,
> however it reads in the manifest.
### Corollary — never ship an integrity claim dressed as a property
> A verification artifact that can be forged by whoever it is meant to catch verifies nothing. If a
> manifest, marker, ledger, or receipt is writable by the same actor whose behaviour it certifies, it
> **certifies the attack.** Such an artifact must sit inside the integrity envelope it belongs to,
> publish atomically, and carry a **tamper negative-control observed red** — otherwise its integrity is
> a _claim_, not a _property_.
>
> **If it cannot be made tamper-evident, say so and reconsider the approach.** Laundering foreign
> content as certified is the only unacceptable outcome; an honest "this cannot be verified" is always
> available and always preferable.
### First-class principle — when a property cannot exist at the layer it was specified
> Some required properties are **impossible at the layer that asked for them** — not hard, impossible.
> A local check cannot defend against an actor who can rewrite the check itself. When that happens,
> there are exactly three honest moves, and all three are mandatory:
>
> 1. **Implement what the layer _can_ guarantee.** Partial protection against the class it was actually
> born from is worth having.
> 2. **State the boundary precisely, in BOTH directions.** What it does _not_ defend, **and** beside it
> what it _does_. A reader who sees only the negative dismisses the check as worthless; one who sees
> only the positive over-trusts it. **Both together is the honest artifact** — either alone misleads.
> 3. **Record where the real guarantee will come from — as a TRACKED DEPENDENCY, not prose.** It must
> name a task that someone must close. _A documented gap with no owner becomes a permanent gap that
> reads as intentional._
>
> **A written-down gap is acceptable engineering. An implied-fixed gap is this mission's core failure in
> a new costume** — a verification artifact that verifies nothing, with a green to prove it.
>
> Promoted to the charter by Mos (2026-07-31) from D-19. Origin: the RM-01 symlink manifest could not be
> made tamper-evident against a same-UID actor (CWE-345), because the manifest and its marker share one
> writable tree. The implementing seat **escalated rather than relabelling self-authentication as
> tamper-resistance** — the corollary above firing on its first real adversarial test, on the cheapest
> seat in the loop. Residual risk bound to **RM-59** (`depends_on: RM-12, RM-21, RM-25`), where the
> choke-point executor and spine verify from _outside_ the worktree's authority.
### First-class principle — query for refutation, never for confirmation
> **A subordinate asked to confirm a hypothesis will agree. Ask it to refute, with evidence.**
>
> The bias is induced by the **query**, not by the answerer's diligence. _"The DB flaked — please
> confirm"_ and _"confirm or refute this, with the log line that proves it"_ are different instruments,
> and they return different answers to the same question. The first harvests agreement; only the second
> can return **"you are wrong, and here is why."**
>
> This matters most with agent subordinates, which are **agreeable by construction**: fluent, eager to
> be useful, and structurally disinclined to tell the dispatcher their premise is false. A confirmation
> query aimed at one is close to a guaranteed yes — so the discipline cannot rest on the answerer being
> rigorous. **It has to be built into how the question is asked.**
>
> Promoted to the charter by Mos (2026-08-01). Origin: the orchestrator hypothesised that a coincident
> `ci-postgres` failure caused a CI test failure and asked the implementing seat to **confirm or refute**
> it. The seat **refuted it** with the log (`ci-postgres:5432 - accepting connections`, migrations
> completed) and identified the real cause. Reproduction on an identical head then settled it. Had the
> query been phrased for confirmation, the agreement would have been returned, **D-21 would have been
> re-classified on a false premise**, and a banked finding would have been silently corrupted.
>
> **Operationally:** state your hypothesis explicitly, mark it as yours, ask for _evidence that kills
> it_, and say what evidence would change your mind. A hypothesis you cannot describe how to falsify is
> not yet a hypothesis. Where the answer is consequential, **reproduce** rather than accept — two
> independent runs beat one confident report.
### First-class principle — the anchor must live outside the audited party's authority
> **You cannot fix "the author controls X" by deriving X from something the author ALSO controls.**
> Deriving merely **moves** the control point; it does not remove it.
>
> Promoted to the charter by Mos (2026-08-01) on the **THIRD INDEPENDENT ARRIVAL** of the same
> conclusion, each reached while trying to ship something else, each from a different direction:
>
> | arrival | the audited party controls… | found as |
> | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------- |
> | manifest | the tree that certifies its own generated state (same-UID, CWE-345) | **D-19** |
> | sandbox | the code that enters the sandbox, before the boundary exists | **D-25** |
> | **registry seam** | **WHEN the tracked path is introduced, hence the derived boundary** | **D-45** |
>
> Round 1 the value was an author-settable **field**, so it was **derived**. Round 2 the derivation
> depended on **when the author introduces the path**. Same authority, new costume. **Three
> impossibility-derivations of one conclusion is not a coincidence to note — it is the strongest
> architectural evidence this mission has produced**, and it is precisely what **forces Builds 12**
> rather than making them a preference.
>
> **Operationally:** anchor to a reference the audited party cannot move. A git **merge-base against
> `main`** is such a reference for a PR author (they own their branch; they do not own `main`).
> **State the bootstrap in BOTH directions (D-19):** that anchor is sound against an author who cannot
> rewrite `main` — the threat in scope — and **NOT** sound against an attacker who can. **That residual
> is what Builds 12 close, and it must be recorded as a tracked dependency, never implied.**
### First-class principle — no universally-quantified check may pass over an empty set
> **"All registered cases ran" is VACUOUSLY TRUE when there are no registered cases.**
> **Non-emptiness and anchoring are PRECONDITIONS asserted before the quantified check runs — not
> properties hoped for after it.**
>
> Promoted by Mos (2026-08-01) after the identical vacuity appeared **twice, at two different levels**:
> `activationCommit = HEAD` emptied the **commit range** (D-44), and an emptied manifest — `criteria`,
> `gates`, `proseClaims`, `compatibilityScenarios` all `[]` — emptied the **registry population**
> (D-46), each yielding **exit 0**. The first was fixed **as an instance**; the principle was never
> extracted, **so it returned one level up.**
>
> **Delete every gate and every criterion TOGETHER and no remaining reference complains — because every
> reference went with them.** A check that quantifies over a population must actually **range** over it,
> and that population must be **provably complete and non-empty**.
>
> **Corollary (same disease):** a clause written for the instance that produced it is not a clause.
> **Do not relabel the originating instances as the general clauses** — quantify over the population.
### First-class principle — redundant observation on evidence-bearing steps
> **Two observers of the same evidence, disagreeing, catch what neither catches alone.** Apply redundancy
> not only to judgement calls but to **evidence gathering itself** — the step everyone assumes is
> mechanical and therefore skips.
>
> Promoted by Mos (2026-08-01) from **D-33**. A seat scanned a pipeline with `-f json` and reported 9
> steps; the orchestrator scanned the same pipeline in the wrapper's default text mode and reported 8.
> **The default output omits `clone`.** Every "full step scan" that night had been 8-of-9 and was stated
> as complete in good faith. No verdict changed — but the _method_ was wrong, invisibly, and **only the
> disagreement between two counts surfaced it.**
>
> The reason it survived: **a summary that resembles an enumeration is more dangerous than one that
> obviously summarises.** A labelled list of named steps with states _looks_ like the artifact, so nobody
> checks it against the record. Compare D-24 — `mergeable` was a _true answer to a different question_;
> this was a _true answer to a smaller one_. Neither is a lie; both pass every sniff test.
>
> **Operationally:** where a step _produces evidence a decision rests on_, have it produced twice by
> different means, and treat **any divergence as a finding rather than as noise to reconcile**. Prefer the
> machine-readable record over the human-readable rendering — _read the artifact, not the summary_ — and
> state the counts observed so a divergence is detectable at all.
## Decision record (authoritative, immutable)
- **15/15 proposals decided: 13 accept, 2 modify (P-AUTHORITY-001, P-INBOX-001), 0 reject.**
- Site + `annotations.json`: `jarvis-brain/docs/postmortem-spec/site/` (committed, origin/main).
- Discussion checkpoint (rich rationale per proposal): `jarvis-brain/docs/scratchpads/postmortem/REMEDIATION-DISCUSSION-STATE.md`.
- Postmortem report: mosaicstack/stack PR #107 (merged 88f4ee04).
- MACP wiring scout (verdict c=STRANDED): [`MACP-WIRING-SCOUT.md`](./MACP-WIRING-SCOUT.md) (copied into this dir; TODO discharged). Its findings are sound; its _recommended wire-in point_ is superseded by DECISION-1.
## The plan — 15 proposals collapse to 4 builds + hygiene
| Build | Absorbs | What it is |
| ------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **1. One choke-point service** (mechanical enforcer) | MISSION, STATE, AUDIT, WRAPPER, QUEUE | Deterministic program every task/data mutation flows through. **Wire the stranded `@mosaicstack/macp`** — typed tasks, gate-runner, event ledger, credential binding, tri-state write outcomes. ⚠ **Target CORRECTED 2026-07-31 (DECISION-1, Mos):** a new production Node `TaskExecutor` on the **live** dispatch path (`packages/mosaic` launch + `packages/coord`), which Coord/Forge/live-dispatch submit through. **NOT** `mosaic_orchestrator.py::run_single_task` — that controller is `"enabled": false` and references a dispatcher absent from this checkout; wiring it would strand the executor, reproducing this mission's own disease. The Python rail is **deleted**, not ported. Both planners reached this independently. |
| **2. One durable spine + hot path** | (storage under everything) | **PG system-of-record + Redis hot queue** (transactional-outbox). Mission/tasks/state-claims/audit-ledger/comms-inbox all land here. |
| **3. Rotation lifecycle** (finish the Mission Control Plane) | LIFECYCLE, CONTRACT, GUIDE, RECOVERY | Coordinator daemon: contract-hash binding, compaction-detected → rotate-not-compact, checkpoint→fresh-session→rehydrate, broker-independent recovery. Deterministic, not an LLM. Reuse `packages/coord`; existing PRD at `docs/mission-control/`. |
| **4. Comms service** | AUTHORITY, INBOX (+ versioning roadmap) | Envelope (comms/v1) → sole-path service → PG/Redis → pluggable adapters (tmux→Matrix/Discord/Slack/Telegram). Version the protocol, not participants. |
| **+ Hygiene & proof** | FLEET, WORKFLOW, CONFORMANCE | One roster-owned socket/host + stale GC; allowlist auto-sync; the conformance harness that fault-injects the failure classes and proves builds 14 hold. |
## Why Builds 12 are necessary — two independent impossibility proofs
**The choke-point executor and PG spine are not a design preference. They are forced.** Twice during
the mission's own first deliveries, work stopped against a security property that **cannot exist** at
the layer that needed it — and both times the only resolution was an authority _outside_ the audited
party's control, which is precisely what Builds 12 provide.
| | the audited party controls… | so what fails | found as |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | -------- |
| **Artifact integrity** | the manifest that certifies its own generated tree (same-UID write ⇒ regenerate manifest _and_ marker consistently, CWE-345) | tamper-evidence | **D-19** |
| **Execution integrity** | the code that enters the sandbox (PR-controlled config executes _before_ the boundary exists) | isolation | **D-25** |
Both reduce to one sentence:
> **Self-verification by the audited party is not verification.**
And to one consequence: **the anchor must live outside the audited party's authority.** A local check
cannot defend against an actor who can rewrite the check; a repo cannot grant a capability to
PR-controlled config and simultaneously prevent that config from using it.
**An architecture forced by two independent impossibility proofs is stronger evidence than one argued
for.** Neither proof was sought — both arrived while trying to ship something else, from different
directions (a symlink manifest; a CI sandbox), at different layers. RM-59 and RM-60 are the two tracked
dependencies this creates, and they are the same dependency in different clothes.
## The finding that sets the cost
**Built-but-unwired disease.** `@mosaicstack/macp` is stranded (nothing calls it); `packages/coord` primitives
exist; the Mission Control PRD exists; PG + Redis already run in-stack. Three duplicate MACP islands, an
orphaned context loader, a fail-open bypass. **Work = wire + consolidate + retire, NOT greenfield. "Finish, don't re-spec."**
## Sequencing (skeleton — adversarial decomposition refines this)
1. **Spine + choke-point service** (builds 1+2) — foundation; unlocks MISSION/STATE/AUDIT/WRAPPER/QUEUE at one integration point.
(Per DECISION-1, a P0 phase of provable-gate + activation work precedes this; see `TASKS.md` §3.)
2. **Rotation daemon** (build 3) on that spine — the drift fix proper.
3. **Comms service** (build 4) — envelope → service → PG/Redis → adapters; retire direct-tmux.
4. **Hygiene + conformance** (build 5) — fleet convergence, allowlist sync, dogfood harness.
- **Cross-cutting retirements:** flat-file orchestration tracking (hard cutover to DB), the 3 duplicate MACP islands, the silent `MOSAIC BYPASS`.
## Standing directives (Jason, 2026-07-31)
- **Dogfooding:** validate EACH fix against the live fleet failure that motivated it. Seed acceptance tests:
Pi brick (RECOVERY), scout-bounce (INBOX/FLEET), gate-6 inert + #1019 recursion (QUEUE), identity drift
(WRAPPER), auto-sync sweep (WORKFLOW), #1018 stale-consumed (INBOX). The fleet is its own test bed.
- **Orchestration tracking → DB**, hard cutover ("rip off the bandaid"), NO flat-file interim. jarvis-brain
PDA flat-files untouched. Current flat-file tracking runs as-is/unhardened until DB tracking is real, then one clean replace.
-**QUALIFIED 2026-07-31 (DECISION-2, Mos):** the DB spine **must NOT be a single-point hard-stop.**
A broker-independent / degraded mode **and** a rehearsed rollback artifact are **design requirements**
(P-RECOVERY-001), binding now on RM-12, RM-13, RM-23, RM-36 and RM-53. This **supersedes** the earlier
orchestrator recommendation to pre-commit "no DB ⇒ the fleet stops" — that answer is _not_ on record.
Only the specific availability _target_ remains open, queued for Jason; it does **not** block current work.
## The 15 decisions (one-line; full rationale in the checkpoint)
1. **P-ACTIVATION-001** accept — transactional CLI+hooks+broker+version release; block launch on skew, fail-SAFE.
2. **P-AUTHORITY-001** MODIFY — structured authenticated inbox; envelope carries comms-PROTOCOL version; version the protocol not participants; N-version window.
3. **P-LIFECYCLE-001** accept — rotation not recursive compaction; pre-empt at token threshold; enforcer = deterministic coordinator; = finish Mission Control Plane.
4. **P-MISSION-001** accept — bind lanes to mission+task ledger; convention exists, ENFORCEMENT is the gap; mission+tasks → DB spine (hard cutover).
5. **P-QUEUE-001** accept — repair queue transport + exit-asserting non-null-case tests (gate-6 was INERT fleet-wide; #1019 fix recursed the same bug).
6. **P-STATE-001** accept — typed claims (source/confidence/TTL) not prose blob; MACP typed record; integrity fail-closed HMAC; don't fork a 4th island.
7. **P-AUDIT-001** accept — MACPEvent lifecycle ledger; EXTEND enum to lifecycle events; runtime-neutral (executor-emitted); retire duplicate Python ledger.
8. **P-WRAPPER-001** accept — identity derives from seat name + survives respawn; tri-state write outcomes MANDATORY; name safe target metadata.
9. **P-CONTRACT-001** accept — bind session to contract hash; re-anchor on policy-change OR compaction-detected; stale generation loses authority MECHANICALLY.
10. **P-INBOX-001** MODIFY — sole-path comms SERVICE; PG durable SoR + Redis hot queue (outbox, reconciliation sweeper); pluggable adapters; protocol-first, PG-first-then-Redis.
11. **P-RECOVERY-001** accept — broker-independent bootstrap recovery; honest capability labeling; break-glass LOUD+AUDITED+TEMPORARY not silent permanent bypass.
12. **P-GUIDE-001** accept — delete `/compact and continue` from orchestrator path (keep for ephemeral); removal = substitution (wire rotation trigger).
13. **P-FLEET-001** accept — one roster-owned socket/host; quarantine unmanaged; stale-session GC; prerequisite for INBOX identity-addressing.
14. **P-WORKFLOW-001** accept — auto-sync ALLOWLIST not denylist; worktree/lease isolation for agent docs/source; DB-tracking obviates the flat-file-sweep criterion.
15. **P-CONFORMANCE-001** accept — fleet lifecycle harness on REAL runtime artifacts + fault injection; the 100-rotations-lossless bar is a test; target the DB substrate.
## Fleet operating model
- **Project orchestrator** `mos-remediation` (this seat) owns the mission; coordinates under Mos (lead).
- **Adversarial task decomposition:** `planner-opus` (robustness) + `planner-sol` (pragmatic) each decompose
the plan independently; orchestrator reconciles into `TASKS.md`/DB tasks. Oppositional by design.
- **Delivery gates — REFERENCE, do not restate.** The authoritative definitions live at
[`~/.config/mosaic/fleet/roles.local/merge-gate.md`](file:///home/hermes/.config/mosaic/fleet/roles.local/merge-gate.md)
(verdict authority) and
[`~/.config/mosaic/fleet/roles/validator.md`](file:///home/hermes/.config/mosaic/fleet/roles/validator.md)
(validator/certificate role). **Read them; do not paraphrase them.** Restating an authoritative source
is lossy every time — see D-26, where a subset restated from memory dropped a security precondition.
**Gate order** (the sequence only; the definitions are in the files above):
1. Independent review, **author ≠ reviewer** (`rev-974` on mosaicstack), with PRE-REGISTERED diff-blind
acceptance checks committed before the diff is read
2. Remediation of findings
3. **CI terminal-green** at the exact full-40 head, by **full step scan**
4. **Merge-gate verdict — `GO` / `NO-GO` / `HOLD`** (class `merge-gate`; "Ultron" is an _instance name_,
display data, never an authority source). **Bound to a commit and VOID the instant the head moves.**
`HOLD` persists until replaced; a `NO-GO` answered by an empty commit must be re-issued as `NO-GO`.
Posted durably on the PR under the gate's own minted identity, **enumerating** its evidence — a bare
"GO — gates verified" is non-conforming.
5. **Coordinator merge**, head-pinned. The gate never merges; it holds `push=False` by design.
**The CI queue guard runs but is ZERO-INFORMATION until RM-03 lands** (D-23: it returns pass for every
possible input). It must not be cited as evidence by any gate, including the coordinator's own merge path.
**Assignment:** the coordinator assigns the merge-gate seat; the orchestrator does not. The orchestrator
owns getting a PR _gate-ready_.
- **Compaction survival:** see `KICKSTART.md` in this dir — the resume procedure. Persist typed state, not transcript.