stack/docs/remediation/AC-RM02-REBASE.md

RM-02 / PR #1030 — PRE-REGISTERED ACCEPTANCE CHECKS (post-rebase, keystone)

Subject head (exact): 83d2ecb2243f1b0987ef2bc14de47f444285a684 Rebased onto: main @ f4fd5967fc5d4cbc72d680b199d88224aa855131 (post-RM-61) Registered by: mos-remediation BEFORE the reviewer read the diff. Reviewer: rev-974 (author ≠ reviewer; branch commits are f10-coder's and coder-mos1's). Prior reviews 63 / 65 are SUPERSEDED; this head carries NO live review of any kind.

RM-02 is the keystone: it is the anti-inert-gate registry every downstream gate is measured against. A defect that survives here propagates into every gate this mission ships.

★ CRUX — the one non-mechanical change, made by the author, that turned a red green

The rebase was clean. One further commit was not purely mechanical and the author disclosed it unprompted (83d2ecb2 — advance registry activation seam):

gates/gates.manifest.json
-  "activationCommit": "f65e9ea656ec466e12640bf6ab5d46fe07ff160c"
+  "activationCommit": "f4fd5967fc5d4cbc72d680b199d88224aa855131"

Stated rationale: after the rebase, pnpm gate:verify correctly failed because the newly-merged pre-registry RM-61 commit was treated as prospective and required a manifest that could not exist.

activationCommit sets the lower bound of activationCommit..HEAD — the set of commits required to carry own-tree registry provenance (gate-history.mjs:314 → listProspectiveCommits). Advancing it shrinks that set.

Determine, do not assume — and I have deliberately formed and stated no verdict (D-39):

id	check
A1	Is the advance JUSTIFIED? Can a pre-registry commit on main (e.g. f4fd5967) satisfy the provenance requirement at all, or is requiring it impossible-by-construction? If impossible, is advancing the seam the correct remedy, or does a correct remedy exist that does not move an author-controlled field?
A2	Is the advance MINIMAL? Was it advanced exactly to the new parent baseline, or beyond it? Does any commit that should remain covered fall outside the new range?
A3	Are all 7 branch commits still PROSPECTIVE under the new seam? Enumerate them and show each is still required to carry provenance. The author claims "own-tree provenance over every registry-era branch commit" — verify the claim, do not accept it.
A4	★★ IS THE SEAM ITSELF CONSTRAINED? The only validation found is merge-base --is-ancestor activationCommit head (gate-history.mjs:288). A commit is its own ancestor. Determine what activationCommit = HEAD does: is the prospective range empty, does the per-commit loop iterate zero times, and does the history check therefore PASS VACUOUSLY? If so, the anti-inert-gate registry contains an author-settable field that can inert its own history check. Run it. Report the observed exit and whether any failure is raised.
A5	If A4 shows vacuity is reachable, is there a registered MUST-FAIL negative control for it? RM-02's own founding rule is that a gate with no proven failure path manufactures evidence. Does the registry hold a case that goes RED when the seam is over-advanced? If not, that is a hole in the registry's coverage of itself.
A6	Self-verification shape (charter / D-19 / D-39b): the field was advanced by the change's own author to make the author's gate pass. Independent of whether the value is correct, determine whether the mechanism permits an audited party to relax its own audit, and whether that needs a constraint, an owner, or an escalation.

Registry substance — the clauses this PR must now carry

id	check
B1	D-38 clause present and enforced: the registry asks of every gate "does this gate BIND its evidence to the subject under review?" Ruled in-scope for THIS PR by Mos. Verify it exists as a checked clause, not prose.
B2	D-40 clause present and enforced: "discriminator and comparison inputs must be TYPE-STRICT." Also ruled in-scope for THIS PR. == 0 matching False/0.0 is the banked instance; the clause is the general form.
B3	D-42's clause is CORRECTLY ABSENT — provider-side negative control tracks separately (Mos: landing it now would give the registry a clause with nothing to satisfy it, going red on its own clause). Confirm its absence is deliberate and recorded, not forgotten.
B4	The four founding clauses still hold (MISSION.md): every check proven right (red for its own stated reason), the set covers, no two criteria conflict, and criterion evolution retains original text + restatement + reason.
B5	Nothing was weakened, skipped, or deleted by the rebase. Diff f9746b23 → 83d2ecb2 and confirm no registered case, test, or assertion was removed or relaxed to make the rebase land.
B6	coverageBoundary.excluded[] is honest in BOTH directions (charter principle 4): what it does NOT cover is stated beside what it DOES, and the gap is tracked (trackedBy: RM-54) rather than implied-fixed.
B7	The RM-02 execution boundary (gate-history.mjs, DOES / DOES NOT, owner RM-60, xref RM-59) states its limits in both directions and names a tracked owner — not a documented gap with no owner.

Head + CI (re-run these; do not carry them forward from the author's report)

id	check
C1	Head 83d2ecb2… on both git and provider; Closes #1029 present in the body (delivery-issue rule, D-38c).
C2	Exact-head CI terminal-green by full -f json scan, counts stated including clone. Note the count changed 9 → 10 (this PR adds gate-verify) — confirm the new step is real, not a miscount.
C3	Machine-check it, do not assert it: verify-terminal-green.py --expect-commit 83d2ecb2243f1b0987ef2bc14de47f444285a684. Report exit, exempted_steps, commit == expected_commit.
C4	exempted_steps=0 is expected here — ci-postgres succeeded, so the #1000 exemption was not needed. Confirm the exemption is present-but-unused rather than silently inapplicable.

Reviewer instruction

Verdict bound to 83d2ecb2243f1b0987ef2bc14de47f444285a684, evidence enumerated per check, posted durably under your own identity. If a check is unrunnable, say so — never substitute a variant that passes. Scan CI from -f json, never default text (D-33); state your counts.

A4 is the check I most want an answer to and the one I have least confidence about. Attack outside this set as well: every blocker found on this mission so far came from mutating something nobody had registered a check for.

No one dispatching this review may state a conclusion on an open check (D-39). Observations may be relayed to you; verdicts may not. The ruling is yours.