Diagrams — the shapes, drawn once

Load when: explaining this system to someone, or checking that a flow you are about to change still matches the picture.

Every node here names something the corpus defines. A diagram that introduces a box with no file behind it is a second source of truth, and the one that ages first — so if a shape below stops matching its file, the file wins and the diagram is wrong.

The front door

Read from the ground, never asked. Doors exist for every branch below; none of them is how a route is chosen.

The cascade

One resolution shape for every setting. Each setting declares which rungs it has; the resolved value is recorded on the run.

The advisor is the session, so nothing here sets its model — it is read and recorded, never stored → ./hiring.

The six layers, and the cut

One position on a ladder, not six switches. Above the line goes to the repository; below it stays with you.

→ ./storing

Stage and wave are different things

A stage orders the ladder. A wave orders the children.

Nothing transitions itself — the barrier lifting surfaces the next wave as ready; it does not start it → ./decomposing.

The decision loop

Every real decision runs this, named once so it is followed rather than reinvented.

Two evidence pyramids, never pooled

Three live interviews and twenty synthetic runs are never "23 responses" → ./audience.

Four kinds route to the owner

The gate belongs to the action rather than the actor, which is why the advisor is not exempt.

→ ./permissions

What actually holds a gate

Only one of these moves between runtimes.

The downgrade is announced at dispatch, not discovered → ./runtimes.

Recovery reads the repository, not the session

→ ./recovering

Three arrangements with an outside tracker

Each names a canonical side. There is deliberately no fourth.

→ ./importing

How much of a repository to read

Measuring is nearly free; reading is not. The recommendation is filled in, and all three stay open.

A guest reads less, not more → ./entering.

The two bars a task passes

Ready to start and ready to finish are different bars, held by different hands. Collapsing them is how work starts unstartable and finishes undone.

Done is checked against the list, never against the feeling of doneness → ./writing-work.

The product map, and how a flow climbs into it

Two maps answer two questions; only one of them is about the tree. The map holds what shipped.

A map known to be stale is worse than no map: it answers confidently → ./mapping.

Taking a project over, in order

Four steps, and skipping one changes the outcome. The debt list is the deliverable, not the audit.

Nothing is fixed before they have seen the list, and both ends of that are performed rather than promised: a mutating call before the list exists is refused, and a run that presented deferrable findings and wrote no ./later is stopped once and asked to write them → ./entering.

An upgrade, in order

Swapping the files is not migrating the project. The log is what tells the two apart.

A guest trips none of this, and nothing-required is a line worth writing → ./upgrading.

Guest or successor

Two arrivals wearing the same clothes. Ambiguity is guest.

The same signals the reading uses are the ones the hooks read — CODEOWNERS, a contributor guide, a PR template, a history in many hands — and on doubt they stand down, because ambiguity is guest → ./entering.

Before a release

→ ./shipping

Something went wrong — whose defect is it?

The person who just hit it should not have to classify it. The door decides, from evidence.

/opsinist:report is the door, and a sentence reaches the same place → ./self-maintenance.

How a change to this system travels

The same tasks, gates and history as any other work — and one extra rule.

Self-editing is proposed, never self-merged → ./self-maintenance.

Nobody waits, and nothing runs at the wrong tier

The two halves of the same decision: whether work leaves the turn, and what it runs on.

"Same as me" is the most expensive default available, and it hides in the bill as ordinary work → ./dispatching.

The one tier no setting can raise is the advisor's own, because the advisor is the session:

Named as a tier, never as a product — the runtime may not be the one this was written on. A limitation stated before the work is a choice; the same one stated afterwards is an excuse.

Where a stuck agent goes

Every escalation is a request with an age, answerable later rather than living in a conversation → ./escalating.

Trust moves both ways, and never by itself

A role never loosens its own gate, which is nobody edits the bar they are measured against applied where it is most tempting to skip → ./permissions.