# β Close-Out — Cycle #260 (PR #260)

## Cycle summary

| | |
|---|---|
| PR | #260 — `fix: normalize cnos.cdd package after triadic rewrite` — squash-merged to main as `abeec2e` |
| Ships in | **unreleased** — small-change per CDD §1.2 (governance-docs-only normalization; no code, no runtime delta, no version bump). Next tagged release inherits this change into its CHANGELOG note. |
| Work shape | Small-change; PR body carried the coherence contract (five F1–F5 findings from prior β review) in lieu of an issue. |
| Review rounds | **2** (Round 1 REQUEST CHANGES; Round 2 APPROVED after narrow re-review) |
| Findings total | 1 (C-judgment, sibling drift) |
| Mechanical ratio | 0% (0/1) |
| Diff | 6 files, 22+/22− — CDD.md, design/, plan/, issue/, gamma/SKILL.md + cdd-issue.md template |

## Findings

### Finding 1 — F4 sibling drift in gamma/SKILL.md (C, judgment)

**Caught:** Round 1 via review §2.2.1 sibling-enumeration and §2.2.8 authority-surface conflict.

**Surface:** α's PR body scoped F4 (`Active invariants` → `Active design constraints`) to the issue template + issue/SKILL.md — the two files whose field definition was being renamed. But three sibling references in gamma/SKILL.md (L144, L159, L381) still carried the old term, and L144 explicitly promised "γ does name Tier 3 skills, active invariants, related artifacts … **exactly as `issue/SKILL.md` requires**" — a direct authority conflict with the renamed field. An α following gamma literally would have omitted transition/process constraints that the renamed template field was designed to capture.

**Fix:** α pushed `456e164` with three exact-string replacements, scope-clean (6 line-diff, no scope creep). Verified post-fix: `git grep 'active invariants' gamma/SKILL.md` → zero hits. The one remaining `Active invariants` occurrence in review/SKILL.md L289 is correct contextual usage (naming one of three sub-categories of design constraints: invariants / transition / process) and was explicitly preserved by α with justification. Clean narrow Round-2 approval.

**Root cause:** rename cycles that touch a named field should enumerate every skill that references the field by name, not only the skills in whose section the field is defined. The F4 bullet in the PR body said "issue template + issue skill" as though that was the full surface — it was not. The review skill §2.2.1 sibling-enumeration rule would have caught this at authoring time if α had run it on the renamed term.

**Severity:** C (real incoherence, non-blocking) because a literal reader of gamma/SKILL.md would ship narrower-than-intended issue packs, but the runtime effect is a skill-doc mismatch, not a code path that breaks. Severity convention matches F2/F3 in this same PR (also cross-file drift fixes rated C).

**Triage disposition:** **drop** as a one-off; the sibling-enumeration rule that would have prevented it (`review §2.2.1`) is already in the review skill as written. This cycle demonstrates the rule caught the gap at review time — the skill worked. Not an MCA candidate.

**MCI candidate (soft):** if the same pattern — "rename that propagates incompletely beyond its declared file scope" — recurs, consider adding a small check to α's pre-review gate (§2.5b / alpha/SKILL.md §2.6): *when a rename touches a named-field term, grep the term across all Tier 1 skill files before PR open*. One-liner per rename; mechanical; same shape as the row-7a peer-enumeration addendum already pending γ triage. Recording as a candidate, not proposing as MCA — one data point does not warrant a patch.

## §9.1 Triggers

- [ ] review rounds > 2 — **no**, exactly 2 rounds
- [ ] mechanical ratio > 20% with ≥ 10 findings — **no**, 1 finding total (below the 10-finding floor)
- [ ] avoidable tooling/environmental failure — **no**
- [ ] loaded skill failed to prevent a finding — **no**; the review skill caught the drift as designed, and the authoring-time miss (sibling enumeration) is a known α pre-review gap already surfaced in prior cycles

Cycle Iteration section **omitted** per §9.1 "If the cycle went cleanly (no trigger fires), cycle iteration may be omitted."

## γ reports

**No action requested from γ.** This cycle is fully closed on the β side. The normalization is live on main (`abeec2e`). No issue to auto-close (PR was not issue-tracked — per α's PR body, "Closes no issue (normalization pass, not issue-tracked)").

**Candidate MCI for γ's cycle-iteration queue:** the soft MCI noted in Finding 1 above — a mechanical rename-propagation check at α's pre-review gate. γ may hold pending a second recurrence before triaging.

**Process note worth recording:** this cycle ran as small-change per §1.2 and closed without a tagged release. That path is now exercised concretely — six skill-doc files + one template file, reviewed under full β discipline, merged, no version bump. The "every merge is a measured coherence delta" discipline from release/SKILL.md was interpreted against §1.2: no runtime delta → no tag → no POST-RELEASE-ASSESSMENT (which post-release/SKILL.md keys off `git tag`, not merge). β close-out instead of full assessment. Worth recording as a precedent in case γ wants to formalize the small-change closure surface (current post-release/SKILL.md does not explicitly name the docs-only-merge case).

## Finding 2 — HTTP 403 on branch delete (third consecutive recurrence)

**Added post-merge during β's step-10 commit push.** The β close-out commit itself (`16b639b`) pushed to `main` cleanly. The immediately-following `git push origin --delete fix/cdd-package-normalization` hit the identical sandbox-403 pattern documented in the 3.56.2 β close-out Finding C (misleading `Everything up-to-date` tail, four exponential-backoff retries all 403). The merged branch `fix/cdd-package-normalization` remains on the remote at `456e164`.

**This is the third consecutive cycle exhibiting the pattern** (3.56.1 tag push, 3.56.2 tag push, 3.56.3-would-be #260 branch delete). Per the 3.56.2 β Finding C disposition: "If it recurs a third time, file as a tooling-gap issue." That threshold is now hit.

**Not closure-blocking for β.** Branch deletion is γ's step per `CDD.md` γ-algorithm Phase 5 item 14 (`git branch -r --merged origin/main | … | xargs -I{} git push origin --delete {}`). β owns the cleanup *attempt* adjacent to release per release/SKILL.md §2.6a but, like tag-push (β algorithm step 8: "commit all release artifacts to main and defer tag push to γ/operator — do not block closure on it"), the 403 class defers to γ/operator when the sandbox cannot reach the remote for ref writes.

**Disposition:** **escalate to γ.** The γ-side open items for this cycle are now two:
1. Mechanical: execute the `git push origin --delete fix/cdd-package-normalization` from an environment without the 403 wall (user terminal / CI / ops host).
2. Process: file the tooling-gap issue named in the 3.56.2 disposition — three consecutive cycles across two different ref-write operations (tag push, branch delete) constitutes a pattern, not transient flakiness. Candidate MCA shapes: (a) a harness-level diagnostic for the 403 class so agents distinguish "sandbox credential wall" from "real remote rejection"; (b) a longer release-skill retry budget (current 4-retry exponential is insufficient — each of the three recurrences exhausted it); (c) a documented escalation path (which environment actually has write creds?). γ's call on which shape, or whether to split.

**Severity:** N/A (environmental, not a code or review finding). Recorded as a γ-surface item, not a review finding against the diff.

## Next cycle

No β commitment to a next MCA from this cycle. Prior assessment commitments (v3.56.2 §7 — `#230` `cn deps restore` version upgrade skip) stand unchanged. See Finding 2 for two γ-surface open items carrying over.

Signed: β (beta@cdd.cnos) · 2026-04-23 · merge commit `abeec2e` · close-out commit `16b639b` · no release tag (small-change per §1.2)
