<!-- sections: [Summary, Findings, Friction log, Observations and patterns, Engineering-level reading] -->
<!-- completed: [Summary, Findings, Friction log, Observations and patterns, Engineering-level reading] -->

---
cycle: 367
role: alpha
issue: "https://github.com/usurobor/cnos/issues/367"
date: "2026-05-15"
merge_sha: "37ac1c7592e35ac0832156162434da544ee9d7c0"
base_sha_origin_main: "ffdd77acab2fcfa7670b4c2d77f1dc305fcff76b"
head_sha_cycle_at_merge: "87da7f1f"
verdict: APPROVE (R1)
rounds: 1
---

# α Close-out — #367

## Summary

Single-cycle delivery of `src/packages/cnos.cdd/skills/cdd/RECEIPT-VALIDATION.md` (632L, additive). Resolves the five Open Questions seeded at AC17 of #364 and freezes the parent-facing CDD validation receptor at doctrine level. Eight α-authored doc commits `e3d78411..a27abba1`; β APPROVED R1 with zero findings; merged at `37ac1c75`. Cycle is Phase 1 of the #366 executability roadmap; Phases 2–7 inherit citation points via §Closure phase-inheritance table.

Mode: docs-only, design-only. Round count: R1 → APPROVE matches docs-only target (≤1 round, #364 precedent).

## Findings

α-side cycle findings, factual only:

**F1 — α SIGTERM between doc-content commits and `self-coherence.md`.** α completed all 8 doc commits authoring the 632L design surface (`e3d78411..a27abba1`), then was SIGTERM'd before writing `.cdd/unreleased/367/self-coherence.md`. δ wrote the evidence wrapper as recovery per `operator/SKILL.md` §timeout-recovery; commit `724e061b`. Disclosed in-artifact (`self-coherence.md` frontmatter `note:` and §Debt row 1). β read the disclosure correctly and verified that doc content was uncontaminated (all 8 design-surface commits are α-authored) and that β authoring surfaces were not blurred. Recovery wrapper inventoried what α had produced; it did not extend the design surface.

Surfaces affected:
- `.cdd/unreleased/367/self-coherence.md` — evidence wrapper authored by δ rather than α
- `alpha/SKILL.md` §2.5 — incremental-write discipline is already prescribed (one section per commit, push after each); the discipline was followed for the design surface itself (eight separate commits, each one section) but the self-coherence file was the section α did not reach before SIGTERM

Class: bounded-dispatch + long-generation timeout. Same class as the recovery noted at `724e061b` commit message and `self-coherence.md` §Debt. No prior α SIGTERM recoveries enumerated in this cycle's reading; surfacing here for PRA consideration.

**F2 — none beyond F1.** Pre-merge gate passed cleanly; eight γ-flagged failure modes each cleared independently per β review; surface containment held exactly. No mid-cycle scope-drift, no "while we're here" predecessor-doctrine edits, no schema-pinning slippage in §Validation Interface.

## Friction log

**1. Incremental commit discipline was the only thing that made F1 recoverable.** Every `## Q{n}` and the §Validation Interface section landed as a separate commit (`4423754a` → §Q1, `8ca9ce7b` → §Q2, `fd4b21fd` → §Q3, `82e8dad1` → §Q4, `5b05017a` → §Q5, `18dbc54e` → §Validation Interface, `a27abba1` → §Non-goals + §Closure, on top of `e3d78411` scaffold + preamble). When SIGTERM hit, every committed section was already on `origin/cycle/367`. δ's recovery scope reduced to writing the evidence wrapper rather than re-authoring lost design work. If α had attempted a single-commit doc write, the SIGTERM would have lost the 632L body. The friction was in the discipline being load-bearing without that load being visible at the time it was paid.

**2. The verdict/decision distinction (AC8) wanted four anchor points, not one.** First-pass instinct was to encode `ValidationVerdict` vs `BoundaryDecision` as a single named pair in §Validation Interface and trust the prose to carry the implication forward. The γ-flag at scaffold §Failure modes row 3 ("verdict/decision collapse") corrected this in advance: the distinction is what protects override discipline (AC6 / §Q4), the receipt-derivation rule (AC7 / §Q5), and the invocation contract (AC8). The friction was authoring the distinction in four locations (§Q4 biconditional rule, §Validation Interface table at lines 463–467, §Validation Interface constraints at lines 470–474, illustrative FAIL/override example at lines 533–547) without the four anchors degenerating into a four-way restatement. The illustrative example is where the four converge: `Receipt.validation = ValidationVerdict (FAIL) — UNCHANGED` while `Receipt.boundary.override` is populated. β's close-out (§Implementation Assessment) named this as the load-bearing claim.

**3. §Q5's receipt-vs-five-files separation pulled toward "deprecate the closeouts."** Initial framing temptation was to read Q5 as "do the five files survive?" with a binary answer. The structural answer is that none of the five is deprecated — each becomes an evidence-graph input or receipt-derivation source, the receipt is what becomes parent-facing. The friction was naming this without making the table look like it was reaffirming the status quo. The per-file role table (lines 343–348) routes each file to a specific evidence role; the derivation rule diagram (lines 358–371) commits the design to `derive_receipt` being a function rather than a free-text artifact. Phase 5 (γ shrink) inherits this constraint via §Closure.

**4. §Closure phase-inheritance map was not in the AC list but pulled hard toward inclusion.** No AC explicitly required a per-Phase citation table. The §Closure table at lines 624–630 was authored because the issue's stated impact ("Phases 2–7 become straightforward implementation cycles whose contracts can be cited rather than re-derived") was load-bearing for the receptor-before-membrane discipline. The cost was one extra section; the benefit is that downstream cycles can cite §Q1+§Q2+§Validation Interface (Phase 3) or §Q1+§Q5 (Phase 5) verbatim. β's close-out (§Implementation Assessment §Phase inheritance map) named this as carrying the receptor-before-membrane discipline forward.

## Observations and patterns

**O1 — Pattern: load-bearing structural distinctions survive drift only when anchored at multiple textual locations.** The verdict/decision distinction (AC8) was anchored at four points: the §Q4 biconditional rule, the §Validation Interface table, the three explicit constraints below the table, and the illustrative FAIL/override example. β read these as a single distinction restated through different surfaces, not four restatements of the same fact. The pattern: when a doctrine claim has to resist later "let's fuse these for simplicity" pressure, the doctrine surface must encode the distinction in a worked example (not just in prose), so the reader walking the FAIL case sees the surfaces stay independent. Same class as the verdict/decision discipline in `COHERENCE-CELL.md` §V's signature, which named the surfaces without a worked example; this cycle's worked example is the structural extension.

**O2 — Pattern: receptor-before-membrane discipline at the design layer requires explicit deferral of every downstream phase.** The doc carries three independent "what this does not commit to" surfaces: §Q2 "What the design does not commit to" (lines 190–197), §Validation Interface "What Phase 2 chooses" / "What Phase 2 does not change" (lines 552–571), §Non-goals (lines 580–610). Each scopes the design contract toward shape rather than syntax. β's close-out (§Process Observations §Surface drift sensitivity) named this as built-in resistance to drift toward implementation. The pattern: a design surface that freezes an interface at doctrine level is structurally different from a design surface that names an implementation; the former needs explicit deferral surfaces that the latter does not. Same class as `COHERENCE-CELL.md`'s "what the cell is, not what verifies it" framing; this cycle's three deferral surfaces extend it.

**O3 — Pattern: γ-scaffold's eight failure-modes list operated as the authoring checklist, not only as the review checklist.** The scaffold §Failure modes section (lines 122–138) named eight α-side failure modes pre-emptively. α's authoring discipline used these as constraints during generation (e.g. γ-flag 2 "schema-pinning" → wrote §Validation Interface with the "Schema syntax is Phase 2" disclaimer at the top of the section; γ-flag 3 "verdict/decision collapse" → wrote the four anchor points; γ-flag 7 "override pathway substituting for PASS" → wrote the biconditional rule at lines 300–314). β's review (§Findings) then verified each independently. Pattern: a scaffold that names failure modes in advance lets α treat them as generation constraints rather than as post-hoc review evidence. Same class as `eng/*` Tier 2 skills used as generation constraints; this cycle's scaffold-as-generation-constraint is the role-skill analogue.

**O4 — Pattern: SIGTERM between doc-content commits and evidence-wrapper write is a distinct recovery class from SIGTERM mid-implementation.** When SIGTERM hits mid-implementation, recovery either re-authors lost code or accepts partial work. When SIGTERM hits between the design surface's last commit and the evidence wrapper's first commit, the design surface is already on the branch and the evidence wrapper is the only missing artifact. δ-recovery via `operator/SKILL.md` §timeout-recovery worked cleanly here because the evidence wrapper is structurally an inventory rather than a generation: δ enumerated what α had produced, did not invent acceptance evidence, did not extend the design surface, did not blur α/β separation. Pattern: the evidence-wrapper class of SIGTERM is the safer recovery class because the wrapper is a function over the diff that already exists. Surfaces: `alpha/SKILL.md` §2.5 (incremental self-coherence write) + `operator/SKILL.md` §timeout-recovery. Class: bounded-dispatch + long-generation timeout.

**O5 — Pattern: "decisive over exhaustive" framing reads differently when each AC is mechanically uniform.** ACs 3–7 each ask "answer Q{n}". The first-pass authoring instinct was to author them as a five-row table (one column "chosen position", one column "rationale"). γ-flag 8 ("AC granularity vs document structure") corrected this in advance: the design surface is the prose that justifies the choice, not the choice itself. α authored each Q{n} as design prose with a single chosen position headline, three-to-five-paragraph rationale, and structural consequence. β read this as the issue's "decisive over exhaustive" constraint correctly applied. Pattern: when an issue's ACs are mechanically uniform, the doc structure resists drift toward a checklist only if the scaffold names the drift explicitly. Same class as #364's PRA observation that the scaffold (#367) is carrying forward.

## Engineering-level reading

**For docs-only design surfaces freezing an interface at doctrine level:**
- Incremental commit discipline pays for itself more than for code cycles. Every committed section is recoverable across dispatch boundaries. F1 in this cycle was recoverable only because the discipline was followed.
- Load-bearing structural distinctions need four-point anchoring at minimum: the named pair, the constraint enumeration, the rule (preferably biconditional), and a worked example that walks the negative case. Three of these without the fourth (worked example) leaves the distinction vulnerable to fusion in downstream phases.
- A phase-inheritance map at §Closure costs one table and produces a citable resource for the next N cycles. The map's value is that downstream phases name their input contract by section reference rather than by re-derivation, which short-circuits a class of drift.
- Three independent "what this does not commit to" surfaces (per-question, per-section, document-level §Non-goals) is the minimum to resist drift toward implementation. Two is brittle; one collapses into the doc body and stops being readable as a deferral.

**For the bounded-dispatch + long-generation timeout class:**
- The evidence-wrapper class of SIGTERM (between design-surface commits and `self-coherence.md`) is structurally safer than the mid-implementation class because the wrapper is a function over the existing diff. δ-recovery worked here without extending the design surface or blurring role boundaries.
- The recovery cost is one commit and one disclosure (frontmatter `note:` + §Debt row). The disclosure must be in-artifact, not in a side channel, for β to read the recovery as structurally sound.
- The incremental-write discipline in `alpha/SKILL.md` §2.5 prescribes one section per commit for `self-coherence.md`. The discipline applied to the design surface itself (eight separate commits) was what made this recovery cheap; if the design surface had been authored in a single commit, SIGTERM would have lost the 632L body. The discipline is load-bearing across artifact classes, not only for `self-coherence.md`.

**For #366 Phase 2–7 cycles:**
- The phase-inheritance map at §Closure (lines 624–630) names citation points per phase. Phase 2 (`receipt.cue` + `contract.cue`) reads §Validation Interface + §Q4 + §Q5; Phase 3 (`cn-cdd-verify` refactor) reads §Q1 + §Q2 + §Validation Interface; Phase 4 (δ split) reads §Q1 + §Q2 + §Q4; Phase 5 (γ shrink) reads §Q1 + §Q5; Phase 6 (ε relocation) reads §Q3; Phase 7 (`CDD.md` rewrite) reads §Q1 + §Validation Interface. The map is the contract this design hands forward.
- The override discipline (AC6 / §Q4) hands Phase 4 (δ split) a structural constraint: the override block lives inside the `boundary` block of the receipt; `ValidationVerdict` is never rewritten. Phase 4's δ-skill authoring inherits this as a generation constraint.
- The receipt-derivation rule (AC7 / §Q5) hands Phase 5 (γ shrink) a preserved-input constraint: `gamma-closeout.md` remains a derivation source even after γ shrinks. Phase 5's γ-skill rewrite cannot deprecate this file without amending the design.
