pm-dispatch: the merge-queue guard still demands an approval for a `references/`-only governed PR — #17950's tier is declared, not enforced

[claude]

Part of #17950

What

scripts/pm/check-governed-queue-guard.mjs (and objectui's scripts/check-governed-queue-guard.mjs) passes a governed diff at merge_group time only on a pinned AUTHORIZED approval (docblock :84–:88; the one zero-approval class is the byte-exact register recompute). #17950's tiering — ruled 「我点头」 and landing in the charter PR #18018 — says a PR whose governed paths ALL lie under .claude/skills/pm-dispatch/references/ lands through the queue after the skills seat's contract-tier review, with no maintainer click. Until the guard learns that tier, the text is declared and not enforced: a references-only PR is still ejected from the queue without an approval, and the charter's 「one hand merge」 for the chain's references follow-up is not yet true.

Work item

Teach the queue leg the tier: a governed diff whose governed paths are all under .claude/skills/pm-dispatch/references/ (nothing in SKILL.md, core-rules.md, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .claude/agents/**, hooks, settings, skills/**, docs/adr/**) passes on a review of record instead of an approval — the same ## Contract review comment check-clause2-carriers.mjs C6/C7 already recognise (heading, current head sha, Reviewed-by: session, Served-tier: equal to CONTRACT_REVIEW_TIER), on the PR thread. Any other governed path keeps today's predicate unchanged. Self-test cases both directions (references-only with a record passes; references-only without one is refused; a mixed diff with one rules-layer path is refused without approval; a dismissed approval still refused). check:pm-governed-prose and the AGENTS.md PD #14 sentence 「the queue guard refuses an unpinned governed diff」 are re-read against the new predicate and adjusted only if they stop being true.

Provenance

Derived from the in-flight card #17950 (chain head #17942) while the skills seat reviewed PR #18018 (record 5653195700); Q2 class 1 of ruling 5652079343: an in-flight card's in-scope derived work is a sub-issue owned by the claiming seat at inherited priority — the one triage bypass, swept post hoc. Labelled by the owning seat for that reason; domain:skills because the guard is the governed surface's own gate (lane table, domain:skills row).

Dedupe keywords

check-governed-queue-guard · references tier · GOVERNED_APPROVERS · merge_group · contract-review record

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Generated by Claude Code

[claude]

Blocked-by: #17915

Parked, not dispatched — skills seat (session session_01DAcomhvR9kKizeYgg89Vo8), 2026-09-13T12:16Z. The guard's new leg has to recognise the review of record the way scripts/pm/check-clause2-carriers.mjs does — heading, current head, Reviewed-by:, and the Served-tier: reading — and the Served-tier: reader (readServedTier / servedTierStands) exists only on PR #17990 (card #17915, awaiting the maintainer's re-run and approval). Importing it is the only shape this lane accepts; a second parser for the same line in the guard is the drift C7 was written against. So this card waits for #17915 to close (PR #17990 landed), then dispatches at once: pm:blocked swapped in this pass and read back, one write. Unlock action: dispatch this card the round PR #17990 lands; the objectui guard copy gets its own bare card then.

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Generated by Claude Code

[claude]

Unblocked — skills seat, 2026-09-13T13:41Z. Blocked-by: #17915 is satisfied: PR #17990 landed as 273a6650 at 2026-09-13T13:39Z and origin/main now exports readServedTier / servedTierStands from scripts/pm/check-clause2-carriers.mjs. pm:blocked → pm:queue in this pass and read back; the claim follows at once.

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Generated by Claude Code

[claude]

Claim: PM loop round 1
Session: session_01DAcomhvR9kKizeYgg89Vo8 (GitHub os-project-manager, skills seat), claimed at 2026-09-13T13:42Z
Branch: claude/issue-18020-queue-guard-references-tier
Worktree: objectstack-issue-18020
Domain: domain:skills (class-1 derived sub-issue of #17950 — the one triage bypass; non-gate? no: the queue guard IS the governed surface's own gate, domain:skills by the lane table; NOT a governed path ⇒ in-seat contract-tier review, then ready + auto-merge by this seat)
File surface: scripts/pm/check-governed-queue-guard.mjs ONLY (its self-test lives in the same file): a references/ tier on the merge-group leg — a governed diff whose governed paths ALL lie under .claude/skills/pm-dispatch/references/ passes on a review of record (the ## Contract review comment on the PR thread that check-clause2-carriers.mjs recognises — heading, current head sha, Reviewed-by:, Served-tier: equal to CONTRACT_REVIEW_TIER with a standing stamp control) instead of an authorized approval; every other governed path keeps today's predicate byte-for-byte. Recognition is IMPORTED from check-clause2-carriers.mjs (readServedTier, servedTierStands, and the record recogniser it exports — landed on origin/main 273a6650 by PR #17990), ⛔ never a second parser. ⛔ No change to GOVERNED_SURFACES / check-governed-merges.mjs; ⛔ no .claude/**; the AGENTS.md PD #14 sentence 「the queue guard refuses an unpinned governed diff」 stays true (a references-only PR is pinned by its record).
Container & model: M, mode:subagent, model: opus (default tier — no path mandate); seat review at the contract-review tier
Clause-②: no
Thread-read: 5653636473 (this seat's unblock note — the newest comment at this claim)
Serial constraints cleared at 2026-09-13T13:41Z: no open PR touches the guard file (file lists of every open PR read); H17 index ∩ this face = ∅; verify lock free; rate ≥14.7k/15k; origin/main at a0dd872c carries PR #17990 (readServedTier exported) and PR #18018 (the tiering text this card enforces).

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Generated by Claude Code

[claude]

os-dev-report

{
  "issue": 18020,
  "status": "done",
  "branch": "claude/issue-18020-queue-guard-references-tier",
  "pr": "https://github.com/objectstack-ai/objectstack/pull/18036",
  "premise_still_valid": true,
  "summary": "The merge-group leg of scripts/pm/check-governed-queue-guard.mjs now classifies each governed pull request's governed paths into a landing tier and, when they all lie under `.claude/skills/pm-dispatch/references/`, accepts the skills seat's review of record on the CURRENT head (a `## Contract review` comment carrying `Reviewed-by:` and a standing `Served-tier:`) in place of an authorized approval. Every other governed path keeps today's predicate: 16 of 16 untouched predicate bodies are md5-identical, and the tier leg is MONOTONE by construction (consulted only for an entry no approval satisfied), so it can lift a refusal and can never create one. Recognition is imported, never re-implemented; reaching the recognisers required solving the module-eval cycle rather than copying a parser. File surface: the guard, plus one export-only keyword in check-clause2-carriers.mjs. No workflow, no GOVERNED_SURFACES, no prose changed. Assignee was already set by the PM; never written by me.",
  "tests": "GATES: `node scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs --commands --repo objectstack-ai/objectstack` (no paths) derived 37 families at f088df57; all 37 run with the exit code captured before any pipe, all exit 0; `--ran` verdict: '37 derived, 37 run, 0 NOT-MEASURED (a DERIVED zero -- all 37 recorded an exit code and none of them is 3), 0 UNRUN'. Includes check:pm-dispatch-gates (exit 0, 1682 self-test cases, run detached with the exit captured to a file and waited on in the foreground), check:pm-clause2-carriers, check:nul-bytes, check:refd-timer-probe, check:closing-target-claim, check:whole-set-label-write, and the guard's own --self-test. check:pm-governed-prose is NOT in the derived set for this diff (no prose surface changed) and was run anyway: exit 0, '2 instruction surface(s) name all 5 registered governed surfaces and claim no others'. SELF-TEST: 183 cases before (measured on origin/main's copy) to 229 after; one new battery registered, SELF_TEST_BATTERY_FLOOR 19 to 20. LINT: `eslint . --no-inline-config --format json` ran the WHOLE population, not a narrowing -- 6722 files, 0 errors, 0 warnings; no parserOptions.project and no typed rules configured. ACCEPTANCE GREPS both directions: REFERENCES_TIER_PREFIX 0 to 9; readServedTier 0 to 4 and servedTierStands 0 to 4; lit control GOVERNED_APPROVERS 34 to 39 (still hits); the tier VALUE appears 0 times before and after; zero regex literals for the record keys (the one grep hit is a self-test assertion over rendered output). ABLATION (each leg: mutate, prove the mutation on disk by marker count AND by git hash-object differing from the HEAD blob, run, restore, prove the restore by blob hash equality and an empty `git diff HEAD`; all four run from the COMMITTED state f088df57, with a trap on EXIT/INT/TERM and absolute paths): A drop the prefix's trailing slash -> 2 of 229 red; B entrySatisfied accepts any record state -> 12 of 229 red, naming every refusal direction; C top-level await restored in the self-test dispatch -> node exit 13, 'Detected unsettled top-level await'; D top-level await restored in the LIVE dispatch (the case the pin actually guards, since C deadlocks before any assertion runs) -> exactly 1 of 229 red, the precondition pin. No ablation file remains.",
  "mcp_calls": "0 -- every GitHub read and write went through REST (curl) or git; no MCP GitHub tool was called",
  "files_changed": [
    "scripts/pm/check-governed-queue-guard.mjs (predicate + docblock + battery)",
    "scripts/pm/check-clause2-carriers.mjs (export-only: `const` to `export const REVIEWED_BY_LINE`; value expression md5 69aacee7a43102c7e55a1b7fd1843b7f before and after)"
  ],
  "premise_checks": [
    "P1 HELD: the merge-group leg passed a governed diff iff an account in GOVERNED_APPROVERS approved on any commit, not dismissed; re-anchored by content on a0dd872c.",
    "P2 PARTLY FALSIFIED: readServedTier and servedTierStands are exported; reviewOfRecord is exported but unusable here -- it gates on needsRecordRead(pair), i.e. gateBindingState(pair).state === 'completed', which needs a card, its label events and a Clause-2 declaration that merge-group time has none of. isVerdictComment and contractReviewHeadMatch are NOT exported from check-clause2-carriers.mjs. Used the lower-level exports on the PR thread instead, from the files that OWN them: CONTRACT_REVIEW_HEADING_MARKER, contractReviewHeadMatch, latestMarkedComment and H51_SHA_MIN_HEX from check-half-states.mjs, readServedTier and servedTierStands from check-clause2-carriers.mjs. The two-line filter is spelled out for reviewOfRecord's own documented reason (latestContractReviewOnHead returns an id, not the row, and the row is what the tier line is read from); everything the filter is made of is imported.",
    "P3 RE-CHECKED and HELD: open PRs created after 13:41Z are #18033 and #18035; neither touches check-governed-queue-guard.mjs or check-clause2-carriers.mjs. Noted for the PM: #18033 is in flight on check-half-states.mjs, which this leg now imports from (it does not edit the four names imported).",
    "P4 FALSIFIED: the #17040 carrier leg does NOT read the PR thread -- makeLabelReader reads `labels[]` off the PULL OBJECT (GET /repos/{o}/{r}/pulls/{n}), deliberately, to avoid the issues route. There was no thread read to reuse, so a new paginated makeCommentReader was added. It widens no workflow scope: measured against the live API, GET /repos/{o}/{r}/issues/{n}/comments answers `X-Accepted-GitHub-Permissions: issues=read; pull_requests=read`, and GitHub's own docs source defines the semicolon as separating ALTERNATIVE permission sets (a comma joins permissions all required), so the workflow's existing `pull-requests: read` suffices.",
    "ZONE 1 ITEM 2 DEVIATION, measured, not chosen: a MODULE-SCOPE import of the recognisers is impossible. check-half-states.mjs resolves its register at module scope with `export const GOVERNED_REGISTER = await loadGovernedRegister()`, which imports this guard. Measured both ways before writing any code: importing check-clause2-carriers.mjs from the guard exits 13 with 'Detected unsettled top-level await' at check-half-states.mjs:9236 -- the INDIRECT edge deadlocks exactly as the direct one does, and a dynamic import inside the self-test deadlocks identically, as the guard's own docblock predicted. The import is therefore LAZY, taken from a function body after this module finishes evaluating, which is legal only because the guard's two entrypoint dispatches no longer carry a top-level await. That precondition is pinned against this file's own source and ablation D reds exactly that one case. The CONTRACT_REVIEW_LABEL mirror STAYS a mirror -- it is read at module scope and no lazy import can supply that -- and its docblock now states the boundary precisely instead of as a blanket impossibility."
  ],
  "deviations": [
    "PR body is 56 lines, over the '~40 lines' the dispatch asked for. The overrun is the two acceptance tables and the ablation table; I kept the evidence rather than the line count and am declaring it rather than trimming the measurements.",
    "I re-sent a PR body that already carried my session-URL footer on a raw REST PATCH and the channel appended a bare one, leaving two -- the trap platform-readings.md line 331 already records. Corrected with ONE further write that sent NO footer of my own; read back: exactly one footer stored, durable attribution moved into body prose per AGENTS.md. Offered measurement for platform-readings.md (the cell for sending NO footer on a PR-body PATCH is not recorded there): raw REST `PATCH /pulls/{n}` with a footerless body stores exactly one bare footer. Filing it would be a references-tier doc edit, outside this card's file surface.",
    "Commit trailer pair is the model-free AGENTS.md one (`Claude-Session:` + `Co-authored-by: Claude`), not the harness reminder's model-bearing spelling; the pre-push hook confirmed it ('carry no card relation and no model identifier in the trailer pair')."
  ],
  "open_questions": [],
  "out_of_scope_findings": [
    "noted, not filed: makeLabelReader's docblock in the same file says the issues-labels route 'needs `issues: read`, which this workflow does not grant'. Measured live, GET /repos/{o}/{r}/issues/{n}/labels answers `issues=read; pull_requests=read`, so the stated REASON is stale -- the choice to read the pull object is still correct (it reuses a call the leg already makes) and the code needs no change. Not class (a), (b) or (c): nothing fails, no declared contract is broken, no metadata trap. Successor who would hit it: whoever next edits that reader, in this same file. Recorded in the PR's Acceptance notes.",
    "noted, not filed: the objectui copy scripts/check-governed-queue-guard.mjs is NOT mine -- the dispatch says the seat files its own card for it."
  ]
}

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