Doctrine Change Conventions

Doctrine Change Conventions

What any doctrine diff in this repo must satisfy beyond the canon skills (skills/skill-authoring is canonical for method; the README "House covenant" paragraph for the probe policy). Every item below was verified against the repo on 2026-07-30.

The covenant pairing (in-body marker + Provenance entry)

• README House covenant, quoted verbatim (2026-07-16): "a new behavioral rule ships with the probe or trap that would have failed without it, or it ships explicitly labeled unprobed."
• The standing form here is BOTH pieces: an in-body marker at the clause — (`unprobed` — see Provenance.) — AND a Provenance entry. A clause carrying only the Provenance-level label gets the in-body marker added as an integration fix (f529014: "#94 and #96 already carried theirs"; 814d116 added six for the #85–#89 batch).
• Provenance source labels in current use: contributor-reported, not linkable (private evidence) and repo-verifiable (cite the commit/PR). External measurements are additionally glossed "cited as shape" — a qualifier phrase, not a label — when another project's numbers are described without restating them as this repo's own evidence.
• Probe debt needs no ledger edit: issue #92's canonical live view is grep -rn 'unprobed' skills/*/SKILL.md. The issue stays open while any marker exists; a marker leaves only by a probe-result write-back or a recorded demotion/decline (see #92's body). Note the grep's scope is skills/ only — a design-pack marker would escape it; extend the sweep when editing design-pack doctrine (the gap is #92's mechanism, recorded here).

Line and glyph norms

• Added lines stay ≤80 characters, counted in CHARACTERS. This is a review-enforced house norm recorded in the campaign PR bodies (#90: "added lines all ≤80 characters"; #93/#97: "added lines ≤80 chars") — it is NOT enforced by checks.py (verified 2026-07-30: checks.py contains no width check). Rewrap without changing words.
• Glyphs: checks.py bans invisible/bidi/Tag-Block characters across ALL tracked files, failing closed on anything it cannot decode. Ordinary visible Unicode is house-normal — a gate finding claiming → was banned was rejected on an occurrence count plus the checks.py class read (worked example and counts: gate-adjudication-and-folds, Rejections section).

Provenance house style

• Continuous prose: no blank lines inside a Provenance section (normalized during the #86 merge resolution; recorded in 814d116).
• Entries append chronologically; a merge conflict at the section tail is the expected shape — stack entries in PR order.

Version policy (date-stamped 2026-07-30)

• Doctrine-only merges do NOT bump the version: 0.1.16 was set inside PR #83 (commit 32c6929) and is unchanged through #84–#97. The 2026-07-12-era "bump every substantive PR" convention is historical, superseded by observed practice.
• Git tags still end at alpha-0.1.2; versioning lives in the README badge AND "Early alpha" callout lines (both languages), plugin.json, and marketplace.json — six sites per 32c6929's own message; checks.py check 2 enforces their agreement, so a bump touches all sites together or CI fails.

Pre-push check

• Run python3 .github/checks.py locally before every push. Know its scope: frontmatter checks cover the marketplace-declared skill roots (skills/, design-pack/skills/) via the working tree; the hidden-directive sweep covers every git-tracked file; there is no line-width or prose-style check — those are review duties.

Done definition

checks.py green; every new behavioral clause carries the in-body marker paired with a Provenance entry that names its source label; added lines ≤80 characters; no version bump unless the owner asked for one.

When NOT to use this skill

Judging reviewer findings about your text → gate-adjudication-and-folds. Campaign mechanics → contribution-gate-playbook. General authoring method (triggers, dup-check, compaction) → skills/skill-authoring (canonical).

Provenance

Distilled 2026-07-30 from the session transcript; verified same-day against: README House covenant paragraph; issue #92 body; commits f529014/814d116/32c6929; .github/checks.py (read in full for the width/glyph scope claims); git tag -l; the version badge lines in both READMEs; PR #90/#93/#97 bodies.

Re-verify: python3 .github/checks.py && gh issue view 92 --json state --jq .state (expect "all checks passed" and OPEN while any unprobed marker exists).