Premise and mechanism implementation packet

Date: 2026-07-29

Status: phase A is ready for maintainer approval; phase B is semantically settled except for one prerequisite-family hold and must not execute yet. No durable catalogue, contract, ADR, or corpus change has been made.

Use two atomic directional-label migrations rather than one 374-row edit:

  1. Phase A — retire mechanism. Adopt explained-by and operates-through, update current guidance, and migrate all 82 active mechanism tuples. This phase is complete and independently executable: 81 tuples have exact successor labels and one is removed.
  2. Phase B — retire grounds. Adopt premised-on, add the demonstrated notes→notes is-evidence-for pairing, and migrate the 292 active grounds tuples. Do not execute this phase until F094 receives an exact label from the enables / precondition family review; prerequisite-hold is a disposition, not a registered identifier.

This split lets mechanism reach zero without preserving a synonym or inventing a temporary prerequisite label. It also keeps an accepted ADR truthful: phase A can describe implemented behavior while phase B remains workshop state until every active grounds tuple has a successor or removal.

Live planning baseline

The live disposition manifest freezes the current active mutable surface with exact source and target identities, source/destination collections, current line and line digest, decision provenance, action, and authorization status.

current label live tuples relabel remove hold
mechanism 82 81 1 0
grounds 292 287 4 1
total 374 368 5 1

The active pairings are 366 notes→notes, seven sources→notes, and one reference→notes. Generated reports, workshop history, archived proposals, immutable snapshots, quotations, and ordinary prose are outside this active registered-edge baseline.

The full accepted disposition is:

disposition rows
premised-on 168
explained-by 73
extends 34
operates-through 33
exemplifies 21
defined-in 15
evidenced-by 11
is-evidence-for 10
remove 5
contrasts 2
rests-on 1
prerequisite-hold 1
total 374

The decision provenance reconciles exactly: 87 accepted mechanism-core rows, 42 mechanism-boundary rows, 155 surviving original premise rows, 69 surviving grounds-boundary rows, and 21 accepted drift rows.

Registered semantics

All three proposed identifiers are asymmetric, source-as-subject, and have no required inverse. Target artifact type is not sufficient to choose between them; the source's assertion and revision consequence decide.

premised-on

theoretical assertion source premised-on premise target

  • Follow: verify a proposition on which the source's truth or applicability depends.
  • Skip: when looking for a causal account, actual operating path, corroborating case, or merely prior operational availability.
  • Revision consequence: rejecting or materially revising the target reopens whether the source assertion holds or applies.
  • Boundary test: the source imports the target proposition as a condition of its argument. If the target instead accounts for why/how the source occurs, use explained-by; if it participates in producing the effect, use operates-through; if it corroborates the claim without being required by it, use evidenced-by.

explained-by

source claim or effect explained-by target account or principle

  • Follow: understand why or how the source occurs or holds.
  • Skip: when the task is to inspect the actual component, control path, artifact, process, or operational rule used to produce it.
  • Revision consequence: rejecting or materially revising the target reopens the source's explanatory account, but does not by itself assert that an implemented path changed.
  • Boundary test: the target functions as an account of the source. A process-shaped target can still be explanatory when the source does not literally use it as its operative path.

operates-through

source effect or behavior operates-through target process, component, control path, artifact, or operational rule

  • Follow: inspect the actual pathway or machinery producing the source effect.
  • Skip: when the target only supplies a principle or causal account, or is merely required beforehand.
  • Revision consequence: changing the target prompts interface, behavior, delivery, or operational-fit review at the source.
  • Boundary test: the source literally uses or is realized through the target. Availability alone is a prerequisite relation; an account without operational participation is explained-by.

Exact authorization audit

source → destination disposition current rows current authorization required decision
notes → notes explained-by 73 absent register label and pairing
notes → notes operates-through 33 absent register label and pairing
notes → notes premised-on 168 absent register label and pairing in phase B
notes → notes is-evidence-for 3 absent add pairing in phase B
sources → notes is-evidence-for 7 authorized no change
reference → notes rests-on 1 authorized no change
notes → notes all other exact labels 83 authorized no change
notes → notes removal 5 not applicable delete exact footer rows
notes → notes prerequisite hold 1 unresolved family review before phase B

No notes→notes see-also authorization is needed. The five weak-adjacency rows are removals. No reference→notes authorization is needed for either new mechanism successor: the sole reference row is exactly rests-on.

Phase A — executable mechanism migration

Corpus disposition

successor/action active mechanism rows
explained-by 39
operates-through 28
exemplifies 6
extends 3
defined-in 2
evidenced-by 1
contrasts 1
rests-on 1
remove 1
total 82

The notes source owns 81 rows; the one reference→notes row becomes the already-authorized rests-on. The removed row is F043, the notes→notes weak companion the maintainer directed us to drop.

Proposed ADR 061

Target: kb/reference/adr/061-mechanism-splits-into-explained-by-and-operates-through.md.

The implemented ADR should:

  • amend ADRs 009, 020, and 058;
  • record the 129-row k=3 replacement evidence, the 87-row accepted core, the 42-row exact-boundary adjudication, and the current 82-row active-mechanism execution baseline;
  • retire mechanism as a registered identifier rather than retain it as a broad alias;
  • adopt the explained-by and operates-through assertions, follow/skip decisions, revision consequences, and boundary tests above;
  • state that a process-shaped target does not force operates-through: literal source use, not target ontology, is decisive;
  • record the exact 82-row disposition table above and the no-reciprocal-authoring rule;
  • scope ADR 009's five labels as the original theoretical-profile seed rather than a global closed vocabulary under ADR 019's collection-owned architecture;
  • name the operativity path: collection authors consult the catalogue, cp-skill-write and cp-skill-connect load kb/notes/COLLECTION.md with binding force, and current footer examples teach the same semantics;
  • reject a rename-only migration to either successor, retention of mechanism as a synonym, target-role or ontology signatures, and weak see-also preservation.

The ADR is created only in the implementation commit, after the corpus and authoritative surfaces match it. Its status must not become accepted while it describes unimplemented behavior.

Proposed durable surface edits

Apply these together with the 82-row corpus migration:

  1. kb/reference/link-vocabulary.md
  2. replace the current mechanism catalogue row with explained-by and operates-through entries carrying the registered semantics above;
  3. add ADR 061 to the decision links;
  4. leave historical discussion of mechanism in ADR 020 intact.
  5. kb/notes/COLLECTION.md
  6. replace the notes→notes mechanism authorization with separate explained-by and operates-through rows and their reader needs;
  7. leave grounds unchanged until phase B.
  8. kb/work/COLLECTION.md
  9. replace mechanism in the loose theoretical-label suggestions with explained-by and operates-through so new workshops do not teach the retired identifier.
  10. kb/reference/text-contract-profiles.md
  11. replace mechanism in the theoretical profile's inference-label list with the two successors.
  12. kb/reference/adr/009-link-relationship-semantics.md
  13. add an explicit scope note naming it as the initial theoretical seed and pointing to ADR 019 plus ADR 061 for current ownership and successor semantics; preserve its historical decision text.
  14. kb/reference/adr/020-theoretical-default-contrasts-mechanism.md
  15. add ADR 061 to Amended by; preserve the historical evidence and decision.
  16. kb/reference/adr/058-directional-identifiers-use-source-as-subject.md
  17. add ADR 061 to Amended by as resolution of the mechanism debt.
  18. kb/reference/README.md
  19. add ADR 061 to decision-history navigation and describe ADR 020 as the historical origin of the now-split relation.

No source contract, reference contract, instruction, schema, validator, or code change is required in phase A.

Phase A execution and reconciliation

  1. Re-scan the active surface immediately before editing. Require exactly 82 mechanism tuples and compare (current label, source, resolved target) against the manifest. Stop for additions, removals, or target movement; line-number movement alone is refreshed after identity checks.
  2. Stage the ADR and authoritative-surface edits in the same working change as the corpus migration.
  3. Apply only manifest rows whose current_label is mechanism: relabel 81 exact rows and delete the complete footer row for the one removal. Preserve targets and context phrases for every relabel.
  4. Independently reconcile:
  5. baseline tuples = 82;
  6. exact successors = 81;
  7. removals = 1;
  8. active registered mechanism = 0;
  9. active grounds remains exactly the fresh pre-edit count;
  10. every resulting source→destination pairing is authorized;
  11. historical ADR/workshop evidence remains historical rather than being lexically rewritten.
  12. Validate every changed KB artifact, run git diff --check, inspect the complete diff, and write the phase retrospective before committing.

Phase B — grounds migration, one dependency outstanding

The current 292-row grounds surface is otherwise fully classified:

successor/action active grounds rows
premised-on 168
explained-by 34
extends 31
exemplifies 15
defined-in 13
evidenced-by 10
is-evidence-for 10
operates-through 5
contrasts 1
remove 4
prerequisite-hold 1
total 292

F094 is the only blocker:

kb/notes/an-outcome-check-licenses-replay-a-rule-needs-the-process-verified.md:40 → kb/notes/diagnostic-richness-constrains-outer-loop-learning-quality.md

Two of three exact classifiers found a prerequisite relation; one found explained-by. The accepted prerequisite-hold says the target must be available or true before the source works, but deliberately withholds a spelling until enables and precondition are reviewed together. Carrying grounds as a one-row legacy authorization would keep the retired ambiguity authorable; inventing a temporary label would create unreviewed vocabulary. Both are worse than resolving the family first.

After that review, phase B should receive its own final rebaseline, ADR, and approval. Its already-settled durable changes are:

  • replace grounds with premised-on in the shared catalogue, notes contract, workshop suggestions, and theoretical text-contract profile;
  • add notes→notes is-evidence-for to kb/notes/COLLECTION.md for the three demonstrated evidence-note rows;
  • amend ADRs 009, 020, 058, and 060 with the final premise and prerequisite outcomes;
  • migrate every fresh grounds tuple by the refreshed manifest, including the four accepted removals and no notes→notes see-also edges.

Maintainer gate

Recommended next authorization:

  1. approve phase A exactly as scoped above; and
  2. authorize the read-only enables / precondition family review needed to replace F094's hold before a separate phase-B approval.

Neither authorization permits phase-B corpus mutation. Any phase-A corpus edit still starts with a fresh tuple rebaseline and stops on drift.