audit-wg-control-plane-authority-sprawl

Metadata

Status	open
Agent identity	`02e879681e52e0a384106169be043416c4d946e850ab26b2269c57681b52a6e7`
Created	2026-08-06T08:00:15.045151858+00:00

Description

Objective

Freeze further WG control-plane accretion and produce an evidence-backed deletion map for the overlapping attempt authorities added since the March baseline. Inventory lifecycle reducer, dispatcher/convergence, worker capability journal, completion candidate/review/land/done path, heartbeat/reaper, worktree observer, Pi watchdog, stream observer, assignment/quality synthetic tasks, and legacy compatibility paths. For each fact/state transition, name every writer, reader, replay key, terminal authority, subprocess, and persisted copy. Identify contradictions demonstrated by the current incident traces.

Define the smallest semantic kernel needed to preserve current user-visible guarantees, and classify every existing mechanism as keep, fold into the kernel, projection-only, migrate-once, or delete. This is a deletion audit, not a proposal for another controller. Record the March-vs-current size/authority baseline and freeze policy: no new control-plane feature may land during this program unless it removes or replaces an existing path or fixes a release-blocking safety defect.

Deliver docs/research/wg-control-plane-authority-deletion-map.md plus machine-readable recorded traces for: lost IPC response after durable mutation, live PID with missing heartbeat, duplicate provider event, repeated threshold compactions, child exit/observer EOF, stale capability, assignment plumbing completion, and completion response replay.

Validation

Every authoritative state and transition has an exhaustive writer/reader/persistence table backed by file/function references and searches.
The report proves where one semantic fact is represented by multiple authorities and names the exact deletion/cutover owner.
Recorded incident traces replay without credentials and include expected single-kernel outcomes.
A concrete freeze/deletion scorecard counts authorities, helper processes, durable journals, transition APIs, compatibility paths, and production LOC before the program.
No production behavior is changed; git diff --check and trace-fixture validation pass.

## Objective
Freeze further WG control-plane accretion and produce an evidence-backed deletion map for the overlapping attempt authorities added since the March baseline. Inventory lifecycle reducer, dispatcher/convergence, worker capability journal, completion candidate/review/land/done path, heartbeat/reaper, worktree observer, Pi watchdog, stream observer, assignment/quality synthetic tasks, and legacy compatibility paths. For each fact/state transition, name every writer, reader, replay key, terminal authority, subprocess, and persisted copy. Identify contradictions demonstrated by the current incident traces.

Deliver `docs/research/wg-control-plane-authority-deletion-map.md` plus machine-readable recorded traces for: lost IPC response after durable mutation, live PID with missing heartbeat, duplicate provider event, repeated threshold compactions, child exit/observer EOF, stale capability, assignment plumbing completion, and completion response replay.

## Validation
- [ ] Every authoritative state and transition has an exhaustive writer/reader/persistence table backed by file/function references and searches.
- [ ] The report proves where one semantic fact is represented by multiple authorities and names the exact deletion/cutover owner.
- [ ] Recorded incident traces replay without credentials and include expected single-kernel outcomes.
- [ ] A concrete freeze/deletion scorecard counts authorities, helper processes, durable journals, transition APIs, compatibility paths, and production LOC before the program.
- [ ] No production behavior is changed; `git diff --check` and trace-fixture validation pass.

Depends on

Required by

open design-wg-single-attempt-kernel

Log

2026-08-06T08:00:14.939683370+00:00 Task paused
2026-08-06T08:00:15.931287143+00:00 Reconciliation: stale-claim cleared (was Open, agent: 02e879681e52e0a384106169be043416c4d946e850ab26b2269c57681b52a6e7)
2026-08-06T08:00:17.722207099+00:00 Task published
2026-08-06T08:00:33.063560410+00:00 Lightweight assignment: agent=Careful Programmer (02e87968), exec_mode=full, context_scope=full, reason=The Careful Programmer is the only and closest fit for this correctness-critical, repository-wide architecture audit requiring exhaustive evidence, trace fixtures, and documentation changes.
2026-08-06T08:01:09.883236189+00:00 Publish generated a redundant assignment prerequisite despite explicit assignment; removed it before execution so legacy assignment-plumbing cannot block the course-correction graph.