Skip to content
PETROVA

The petrova.blog version band is bound to its sources, not written down

Date: 2026-08-06 Status: closed Supersedes: none Superseded-by: none — current Implements: docs/specs/2026-08-05-petrova-apex-domain-topology.md §4 items 1–2

Context

Section titled “Context”

PETROVA-APEX §4 flags the petrova.blog version band as the one item in the whole apex proposal that is unambiguously safe to fix today, and as a genuine MR-12 defect. It read:

v0.4 · MR-1..MR-12 · 8 fleets · updated 2026-05-11

Every cell after the first was false:

CellClaimedActual
MR rangeMR-1..MR-12MR-1..MR-17 — 17 ## MR-N headings in core/playbook/META-RULES.md, and the same 17 in the canonical eva-hq copy
unit count8 fleets39 registry entries; the console says 39 REPOS. “Fleet” was never defined on the page
dateupdated 2026-05-11~3 months stale

MR-12 says the CLAUDE.md is the projection, not the source. The band is a projection by exactly that definition, and it had drifted from all three of its sources — on the front page of the surface that publishes MR-12.

Root cause

Section titled “Root cause”

The band was three string literals inside ensureRootIndex in site/scripts/pull-content.ts, the script that materialises the landing page on prebuild. A literal cannot notice that META-RULES gained five rules.

A second mechanism kept it alive: ensureRootIndex returned early when index.md already existed, and index.md was the one path exempted from site/.gitignore’s “pulled content is regenerated on every build” rule. So the generated landing was also a committed file that no build would ever refresh. Editing the committed copy and editing the template were two different acts, and only one of them survived a build.

Decision

Section titled “Decision”

Each cell is read at build time from the thing it describes. bandCells() in pull-content.ts reads:

  • the MR range from core/playbook/META-RULES.md, counting ## MR-N headings (headings, not mentions — the file cross-references MR numbers throughout its prose). That file is the in-repo mirror of the canonical eva-hq/prompts/_shared/petrova/META-RULES.md;
  • the repo count from registry.yaml;
  • updated from git log -1 --format=%cs.

A missing or unparseable source throws. No fallback literal. Silently substituting a stale constant is the defect being removed; a red build is the honest signal. Verified by moving META-RULES.md aside and confirming prebuild fails with a named error rather than emitting a band.

8 fleets becomes 39 governed repos. §4 item 2 asks for the unit to be named. “Fleet” appeared on no other surface and read as a contradiction next to the console’s 39 REPOS; the registry counts repos, so the band counts repos.

ensureRootIndex now rewrites the landing on every prebuild, and index.md is no longer tracked — the !src/content/docs/index.md exemption is removed from site/.gitignore. The template lives in the script; the file is output. Tracking output would dirty the tree on every build (the updated cell moves with each commit) and would let a stale copy reappear in review, which is how this defect survived.

The “cross-cutting MR-1..MR-12 set” subtitle in the same page’s start-grid carried the same stale range. It now reads “the cross-cutting meta-rule set” — no number to drift. This follows PETROVA-APEX §5 item 3, which asks that no apex copy cite an MR by number while the numbering is contested.

Rejected alternative

Section titled “Rejected alternative”

Converting the landing to .mdx and computing the band in an Astro component. Attempted first, and abandoned: the page body is hand-written HTML with a fenced mermaid block, and MDX’s expression parser rejects it (Unexpected content after expression). The generator was the correct binding point regardless — it is where the template already lived.

Scope

Section titled “Scope”

This is §4 items 1 and 2 only. Deliberately not done here:

  • §1 — petrova.blue is not registered. That is a purchase.
  • §3 — the petrova.host re-root. A routing change against a live operator surface; §6 asks for its own decision doc first, per MR-7.
  • §4 item 3 — the reciprocal petrova.host link above the fold. Blocked on docs/decisions/2026-05-13-cross-platform-nav-contract.md, still open, and now governing four surfaces rather than three.

Consequences

Section titled “Consequences”
  • The band cannot drift again without a build failure or a visibly wrong number in a diff of pull-content.ts.
  • site/src/content/docs/index.md disappears from git ls-files. A clean checkout has no landing page until prebuild runs — which is true of all 207 other pages under src/content/docs/ already.
  • The band now depends on core/playbook/, so a site build requires that mirror to be present. It is in-tree (not a submodule) since 2026-05-14, so this adds no checkout step.
  • Verified: 208 pages built, MR-1..MR-12 occurs zero times in the output, and the landing regenerates correctly from a tree with no index.md.

Sign-off

Section titled “Sign-off”