Retire PROJECT.xml warning W1; keep name-and-URL citation as a style rule
rank: decision outranks: []
Section titled “rank: decision outranks: []”Retire PROJECT.xml warning W1; keep name-and-URL citation as a style rule
Section titled “Retire PROJECT.xml warning W1; keep name-and-URL citation as a style rule”Date: 2026-08-18 Status: open Supersedes: none Superseded-by: none — current Upholds: MR-8
Context
Section titled “Context”panto-cloud/PROJECT.xml carries warning W1: ‘Meta-rule numbering is CONTESTED across three artefacts. Cite meta-rules by NAME and URL, never by number,’ with an instruction to halt if a numeric MR citation is needed.
The corpus contradicts the contest. core/playbook/META-RULES.md defines a single canonical set of 17 rules as ## MR-N headings, at version 1.2 dated 2026-05-13. MR-8, ‘Invariants are numbered and stable’ (https://petrova.blog/meta-rules/mr-8), makes numbering itself an invariant. site/src/content/docs/meta-rules/changing-an-mr.md forbids renumbering without a decision doc and human countersign and requires a grep-and-update sweep first.
W1 conflates two separable things: a claim that the law is contested, and a citation practice. The first is false; the second is independently valuable. The conflation is why W1 reads as unresolvable — there is no action that would ever discharge it.
Note also that PROJECT.xml’s sibling reference
Decision
Section titled “Decision”Retire W1 as a contest warning. Retain ‘cite meta-rules by name and URL’ as a standing style rule, stated as style rather than as a warning about contested law.
Correct the dangling preamble-id: replace G00-PETROVA-PREAMBLE with the fetch URL https://petrova.blog/llms-preamble.txt, whose generator header states the intent — ‘prompts can now open with two lines: fetch this, then load the repo’s contract.’
Consequence that must NOT be taken in this document: state.example.json models a tenant whose gate G1 is ‘Meta-rule numbering resolves to a single canonical set’ at FAIL, with blocker B1 depending on it. Retiring W1 would re-derive that gate and change that tenant’s published next action. That is a state change and must come from a harvest, not from a decision doc. This record rules on the warning only.
Alternatives considered
Section titled “Alternatives considered”Leave W1 in place
Section titled “Leave W1 in place”Rejected: A warning asserting the law is contested, when it is not, teaches every agent reading PROJECT.xml to distrust a source that is correct — and it can never be discharged, because no evidence would satisfy a warning about a contest that has already closed.
Retire W1 and the citation practice together
Section titled “Retire W1 and the citation practice together”Rejected: Name-and-URL citation is independently valuable, costs nothing, and survives being read out of context in a way a bare number does not. The two are separable and only the false half should go.
Rewrite W1 to cite the resolving evidence rather than retiring it
Section titled “Rewrite W1 to cite the resolving evidence rather than retiring it”Rejected: A warning whose body says the matter is settled is not a warning; it is a footnote in the wrong element. The correct home for the settled fact is the style rule.
References
Section titled “References”core/playbook/META-RULES.mdsite/src/content/docs/meta-rules/changing-an-mr.mdsite/src/pages/llms-preamble.txt.tspanto-cloud/PROJECT.xml
Sign-off
Section titled “Sign-off”Human merge required — this PR is opened with the awaiting-human-merge
label and does not auto-merge.