Skip to content
PETROVA

`ratified` is recognized as MR-7's closed-equivalent, grandfathered where it predates Sign-off

Date: 2026-09-05 Status: closed Supersedes: none Superseded-by: none — current

Context

Section titled “Context”

T7 batch 2 of mary-wiki’s fleet-directive status reconciliation covers the 25 petrova-codes decision docs carrying status: ratified / **Status:** ratified — the UNPARSEABLE_STATUS_BASELINE regime’s second largest vocabulary class after countersigned <date> (batch 1, closed 2026-09-05, docs/decisions/2026-09-05-sign-off-heading-synonym.md).

Note this is petrova-codes’ own corpus, not mary-wiki’s: mary-wiki’s FLIGHT-RULES uses ratified for a rule’s enactment state, distinct from this repo’s open|closed|superseded decision-doc status field. No cross-repo equivalence is assumed.

Read individually, the 25 split cleanly into two groups:

  • 8, dated 2026-08-11 through 2026-08-28 — all petrova_act_* auto-generated verb docs, each carrying a real ## Sign-off block (the generator’s boilerplate: “Human merge required per MR-12 … does not auto-merge”) with no checkbox, actor: human:alex@devarno.com and an applied_at_iso in the emitted YAML. Being in main under MR-12 is itself evidence a human merged them.
  • 17, dated 2026-05-12 through 2026-08-04 — hand-authored decisions predating docs/decisions/2026-08-10-countersign-gates-closed-status.md, which introduced the Sign-off-block requirement. None carries any Sign-off heading at all — there was nothing to write one into.

Decision

Section titled “Decision”

ratified is recognized as closed-equivalent for MR-7 purposes. Sign-off is enforced only for docs dated on or after 2026-08-10 (when the convention began): those must carry a Sign-off block passing the same checks as closed/superseded. Docs dated before that are grandfathered — no Sign-off block is required of them, and none is retroactively invented. This mirrors FR-016’s own “not retroactive” pattern in the mary-wiki corpus: a rule binds from the date it exists, and a document written before a convention existed cannot be held to a signature that convention did not yet require.

Implemented in cli/src/verbs/validate.ts: an unparseable-status doc whose text matches RATIFIED_STATUS is diverted from the generic “status could not be determined” finding into the same Sign-off/ pending-countersign/countersign-defect checks closed/superseded already run, gated by d.date >= "2026-08-10".

Alternatives considered

Section titled “Alternatives considered”
  • Map all 25 uniformly to closed, full stop — would raise a new “closed decision doc lacks Sign-off block” error on the 17 pre-convention docs, a regression the reconciliation exists to avoid, not produce.
  • Fabricate a Sign-off block on the 17 — invents a countersign that was never given; the reconciliation’s own rule (do not fabricate) forbids it.
  • Leave all 25 unparseable indefinitely — the 8 post-convention docs already carry everything the checker needs; refusing to recognize them is needless backlog, not caution.
  • Treat the 2026-08-10 convention as retroactive — rejected for the reason above; MR-7’s own append-only rule already forbids editing a merged record’s body to add what it lacked when written.

Consequences

Section titled “Consequences”

For code:

  • cli/src/verbs/validate.ts: RATIFIED_STATUS constant and a diverted branch in the MR-7 unparseable-status check, date-gated at 2026-08-10.
  • cli/tests/validate.test.ts: UNPARSEABLE_STATUS_BASELINE 58 → 32.

For docs:

  • None of the 25 decision docs is edited. This is a checker-recognition change, not a corpus edit.

For in-flight phases:

  • Unblocks mary-wiki fleet-directive T7 batch 2.

For invariants:

  • MR-7’s Sign-off requirement is unchanged for every doc dated on/after 2026-08-10. A grandfather clause is added for what predates it, scoped to that one date, not extended to any other vocabulary or convention.

References

Section titled “References”
  • cli/src/verbs/validate.ts
  • docs/decisions/2026-08-10-countersign-gates-closed-status.md
  • docs/decisions/2026-09-05-sign-off-heading-synonym.md (T7 batch 1)
  • mary-wiki/docs/runbooks/2026-09-04-fleet-directive-phase-2-verification-and-governance.md

Sign-off

Section titled “Sign-off”
  • Subagent: fleet (mary-wiki session 2026-09-05)
  • (proxy) Human countersign — approves ratified as a recognized closed-equivalent status, grandfathered before 2026-08-10

Countersigned by human:alex@devarno.com on 2026-09-05, by explicit directive in session (“ill approve”). Ticked by the agent as scribe, not as signatory.