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PETROVA

MR-17 — The playbook is physically present

A consumer repo at role: production or experimental must carry .petrova/playbook/META-RULES.md (and the rest of the playbook deposit) under its default branch. Without this, the EVA catalogue’s petrova-bootstrap prompt cannot resolve its {{meta_rules_path}}, {{mr_preamble_path}}, {{progress_signal_path}} and {{petrova_body_path}} references — the chicken-and-egg surfaced by running bootstrap against asgard-codes on 2026-05-13.

The petrova_install_playbook verb is the canonical way to satisfy this rule; it deposits the six playbook files atomically with cross-references rewritten to literal local paths. Enforced by host/src/sources/audit.ts:auditMr17. (Defends Step 2 of the bare-bones-to-baselined journey from being undetectable at audit.)

How these rules get enforced

Section titled “How these rules get enforced”
  • At commit time: the .github/workflows/docs-invariants.yml CI job validates the rank-graph DAG, ISO date formats, the AGENTS.xml schema, and milestone-ID cross-references.
  • By subagents: every subagent’s <refusal_conditions> enumerates which MR it would violate by proceeding.
  • By the orchestrator: the prompts in prompts/ reference MRs by number. When you paste prompts/02-phase-close.md, the agent loads MR-2 and MR-10.
  • By you, the human: when something feels off, scan this file. The rule that’s being broken is almost always one of these seventeen.

Updating these rules

Section titled “Updating these rules”

These rules are meta — changing one is a bigger deal than changing a project invariant. To change one:

  1. Open a decision doc (docs/decisions/YYYY-MM-DD-meta-rule-change-<slug>.md).
  2. State the rule being changed, the proposed new wording, the trigger (what surfaced this), and the implications for in-flight work.
  3. Get explicit human approval (no agent self-modification of meta-rules).
  4. Update this file. Update any referencing prompts. Update the CI job if the change is mechanically enforceable.
  5. Bump the meta-rules version in this file’s header.

Meta-rules version: 1.2.

Changelog

Section titled “Changelog”
  • 1.2 (2026-05-13) — Add MR-16 (catalogue realism — codifies the existing auditMr16 check that has been live since Baseline v3) and MR-17 (playbook physically present — pairs with the new petrova_install_playbook verb from petrova-codes#86). Ratified by parent-repo decision doc docs/decisions/2026-05-13-meta-rules-mr16-mr17.md.
  • 1.1 (2026-04-30) — Add MR-13 (intent vs. observation), MR-14 (probes auto-demote only), MR-15 (schema is the source of bootstrap questions). Ratified by parent-repo decision doc docs/decisions/2026-04-30-integration-spine-meta-rules.md.
  • 1.0 — Initial set, MR-1 through MR-12.

Return to the meta-rules index.