A withdrawal arm at both granularities, and delete the wrapper it unblocks

[wenzowski]

Closes CLOUD-1080

Supersedes #713, whose branch this reuses. That PR is closed rather than merged; f39265e carried the same design against a rules.rs that #712 has since superseded, and it stays fetchable at refs/pull/713/head (verified). Two defects in it are not carried forward — a false CLOUD-1052 citation baked into code comments, batten.toml and the commit body, and an earlier test pass asserting on stdout reason strings where this suite's convention is path:line pointers.

Important

Read the config-lint line in this PR's verify log sceptically. It says "2 smell(s), every one admitted by a groomed decision". No groom was read. Both weakenings were admitted on their commit trailers alone, through the gate's empty-receipt path, because the groomed half cannot be recorded at all — see The admission is one-sided below and CLOUD-1082. This is stated up front because the subject of this PR is a gate that had no honest path, and it must not land pretending it took one.

The gate had no honest path

conserves obliges every deleted @test to name an arm in crates/batten/tests/*.rs — carried, subsumed or changed. All three name a successor, because the column was written for a bash suite migrating into the engine. A withdrawal has none: the subject is deleted because the feature should not exist, so the honest mapping is that there is nothing to map.

With three arms the only routes past that were a false subsumed — a ledger entry that lies in order to pass — or a [[waiver]], which config-lint refuses as waiver-added unless the weakening was groomed before the work started. Neither is honest, so this is a gate defect rather than a verdict, and AGENTS.md says a wrongly-refusing gate is repaired in-session.

One ledger, two granularities — which is why this is two commits

The scope grew once, for a reason the tree stated itself. policy/shell-retirement.rego's own header: "THE LEDGER IS CLOUD-908'S, NOT A SECOND MANIFEST … 908 conserves the CASES inside a dying suite, and this conserves the FILE." An arm landed at one granularity and refused at the other leaves the honest deletion with no landable spelling at either — with the case ledger complete, tests/container-setup.bats still raised V-RETIREMENT-UNMAPPED.

conserves (feat(rules), 9c036a9) — Conserves.withdrawn: Option<String> and Arm::Withdrawn, admissible only where the dying file's declared subject is absent at head. It owes a reason and names no target. That condition is the design: a waiver admits every deletion under its path indefinitely; this admits one case at a time and only once the subject went with it.

shell-retirement (feat(policy)!, 0989211) — the same arm over the FILE. It trades the two successor obligations (a policy surface, a compiled-binary test) for two others: name a path this same delta deleted, and carry a reason. The retired path is excluded from its own subject set, or a row could satisfy the narrowing with the very deletion it is excusing.

One read of "did the subject die"

On main conserve_case_names returns fully_mapped and runs before retirement_blockers computes subject death, so the arm needed that fact earlier. subject_facts resolves it once, above both; retirement_blockers becomes a pure composition over it and keeps CLOUD-1050's fully_mapped skip, which belongs to the aggregate column alone. The round trip is skipped entirely when no path decreased.

Rejected: refusing withdrawn claims inside retirement_blockers — the finding would then point at the path instead of the arm's own line, which is where the fix goes.

Not the same admission as #712's. CLOUD-1050's fully_mapped arm covers a complete ledger over a live subject (the .rego case). This is the complement — subject dead, ledger impossible. Orthogonal, and both now hold.

Two engine bounds, both found by the second test tier

In both cases the module's own test_ rules were green over a shape the engine does not build — the exact class .claude/rules/policy-modules.md records.

1. The file-level arm was first written to read the dying suite's own # subject: header. It cannot: base-lines is bounded to EDITED paths by construction — git.rs says so on the field, "not added (there is no base side), not deleted (the head side is gone)".
2. With the subject named on the row instead, it was still invisible in delta.deleted, because delta_sources named two prefixes and the wrapper lives under .claude/.

delta_sources is now ** — the correction prose-only already records one row down. What the row governs is unchanged; governed_at_head and governed_when_deleted still select mise-tasks/** and tests/**/*.bats and nothing else. That widening is the !.

The cost, stated rather than discovered: the file-level subject is author-declared, where the case-level arm reads the dying file's own declaration. Not a free claim — the named path must actually be deleted in this change — but an author could name a different deleted path than the one the suite declared. Closing that needs the base side of a deleted path, which this PR does not invent.

The admission is one-sided, and that is a finding rather than a caveat

This branch weakens policy in two places, and both are declared:

Weakens: rule-predicate-changed rule[bats-tests-not-deleted].conserves
Weakens: rule-predicate-changed rule[shell-retirement].delta_sources

The first is CLOUD-1080's own subject and was groomed before any code was written. The second was discovered during implementation — after the two engine bounds above closed the routes I expected — and groomed retroactively under an explicit override, which is the shape this PR's own subject calls laundering when it is done silently.

config-lint demands two sources that agree: a **Weakens:** clause in the Ready block, copied by claim-check into the branch's claim receipt, and a commit trailer. The clause half is unrecordable. claim-check anchors on a literal **Weakens:** followed by whitespace and a code span; the tracker's normaliser absorbs that space into the bold and stores **Weakens: **. Four spellings were written and read back — list item, plain paragraph, two spaces, and a non-breaking space (converted to an ordinary space, then absorbed). All four fail the anchor; the receipt carries ready-lint pass and zero weakens lines.

The other repair routes are closed too: mise-tasks/claim-check.sh is an authored shell rule, so editing it is refused as V-SHELL-RULE-EDITED with no override route and no bypass_env; and hand-editing the piped payload would forge the evidence.

So the gate admits both smells through [[ -z "$groomed" ]], its empty-receipt path, printing:

config-lint: admitted rule-predicate-changed rule[bats-tests-not-deleted].conserves (commit trailer; no claim receipt here to check it against)
config-lint: admitted rule-predicate-changed rule[shell-retirement].delta_sources (commit trailer; no claim receipt here to check it against)
config-lint: 2 smell(s), every one admitted by a groomed decision

Both lines are false — a receipt is present, and no groom was read — and the summary is the worse one, because it launders the trailer-only fallback into a claim about grooming. CLOUD-1082 carries the measurement; CLOUD-841 and CLOUD-1078 own the empty-receipt half. The corollary worth stating plainly: every weakening landed in this repository to date landed on a trailer alone, whatever its Ready block said.

What was reverted, and why it is not in the diff

mise-tasks/replay.sh is the ledger's third reader — it resolves arms over the literal list carried subsumed changed. Adding withdrawn there was committed and then dropped: shell-retirement refuses it as V-SHELL-RULE-EDITED, correctly, because that is maintaining a shell gate in place rather than retiring it. Outcomes agree either way — a withdrawn case resolves to no arm there and is skipped, which is where a resolved one would land too, since only carried is replayed — so the revert costs nothing behavioural. The fork is recorded on CLOUD-1080.

The deletion it unblocks

.claude/container-setup.sh and tests/container-setup.bats were added by #709 and are withdrawn here: a Claude-cloud-specific bootstrap around an install path whose whole point is being harness-agnostic. #711 established why it is unnecessary — honouring the CA bundle the environment already declares gets the one-liner through a TLS-re-terminating proxy with no NO_PROXY fencing at all.

disposition	cases	why
subsumed	1	the off-PATH refusal is install.sh's own behaviour now, covered in tests/install.bats
changed	1	the NO_PROXY fencing became CA-bundle handling — same problem, narrower mechanism
withdrawn	6	they described the wrapper's own existence: which script to prefer, what to fetch, what to verify about the fetched bytes

Plus one file-level withdrawn row. Both ledgers sit beside the mechanism that admits them rather than beside a successor, with a comment saying why: there is no successor, which is the point.

Shown able to fail

On the real tree, both directions. Removing withdrawn from batten.toml restores exactly six findings — tests/container-setup.bats:58,76,93,104,135,167 — while lines 116 (subsumed) and 192 (changed) stay absent, which is the arm being load-bearing and correctly scoped. Restoring it returns the tree to green.

Per arm, at both tiers. A withdrawal whose subject died is admitted where the three-arm module raised both successor refusals; one over a live subject refuses (the discriminating case, asserted at the arm's own line — the aggregate subject-alive blocker fires either way); one naming no deleted path refuses; one naming only itself refuses; one whose only reason is the retired path refuses (CodeRabbit's finding, c8b433e); a bare arm refuses while an explained one does not; a withdrawn: line under a row that does not declare the column claims nothing; and the same fixture mapped carried with no policy surface still refuses.

test:cargo 2624/2624 · test:bats 2790/2790 across 152 suites · policy test 184/184 · batten-check green.

Also filed from this branch

• CLOUD-1081 — Batten depends on the toolchain instead of verifying it: doctor::diagnose already checks config resolution, repository-ness, and that every program a rule names resolves on PATH; what is missing is a declaration surface for mise, the pinned tools and the host deps. Filed with a correction to its own premise.
• CLOUD-1082 — the unrecordable groom, above.

[linear-code]

CLOUD-1080 `conserves` has no arm for a WITHDRAWAL: all three name a successor, so a deletion whose subject is gone can only pass by lying or by a waiver `config-lint` refuses

Why

[rule.conserves] obliges every deleted @test inside a ratchet decrease to name an arm in crates/batten/tests/*.rs. Three arms exist — carried, subsumed, changed — and all three name a SUCCESSOR, because the column was written for a bash suite migrating INTO the engine (CLOUD-908).

A withdrawal has none. The subject is deleted because the feature should not exist, so the honest mapping is that nothing replaced the cases. The column cannot express that, and both routes past it today are dishonest:

• a false subsumed — a ledger entry that lies in order to pass; or
• a [[waiver]], which config-lint refuses as waiver-added unless the weakening was groomed onto the issue before the work started. Retrofitting that grooming is laundering, not grooming.

So the gate has no honest path, which per AGENTS.md makes it a defect to repair, not a verdict to accept.

**The measured instance. **.claude/container-setup.sh and tests/container-setup.bats were added by #709 and are unnecessary since #711: honouring the CA bundle the environment already declares (CURL_CA_BUNDLE, else SSL_CERT_FILE) gets the one-liner through a TLS-re-terminating agent proxy with no NO_PROXY fencing at all, so the wrapper was solving a problem it had misread. Of its eight cases, two have real successors in tests/install.bats and six describe the wrapper's own existence — which script to prefer, what to fetch, what to verify about the fetched bytes — so nothing replaced them because nothing should have a subject to replace.

Not covered by CLOUD-1050

CLOUD-1050's fully_mapped admission covers a complete ledger over a LIVE subject — the .rego case, where the module is kept and rewritten. This is the complement: subject DEAD, ledger impossible, because six of eight cases have no successor to name. Orthogonal, and both are wanted.

Mechanism

Conserves.withdrawn: Option<String> and Arm::Withdrawn, admissible ONLY where the dying file's declared subject is absent at head.

That condition is the design rather than a guard on it: it keeps the arm strictly narrower than the waiver it replaces, because a waiver admits every deletion under its path indefinitely while this admits one case at a time and only once the subject went with it.

It owes a reason and names no target — there is no successor to name, and demanding one would force the author back to the false subsumed the arm exists to remove.

Optional column, so a row that does not declare it behaves byte-identically to before. Declared-but-blank is refused at load: an empty token matches every line and would claim every case, so absent and blank are different answers.

One read of "did the subject die"

conserve_case_names returns fully_mapped and runs **before **retirement_blockers computes subject death, so the arm needs that fact earlier. The subject-death computation is extracted into a helper resolved once ahead of both and passed to each. Two readers of "did the subject die" — one by header, one by tree — disagree on exactly the rebase where it matters, which is the drift CLOUD-1037 records for this same ledger.

Rejected: refusing withdrawn claims inside retirement_blockers. It works, but the finding then points at the path instead of the arm's own line, which is where the fix goes.

One grammar, two readers

mise-tasks/replay.sh resolves an arm over the literal list carried subsumed changed. Adding a fourth token to the engine without adding it there re-forks the grammar CLOUD-1037 exists to reconcile, so the list gains withdrawn. Behaviour is unchanged — only carried is replayed — and the vocabulary becomes one.

---

Refinement — Ready

Refinement gate: Definition of Ready & Done. This body carries only specializations.

• **Source of truth (§1). **[rule.conserves] in the committed batten.toml for the vocabulary, the arms declared under its declared_in glob for the ledger, and git at base for whether a subject died. No new authority: all three are already read by this rule.
• Computable predicate (§2). A case claimed by the fourth arm passes iff the dying file's declared subject was alive at base and is absent from the head tree, and the arm carries a reason. A row that does not declare the column reads exactly the three tokens it always did; a row declaring it blank is refused at load.
• **Effect (§3). **read. This is inside batten check, which already resolves the same git fact for the aggregate admission; the round trip is skipped entirely when no path decreased, so a ratchet moving in the permitted direction pays nothing for the column.
• **Generated artifacts (§4). **schema/batten.schema.json and schema/batten.local.schema.json, regenerated by the task that owns them. bench/suites/RESULTS.md, regenerated by suite-bench --write once the suite count changes.
• Output / exit (§5). Pointer-only. A withdrawal over a live subject and a bare withdrawal each report at the arm's own line (path:line) with a stable reason id, never the case body, the deleted assertion or the reason text.
• **Commit / bump (§6). **feat(rules) for the arm, fix(tasks) for the replay vocabulary — library surface for the first, consumer surface for the second. No published flag, verb or exit code changes. Below 0.1.0 release-plz bumps the patch whatever the type says.
• Test obligation (§7). Shown able to fail (CLOUD-418), both directions:
  • Removing the arm from batten.toml restores exactly SIX findings — the six withdrawn cases — while the subsumed and changed arms still resolve. That is the arm being load-bearing and correctly scoped rather than blanket.
  • Restoring it returns the tree to green.
  • The discriminating case: a withdrawn arm over a LIVE subject — a suite gutted with a note attached — refuses. Asserted at the ARM'S OWN LINE, never on a reason string: the aggregate subject-alive blocker fires either way, so a case keyed on that string would pass against an arm that honours every withdrawal.
  • A bare arm (no reason) refused while an explained one is not.
  • A withdrawn: line under a row that does not declare the column claims nothing.
• Blockers (§8). None.

Acceptance

• The eight container-setup cases are mapped honestly — one subsumed, one changed, six withdrawn — and mise run config-lint reports 0 smells, i.e. no waiver was added. That is the whole difference between this route and the one first attempted.
• mise run batten-check green with the arm, and exactly six findings without it.
• Both readers of the ledger resolve the same four arms.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change adds a withdrawn conservation arm for deleted subjects without successors. Rust evaluation shares subject-death facts across retirement and conservation checks. Schemas, configuration, and Rego policy parse and validate withdrawal declarations. Configuration also adds tool-sourced review checks before gh pr ready. Tests cover withdrawal behavior and preserve successor requirements for other arms. The container setup script and its Bats tests were removed. Benchmark results were refreshed.

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 8b1d2

The selector change presents no established behavioral risk, and no actionable merge-blocking issue remains beyond normal checks and review.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 13 functions across 3 files. (2 skipped: 2…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main changes: adding withdrawal arms at both case and file granularities, and deleting the wrapper enabled by those changes.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly related to the changeset. It explains the withdrawal arms, policy updates, deleted files, validation results, and known gate limitations.

Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 13 functions across 3 files. (2 skipped: 2 unsupported.)

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Inline comments:
In `@policy/shell-retirement.rego`:
- Around line 389-394: Update withdrawal_reason to exclude any word equal to
path when building its words set, matching withdrawn_subjects behavior; add a
regression case covering a withdrawn row where the retired path appears
alongside a valid deleted subject and no prose.

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