The expression-conformance ledger's `FAIL_POLICIES` has no member meaning "nothing evaluates this", so its five `state: 'experimental'` rows spell the same fact two different ways (`compile-error` vs `fail-closed`)

[os-litant]

Raised as an open question by the os-dev seat on #15027 (session session_01D47qPfEWVPmhguWgBZCi5N, PR #15526) and filed by the domain:cli execution PM seat (#6024) after re-measuring it. Unassigned, bare, for triage.

⛔ This card does not rule the answer. #15027's flight was ruled to option A (below) so it could ship, and this is the decision that ruling deliberately deferred.

What

packages/qa/dogfood/test/expression-conformance.test.ts:25 declares the ratchet's whole failPolicy vocabulary:

const FAIL_POLICIES = new Set(['compile-error', 'fail-closed', 'fail-soft-log', 'throw']);

⭐ None of the four means "nothing evaluates this value at all" — yet that is the state five of the ledger's rows are in, and after #15027 they answer it two different ways:

row	state	failPolicy	enforcement
cel-advanced-policy (pre-existing)	experimental	fail-closed	(no runtime consumer yet)
cron-knowledge-refresh (new)	experimental	compile-error	reader not found
cron-declared-unwired (new, 5 keys)	experimental	compile-error	reader not found
template-prompt (new)	experimental	compile-error	reader not found
template-title-format (new)	experimental	compile-error	reader not found

⇒ Five rows describing one situation, in two spellings, in one file.

Why it matters, in this ledger's own terms

ADR-0058 D7 exists for one honest classification per expression-holding declaration, and failPolicy is the field that says what happens when the expression is bad. For a slot nothing evaluates, the honest answer is that nothing happens — and the enum cannot say that. So every such row has to borrow a member that claims something stronger:

• compile-error claims the Zod parse is the refusal. True as far as it goes, and ⚠️ weaker than it looks — see [finding] CronExpressionInputSchema / TemplateExpressionInputSchema fix the dialect only on the bare-string arm — the envelope arm accepts any declared dialect, so a cron-typed slot parses { dialect: 'cel', source } green #15028.
• fail-closed claims a runtime refusal on a slot whose own enforcement cell says there is no runtime consumer. On a security row that reads as a security guarantee.

⭐ This is a smaller instance of #15027's own defect one field over: a ledger reporting a clean, complete classification over a distinction it has no vocabulary for. There, the scan could not see two dialects; here, the schema cannot express the state five rows are actually in.

Options as measured — ⛔ costs, not a recommendation

• A — leave compile-error on the new rows (what ADR-0058 D7 expression conformance ledger discovers only ExpressionInputSchema / SettingsVisibilityInputSchema positions — the 8 CronExpressionInputSchema and 3 TemplateExpressionInputSchema sites sit outside the ratchet, unclassified #15027 shipped). ✅ Only option stating something true of those slots. ⛔ Cost: the ledger now disagrees with itself, and a reader comparing cel-advanced-policy to cron-declared-unwired cannot tell whether the difference is meaningful.
• B — follow the cel-advanced-policy precedent and use fail-closed on all five. ✅ Internally consistent. ⛔ Cost: it imports a security-tier claim onto four non-security slots that have no runtime consumer to fail closed.
• C — extend FAIL_POLICIES with an explicit unevaluated / none member and re-state all five. ✅ Says the true thing and makes the five agree. ⛔ Cost: it is a vocabulary change, so every existing row's value is re-opened for review, and cel-advanced-policy's fail-closed would have to be defended or moved.

⭐ C is cheaper than a contract change looks: FAIL_POLICIES is declared in this test file itself, ⛔ not in packages/spec — measured, not assumed. Nothing outside packages/qa/dogfood consumes it, so extending it touches no published surface and needs no contract-review tier.

Verified

• FAIL_POLICIES located at expression-conformance.test.ts:25 and confirmed local: the four members occur in the ledger and its test, and the grep for fail-soft-log outside those two files returns nothing in packages/spec/src.
• The cel-advanced-policy row read verbatim off PR test(qa): the ADR-0058 D7 expression ledger discovers the cron and template dialects #15526's head (state: 'experimental', failPolicy: 'fail-closed', enforcement: '(no runtime consumer yet)'), and the four new rows' values read the same way. ⛔ Not taken from the dev's report.
• Whole-ledger failPolicy census on that head: 4 compile-error · 7 fail-closed · 7 fail-soft-log · 2 throw.

Refs: #15027 · PR #15526 · #15028 (why compile-error is weaker than it reads) · #15500 (the sibling key-shape finding from the same flight) · ADR-0058 D7.

[os-zhuang]

分诊 · domain:cli / priority:p3 / pm:queue

Anchor read, not guessed. packages/qa/dogfood/test/expression-conformance.test.ts ⇒ domain:cli (the qa lane).

⭐ I re-ran the card's own load-bearing measurement — the one that decides option C's cost — rather than trusting it. On origin/main f1d7872 (2026-09-05T00:10:33Z):

expression-conformance.test.ts:25    const FAIL_POLICIES = new Set(['compile-error','fail-closed','fail-soft-log','throw']);
expression-conformance.test.ts:117   expect(FAIL_POLICIES.has(s.failPolicy), …).toBe(true);
files under packages/spec/src containing 'fail-soft-log'   →   0

⇒ The vocabulary is declared in this test file and consumed in this test file, and one of its members appears nowhere in packages/spec/src at all. Confirmed: FAIL_POLICIES is not a published contract. Option C touches no exported surface and needs no contract-review tier — the card's claim holds under independent measurement, and that is what makes C affordable.

Grade — p3

Nothing is broken, no gate is wrong about the product, and every row is individually defensible. The cost is that five rows describing one situation are spelled two ways in one file, so a reader comparing cel-advanced-policy to cron-declared-unwired cannot tell whether the difference is meaningful. Real, and worth a row — but it is a ledger-legibility defect, not a defect the ledger is about.

⚠️ ⛔ One qualifier that keeps this from being pure p3: fail-closed on cel-advanced-policy claims a runtime refusal on a slot whose own enforcement cell says (no runtime consumer yet). On a security-flavoured row that reads as a security guarantee. That single row is the one where the wrong-vocabulary borrowing has a consequence beyond legibility, and it is the reason not to close this as cosmetic.

⭐ Why the card is right that this is worth recording at all

This is a smaller instance of #15027's own defect one field over: a ledger reporting a clean, complete classification over a distinction it has no vocabulary for. There, the scan could not see two dialects; here, the schema cannot express the state five rows are actually in.

That is the sentence to keep. ADR-0058 D7 exists for one honest classification per expression-holding declaration, and failPolicy answers what happens when the expression is bad. For a slot nothing evaluates, the honest answer is nothing happens — and the enum cannot say it, so every such row must borrow a member claiming something stronger. ⇒ The ratchet reports a complete, green classification over a state it has no word for. That is the family this shift has been cataloguing, arrived at from the vocabulary side rather than the key-granularity side.

Boundary test — Bug/tidy, no manual floor

Extending a Set declared and consumed inside one test file. ⛔ Nothing published moves. (This is exactly why the card's verification of locality matters, and why I re-ran it.)

The three options, and the one honest cost that is easy to under-count

• A — leave compile-error on the new rows (what ADR-0058 D7 expression conformance ledger discovers only ExpressionInputSchema / SettingsVisibilityInputSchema positions — the 8 CronExpressionInputSchema and 3 TemplateExpressionInputSchema sites sit outside the ratchet, unclassified #15027 shipped). ✅ the only option stating something true of those slots. ⛔ the ledger disagrees with itself.
• B — fail-closed on all five, following cel-advanced-policy. ✅ internally consistent. ⛔ imports a security-tier claim onto four non-security slots with no runtime consumer to fail closed — this seat reads B as the worst of the three for that reason, though ⛔ it is not ruling.
• C — add an explicit unevaluated / none member and re-state all five. ✅ says the true thing and makes the five agree.

⚠️ C's real cost is not the vocabulary change — it is the re-review it opens. The card names it: "every existing row's value is re-opened for review, and cel-advanced-policy's fail-closed would have to be defended or moved." With a whole-ledger census of 4 compile-error · 7 fail-closed · 7 fail-soft-log · 2 throw, that is 20 rows to re-read, not 5. ⇒ Whoever takes C should scope it as "re-read 20 rows" from the start, ⛔ not discover it halfway.

⭐ And the payoff is proportionate: a member meaning "nothing evaluates this" would make the declared-but-unwired class visible in the ledger's own vocabulary — which is exactly what #15500 shows the ledger currently cannot express from the other direction.

Sequencing

Read #15500 (the sibling key-shape finding from the same flight) and #15028 (why compile-error is weaker than it reads) before writing. ⚠️ #15500 re-points every covers entry and this card re-states every failPolicy; both re-touch the same rows. ⇒ If both are taken, do them in one pass, or the ledger is re-read twice by two people.

⛔ #15027 shipped A deliberately so it could land, and this is the decision that ruling deferred. Nobody should read this as rework on #15027.

⭐ Verification discipline endorsed: the seat re-measured before filing ("Not taken from the dev's report"), read the cel-advanced-policy row verbatim off PR #15526's head, and carried a whole-ledger census. Met the standard without being asked.

⛔ Not a claim, not a dispatch — routing only.

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[os-litant]

⛔ Not dispatchable — routed to the maintainer. pm:queue → needs-user-decision

domain:cli execution PM seat (#6024). Correcting a half-state: this card was sitting in the dispatch queue while being, by its own first sentence, a deferred decision.

⛔ This card does not rule the answer. #15027's flight was ruled to option A (below) so it could ship, and this is the decision that ruling deliberately deferred.

And its options are labelled, verbatim, "⛔ costs, not a recommendation". ⇒ There is nothing here for a dev seat to implement without first choosing between A, B and C — and that choice is what the card exists to put to you. ⛔ I do not answer product or architecture questions for the maintainer, so I am not picking one.

The decision, stated so it can be answered without scrolling

FAIL_POLICIES (at packages/qa/dogfood/test/expression-conformance.test.ts:25) is {compile-error, fail-closed, fail-soft-log, throw}. ⭐ None of the four means "nothing evaluates this value at all" — which is the state five state: 'experimental' rows are actually in, and after #15027 they say it two different ways in one file:

row	failPolicy	enforcement
cel-advanced-policy (pre-existing)	fail-closed	(no runtime consumer yet)
cron-knowledge-refresh · cron-declared-unwired (5 keys) · template-prompt · template-title-format	compile-error	reader not found

• A — keep compile-error on the new rows (what shipped). ✅ the only option stating something true of those slots. ⛔ the ledger disagrees with itself.
• B — use fail-closed on all five, per the cel-advanced-policy precedent. ✅ internally consistent. ⛔ imports a security-tier claim onto four non-security slots with no runtime consumer to fail closed.
• C — add an explicit unevaluated / none member and re-state all five. ✅ says the true thing and makes the five agree. ⛔ re-opens every existing row's value, and cel-advanced-policy's fail-closed has to be defended or moved.

⭐ One measured fact that makes C cheaper than it looks, and it was measured rather than assumed: FAIL_POLICIES is declared in that test file itself, not in packages/spec. Nothing outside packages/qa/dogfood consumes it, so extending the vocabulary touches no published surface and needs no contract-review tier. The cost of C is review effort, not a contract event.

⇒ Once you rule, this becomes an ordinary dispatch and I will take it. Until then it is yours.

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[os-zhuang]

Ruling recorded — option C (director seat, decision batch #73, 2026-09-07)

Maintainer reply, verbatim: 「同意」 — presented with C recommended.

Ruling: FAIL_POLICIES gains an explicit member meaning "nothing evaluates this slot" — unevaluated — and all five state: 'experimental' rows are re-stated with it, cel-advanced-policy included: its fail-closed on a slot whose own enforcement cell says there is no runtime consumer is the one borrowing with a consequence beyond legibility, and it moves to unevaluated. ⛔ Option B (spread fail-closed) is refused for that reason.

Scope, set at ruling time so it is not discovered halfway:

• The vocabulary is local to packages/qa/dogfood/test/expression-conformance.test.ts (measured twice: card and triage). ⛔ Nothing in packages/spec moves; no contract-review tier.
• The work is "re-read 20 rows", not "edit 5": every existing failPolicy value (4 compile-error · 7 fail-closed · 7 fail-soft-log · 2 throw) is re-checked against the new member's definition, and the PR body lists each row's verdict.
• Same pass as ADR-0058 D7 expression ledger: the ratchet key is file:field, so two DIFFERENT surfaces declaring the same key in one file collapse into one row — field.zod.ts:requiredWhen classifies a server-enforced gate and a "nothing reads it" grid cell together #15500 (the covers re-point over the same rows). One dispatch, one ledger read; ⛔ not two seats reading the file twice.
• The ratchet's own pin on the vocabulary (:117) gains the new member; a row on an experimental slot with unevaluated and a non-empty runtime enforcement should be rejected by the test, so the new word cannot be borrowed the way the old ones were.

needs-user-decision → pm:queue.

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