Known, absent, unknown, stale, ambiguous, and conflicting are separate fact states. Missing or uncertain evidence never grants permission to delete, publish, overwrite, approve, or advance.
Each managed effect binds the snapshot fingerprint, invocation, objective, transition, parameters, authority receipts, configuration evidence, and expiry. The engine re-observes under the effect lock. Drift rejects the admission before mutation.
Local writes stage exact prior and target bytes. The authoritative state installs last. A fresh observation must satisfy the transition's executable target predicate before a receipt is committed. Failure restores prior bytes when reversible or exposes a typed recovery transaction after restart.
External effects use preview, authority, execute, observe, and reconcile. Unknown settlement is preserved as unknown and is never blindly retried.
Every host submits raw command text to the same guard query. One classifier
reduces it to an allowlisted intent fingerprint; raw text is not recorded.
- high-confidence destructive commands are denied;
- direct push, PR mutation, and worktree removal are routed to their registered transition while Boatstack is engaged;
- ordinary repository commands remain allowed;
- non-destructive direct work remains inert when Boatstack is dormant.
The guard is defense in depth, not a sandbox. Keep least-privilege credentials and provider-side protections.
Git ancestry does not prove publication. Cleanup needs durable merged evidence and a landed workspace, or explicit abandonment. It validates the preserved source checkout before deleting the destination and verifies the resulting terminal from that source.
Boatstack never grants merge authority.