clay-borg/workplans/CB-WP-0009-adaptive-gates.md

---
id: CB-WP-0009
kind: meta
title: "Make control gates experimental: window them, review them, cash them out"
status: in_progress
authorized_above_budget: "maintainer, 2026-08-01 — 'improve our policies where it seems promising; we will experiment our way to sensible task- and context-specific control and review gates'. Meta read 59% at the time."
state_hub_workstream_id: "98c0af4a-415c-4cf5-92d0-a722eb70cb90"
---

# Purpose

[ADR-0006](../decisions/ADR-0006-adaptive-control-gates.md) (tier M,
survey merged into the ADR from [CB-EV-0007](../evidence/CB-EV-0007-stage-0.md)
§3 and §5; chaos d4=3, no override, declaration 4 of 12).

Six passes produced five control mechanisms and no way to retire any of
them. CB-EV-0007 found three defects in how gates are *designed*:

1. the meta budget cannot see the pass it governs — the same cumulative
   defect CB-WP-0007 T01 had just fixed for session shape, reintroduced
   two tasks later by the same hand;
2. it blocks its own repair, which is the trap CB-RES-0005 §4 named and
   rejected for session shape and then got built anyway;
3. nothing retires a gate.

This pass is **`kind: meta` and above the budget line**, on explicit
maintainer authorization recorded in the frontmatter — the first use of
ADR-0006 D2, and a deliberate exercise of it.

Per **D4**, every task here ships something runnable. A task that ends in
prose has not delivered.

## Task: the meta budget measures the pass it governs

```task
id: CB-WP-0009-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "c6eefacd-5bb9-4640-8356-12e8112bcf11"
```

ADR-0006 **D1**. `make status` reports the meta share **for the current
pass** — the window since the active workplan's first commit — and keeps
the cumulative figure labelled *history*, exactly as `cb-cost`'s session
shape block does since CB-WP-0007 T01.

The instrument-repair exemption (**D2**) is what makes this task legal to
open at 59%, so the task must also *state* the exemption where the budget
prints, or the next reader will re-derive the same standoff.

**Predicted:** the windowed share for CB-WP-0008 reads at or near 0% —
it was a pure product pass — against 61% cumulative.
**Refuted if** the two land within 20% of each other, in which case D1 is
wrong and the machinery should be deleted rather than kept.

**Done 2026-08-01.** `cb-cost.pass_costs` buckets by pass window in one
read of the transcripts; `make status` reports a trailing 3-pass share
with the per-pass breakdown and the exemption. First reading **36% over
the last 3 passes** against **49% lifetime** — CB-WP-0008 alone reads 0%.

## Task: `gates.toml` and `make gate-review`

```task
id: CB-WP-0009-T02
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "0fb6cfaf-9304-481a-a96f-1f0150f4d81d"
```

ADR-0006 **D3**. A registry of every standing control gate: what it
checks, what it has caught (with pointers), `review_by`, and **what would
retire it**. `make gate-review` reports what is overdue and what has
caught nothing.

Seed it with the mechanisms that exist today — the cost budget, the
shape budget, mutation coverage, the DFD fact gate, the meta budget, the
chaos roll, the kernel spec→code gate, and `gate-review` itself, which is
not exempt from its own rule.

**The positive control this needs:** a registry that silently drifts
behind the Makefile is worse than none, so `loop-lint` gains a check that
every gate target has an entry and every entry names a real target. Its
own self-test must fail when an entry is removed.

**Done 2026-08-01.** `gates.toml` (9 gates), `make gate-review`, and a
`loop-lint` check in both directions — an unclassified `make all`
dependency and an entry naming a target the Makefile lacks each produce
a finding, both pinned by self-tests. First run: **0 due, 2 silent**
(the chaos roll and `gate-review` itself).

## Task: InnerLoop v1.6

```task
id: CB-WP-0009-T03
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "0b1b33ac-8046-4b34-b287-7b32755d964a"
```

Fold **D2**, **D4** and **D5** into `specs/InnerLoop.md`:

- the breach-is-a-signal wording and the two exemptions (instrument
  repair; recorded maintainer authorization);
- the cash-out rule, with its refutation condition;
- the tier trigger for changes to the loop's own operation, closing the
  gap CB-RES-0005 §6 opened and this ADR's own tier declaration used.

`InnerLoop.md` is at its 400-line loadability limit, so this task
**displaces** as much as it adds: the chaos-roll rationale and the v1.1
→ v1.4 change log move to `InnerLoopReference.md`, leaving the rule and a
pointer. Loadability is itself a gate; growing the file to fit a rule
about gates would be the joke writing itself.

**Done 2026-08-01.** v1.6 in `specs/InnerLoop.md`, **386 lines** — the
chaos-roll calibration rationale and the v1.0–v1.3 change log moved to
`specs/InnerLoopReference.md`, so the file came in *smaller* than it
started at 399.

## Task: control loop — did the changes fire?

```task
id: CB-WP-0009-T04
status: todo
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "e06f57fc-147f-4cba-b398-0db6b060381f"
```

Commit `evidence/CB-EV-0008-adaptive-gates.md`. Four questions, all
answered from output, not argument:

1. **Does the windowed meta share differ from cumulative?** Against
   T01's prediction; refuted within 20%.
2. **What does `gate-review` say on its first run?** A registry where
   every gate is current and every gate has caught something is a
   registry that was written to look good — say which entries are
   uncomfortable.
3. **Did D4 hold for this pass?** Three of four tasks here ship a
   command; T03 is prose. State whether the rule survives its own first
   pass or needs the exception written down.
4. **Cost**, against the 0.123–0.362 per-response range, and the meta
   share this pass itself consumed — reported under the rule it wrote.