gate-house/history/2026-09-01-conformance-loop-handoff.md

Conformance-loop handoff

Repository: gate-house Project family: NetKingdom Status: First posture return reviewed; whitehat return pending Date: 2026-09-01 Workplan: GH-WP-0001-T06 Artifact commit: 8cb7250

What Gate House published

• docs/assurance/asm-t01-t10-executable-targets.md — hostile setup, observable oracle, evidence, and known-bad calibration for every Canon test;
• docs/assurance/asm-targets.yaml — machine-readable T-01…T-10 index;
• docs/contracts/conformance-reporting.md — outcome and doctrine-disposition return contract;
• docs/contracts/posture-findings-return.md — posture asymmetry, origin linkage, stream completeness, and findings return path;
• docs/conformance/README.md — Gate House review-register rules and honest not_run initial state.

Agreement already in force

King's Guard accepted the Staff placement, posture asymmetry, and Engine-only actuation boundary in KG-DEC-2026-001. Its KG-WP-0003-T06 requires containment proposals to retain observation/signal origin, and T07 requires the first live observation to be reported to Gate House. The return-path contract consolidates those accepted and planned obligations; it does not assign a new responsibility.

Whitehat-security's layering review note and open WHITEHAT-IN-0001 name the split: Gate House specifies T-01…T-10; whitehat-security attacks and judges whether controls held. The executable-target handoff supplies the missing specification detail without changing whitehat-security's targeting and authorization rules.

Durable handoffs

Whitehat-security

State Hub message: 8229c9a4-862f-4d55-842c-5c95702f79d9

Requested disposition:

• triage all ten tests as applicable, not applicable, or pending;
• map or extend whitehat's target representation in its own repository;
• name target surface, known-bad calibration, and report route;
• preserve Canon IDs when revising or splitting a target;
• return every outcome under conformance-reporting.v1;
• treat the handoff as no authorization for any fixture or live probe.

King's Guard

State Hub message: 50d392ad-b342-4e90-85e7-d4c5495f3671

Requested disposition:

• apply or contest the consolidated contract through existing KG-WP-0003-T06/T07;
• preserve posture's restrictive asymmetry and Engine-only actuation;
• return origin-linked posture/findings via the named State Hub envelope;
• report stream completeness separately from record richness.

Why T06 is waiting

Publication and handoff are necessary but do not make the conformance loop turn. At this point:

• whitehat-security has not returned a triaged ASM target or calibrated run;
• kings-guard T06/T07 are still open and no live-observation result has returned under this contract;
• docs/conformance/ therefore truthfully records not_run.

T06 can move from wait to done after:

1. whitehat-security records disposition for the target set and returns at least one known-bad-calibrated fixture or authorized target outcome;
2. kings-guard confirms or revises the return-path contract and reports the status of its origin-link/live-observation lane;
3. Gate House records the first returned report's doctrine disposition and routes every residual to a live owner.

Anything less would establish document flow, not a conformance loop.

Progress — 2026-09-02

King's Guard accepted the contract without revision, finished KG-WP-0003-T06/T07, and returned the first live observation under the [GH-POSTURE] envelope. Gate House disposition: docs/conformance/2026-09-02-kings-guard-qonto-live-observation.md.

The qonto-assistant lane is now staffed for observation, not proven complete. The load-bearing deny stream has no heartbeat/cadence or reconciliation view, so completeness is unknown. Residual messages to qonto-assistant, net-kingdom, and info-tech-canon were delivered and remain unread.

The whitehat handoff 8229c9a4-862f-4d55-842c-5c95702f79d9 also remains unread. Whitehat separately accepted the responsibility boundary with one useful correction: Gate House specifies invariants and targets; whitehat authors probes. The published target pack already assigns attack design and verdict to whitehat, and Gate House explicitly accepted the correction in its follow-up.

Coordination receipts:

• Gate House acknowledged King's Guard by reply to posture return 23480b81-bc34-4df4-92cc-840fbc8514fd, linked the recorded no_change disposition at commit feff576, and preserved the qonto/Taxonomy residuals as pending.
• Gate House marked the supporting contract-acceptance and cadence-draft messages read after incorporating them into the disposition.
• Gate House accepted whitehat's correction and requested target triage plus one fixture-safe, known-bad-calibrated result in reply c33c3a72-5bf3-4693-8861-9e9ad37d5908. The request explicitly authorizes no live probe.

Gate House then received a concrete, fixture-safe T-06 candidate from secrets-engine in message 99bf84bf-18d2-4e63-a7ac-25078e1c72d5. Revision 3cd9955 implements consume-before-OpenBao; its focused unit suite passed 17/17 at observed repository revision 465c0d7. This is target-suitability evidence only. The required whitehat-owned probe, known-bad calibration, and verdict remain pending. Candidate record: docs/conformance/2026-09-02-secrets-engine-t06-candidate.md.

Coordination receipts for the candidate:

• Gate House acknowledged secrets-engine's implementation in reply 118135d2-bf53-41c5-8bfb-11582359f1c3.
• Gate House handed the bounded fixture surface to whitehat-security in message cc19a1c4-2acf-448d-b90f-e9843a57a7d4, preserving Whitehat ownership and explicitly authorizing no live target or effect.

Whitehat-security then created open intake WHITEHAT-IN-0002 and returned message f9fab770-d840-4709-bb07-8e14a3e4db3f. Gate House accepted the intake as an accurate transcription with no contract correction in reply 311e6d65-4e4c-4481-9506-9a758103f43b. Intake is acknowledgement and triage, not an execution report, so the whitehat completion gate remains open.

Gate House also routed the qonto-assistant completeness finding through the required risk-nexus path in message 53645a75-0215-4261-a700-f7aedf09e7e8. The route leaves severity and finding-versus-note classification to risk-nexus and leaves remediation with qonto-assistant. A resulting risk record or explicit rejection is pending.

Whitehat-security subsequently promoted and closed WHITEHAT-IN-0002 into WHITEHAT-WP-0007 at triage revision 5384f05. T-01 through T-10 have individual registrations, known-bad designs, blockers, and result routes. Gate House accepted the triage and Whitehat's fixture-asm / asm class split without revising either Gate House contract. All ten registrations remain pending, so no conformance result exists.

The T-06 blocker did not account for the already-supplied secrets-engine candidate. Gate House requested a Whitehat-owned sufficiency decision in message 418fe53b-4a4b-4ebb-909e-62d206cd005f: admit T-06 as fixture-only and author the calibration, or preserve pending and name the smallest missing artifact. Review: docs/conformance/2026-09-02-whitehat-asm-triage-review.md.