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. Its focused unit suite passed 17/17 in the then-current working tree at observed repository revision 465c0d7. Whitehat later corrected the immutable implementation revision to 4b4d556; 3cd9955 did not contain the module. This is target-suitability evidence only. 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.

Whitehat-security admitted the fixture-only T-06 surface at revision 75deaf0 and returned a passing known-bad calibration in message 568d7092-f365-4b30-a5ba-1526b6db6893. Gate House reproduced its focused suite (53 passed). The substantive calibration is accepted for review, but the reply is not yet the standalone conformance-reporting.v1 envelope required by the contract; Gate House requested that reporting-only correction in reply 07572202-c855-4235-8289-5a3d9c8f28ae without asking for a rerun or live target.

Risk Nexus registered the qonto completeness residual as RISK-F-0011 under RISK-RULING-2026-09-02-A: medium, public, open, no escalation, with qonto-assistant as fix owner. Its source check correctly narrowed Gate House's initial rationale: the emitted audit stream does not drive the in-process lockout; it is load-bearing for estate observation. Gate House accepted the ruling in reply 0b37297c-9231-4d72-a2dd-66b5ba142031 and corrected its review without changing the no_change doctrine disposition.

Whitehat-security then completed in-process known-bad/known-good calibration for T-01 through T-10 at revision 6f1ca0b and returned aggregate message 32926191-4ca1-46ad-8eec-0d499036d66b. Gate House reproduced the current focused suite (53 passed) and recorded no_change to the executable target specification. These are fixture harness calibrations, not ten live system results; every live asm-tNN remains pending / not_run. Review: docs/conformance/2026-09-02-whitehat-asm-fixture-calibrations.md.

Closure — 2026-09-02

Whitehat-security supplied the corrected standalone T-06 envelope in message a1ebf012-bd1e-43d2-843c-ba3ddecb8c82. It confirms engagement fixture-asm-t06, authorization docs/rules-of-engagement.md v0.2 §1, stable report/run id, target revision 4b4d556, invariants, evidence references, limitations, and returned time. No rerun or live target was used.

Gate House recorded Whitehat's fixture outcome pass without regrading it and set doctrine disposition no_change. Final review: docs/conformance/2026-09-02-whitehat-t06-fixture-return.md.

All GH-WP-0001-T06 completion conditions are satisfied:

1. T-01 through T-10 are triaged and their fixture probes are calibrated;
2. a contract-complete Whitehat T-06 result returned;
3. King's Guard accepted the posture contract, staffed one live observation lane, and preserved completeness separately from richness;
4. Gate House recorded and returned explicit doctrine dispositions;
5. the qonto implementation finding is tracked as RISK-F-0011;
6. live ASM residuals are owned by WHITEHAT-WP-0008 and remain explicitly pending / not_run.

The conformance loop is staffed. It is not declared estate-wide green.