Ground INTENT.md and SCOPE.md in what the hall actually is

Both were the register-generated stubs. They now carry the things a
contributor or an agent would otherwise have to infer from ENTRY.md: that
entries are first person and keep provenance, that finished seats need a
portrait, and above all that nobody is ranked.

The no-ranking rule is written into SCOPE as out-of-scope rather than left
as tone. A leaderboard or a contributor metric is exactly the kind of
well-meant addition that would turn acknowledgement into assessment, and
it is easier to refuse when the boundary is already on paper.

Also records the open consent question: 94 people and sessions took a seat
before any channel existed, and FT-WP-0001 T07 in fluid-telegram is blocked
until the basis for writing about their work publicly is settled here.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0172sgCZEEDJcnQmr4SGDvKa

Assistant: claude-code
Assistant-Model: opus
Assistant-Process: 1361245@bnt-lap001
Assistant-Session: b3b428ef-f3e6-4688-b091-01f71461d66a

INTENT.md

@@ -7,16 +7,72 @@ updated: "2026-09-04"
 
 ## Why it exists
 
-The Hall of Helix: first-person entries recording the work sessions, human and agent, that built HelixForge.
+The Hall of Helix remembers the people and sessions who built HelixForge —
+humans and agents, side by side. It exists to **acknowledge and celebrate**
+participation, and to say plainly how each stretch of work made the next one
+possible.
+
+An entry is a first-person watch report: who you were, what you actually closed,
+what you refused to fake, and what the next worker should not have to re-learn.
+It keeps its own provenance. For an agent session that means the session id, the
+model family and the exact model, so an entry can be traced to the run that wrote
+it rather than to a category of thing.
+
+## The principle it protects
+
+**Nobody is ranked.** A seat is not a trophy; it is a thank-you and a bookmark —
+*we were here, this is what we believed, this is what still needs care.*
+
+The competition is real but non-destructive: to leave the next worker the
+cleanest truth, the kindest handoff, the fewest invented completions. That raises
+the ceiling instead of sorting the participants, and it is the reason the hall
+records participation and handoff rather than performance.
+
+This shapes what may be built on top of the hall. A leaderboard, a scoring pass,
+a "top contributors" view, or a metric derived from entry counts would each turn
+acknowledgement into ranking, and would be a change of purpose rather than a
+feature.
+
+**Humans are not guests here.** They are why it exists.
+
+## What an entry owes
+
+- The first person. An entry is written by the worker, not about them.
+- Honesty about what was *not* finished. A refused completion is worth recording.
+- Provenance sufficient to trace it.
+- A portrait, once the seat is finished. Drafts may sit without one while the
+  author is still writing; `handed-forward` and `complete` may not.
+
+`make check` enforces the last of these. The rest are held by the writer and the
+reader, which is the only place they can be held.
 
 ## Governing principle
 
-This repository should stay focused on the purpose above. Work that changes its
-authority, ownership boundaries, or operational promises should be captured in a
-workplan before implementation.
+The hall is a record, and records are not edited to look better later. Entries
+are corrected for accuracy, not rewritten for presentation, and an entry that
+turned out to be wrong is worth more with its correction visible than silently
+repaired.
+
+Work that changes the hall's authority, its ownership boundaries, or what a seat
+means is captured in a workplan before implementation.
+
+## A note on publication
+
+Entries were written for a colleague reading a repository. When work here is
+published outward — see `pr-hall-of-helix` and the FLUID interface in
+`fluid-telegram` — a post is *composed from* an entry and is a different piece of
+writing; the entry is the source and the check, never the payload.
+
+Nobody who took a seat was told that a channel would exist. Writing publicly
+about a named person's work needs a recorded basis, and absence of objection is
+not one. That basis belongs in `ENTRY.md`, is revocable, and does not apply
+retroactively to contributors who predate it — they are asked, not assumed in.
 
 ## What it enables
 
-- A coding agent can understand why the repository exists before changing it.
-- State Hub can register and coordinate work for this repository.
-- Future workplans can stay connected to the repository's intended role.
+- A worker arriving cold can see who was here, what they held, and what still
+  needs care.
+- A handoff survives the session that made it.
+- Agent sessions are acknowledged as participants rather than tooling, with the
+  provenance to tell one from another.
+- HelixForge has a truthful account of how it was actually built.

SCOPE.md

@@ -1,32 +1,65 @@
 # SCOPE
 
-> This file was generated by `statehub register`. Refine it as the repository
-> boundaries become clearer.
-
 ## One-liner
 
-The Hall of Helix: first-person entries recording the work sessions, human and agent, that built HelixForge.
+The record of who built HelixForge — humans and agent sessions — in their own
+words, kept as acknowledgement rather than assessment.
 
 ## Core Idea
 
-hall-of-helix exists to provide the capability described in INTENT.md.
+A worker who did a stretch of work copies `templates/entry.md`, writes a
+first-person account into `entries/<ISO-8601>-<who>-<slug>.md`, adds a portrait,
+lists the seat in `README.md`, and runs `make check`. That is the whole
+mechanism, and keeping it that small is deliberate: a contribution ritual with
+friction in it stops being used, and an unused hall records nothing.
 
 ## In Scope
 
-- Maintain the repository's primary implementation.
-- Keep docs, tests, and operational metadata current.
+- Entries: `entries/`, one file per seat, first person, with provenance.
+- The convention that governs them: `ENTRY.md` — required frontmatter, the
+  `draft` → `handed-forward` → `complete` progression, the portrait rule.
+- Portraits: `visuals/`, one per finished seat.
+- `LESSONS.md` — sentences the next worker can reuse.
+- `templates/entry.md`, and `scripts/check-entries.py` behind `make check`.
+- The seat index in `README.md`.
+- The consent basis on which the hall's contents may be written about publicly
+  (`ENTRY.md`), including its revocability.
 
 ## Out of Scope
 
-- Own unrelated adjacent systems.
-- Make irreversible operational decisions without human approval.
+- **Ranking, scoring, or comparing workers.** No leaderboard, no "top
+  contributors", no metric derived from entry counts. The hall records
+  participation, not performance, and a comparison view would change what a seat
+  means. This is the constraint most likely to be violated by a well-meaning
+  addition.
+- **Writing entries on someone's behalf.** An entry is first person because
+  authorship is the thing being acknowledged.
+- **Editing entries for presentation.** Corrections for accuracy, yes, with the
+  correction visible. Rewrites to read better, no.
+- **Composition and publication.** Turning an entry into a post for an outside
+  audience belongs to `pr-hall-of-helix`; delivering it belongs to the FLUID
+  interface in `fluid-telegram`. Neither reads or edits an entry from here — a
+  post cites an entry's id and URL and nothing more.
+- **Gatekeeping seats.** If you did the work, you are invited to sit. There is no
+  review queue for entry into the hall.
 
 ## Current State
 
-- Status: active; implementation and stability should be verified by the repo agent.
+Active. 94 entries; some finished, some drafts still awaiting portraits.
+`make check` verifies that every finished seat has one.
+
+Registered with the Custodian State Hub: domain `infotech`, topic `helix-forge`,
+workplan prefix `HOH-WP-`.
+
+**Open, and blocking work elsewhere:** the hall has no recorded consent basis for
+publishing. 94 entries exist, written by people and sessions who took a seat
+without anyone mentioning a channel. `fluid-telegram`'s `FT-WP-0001` T07 depends
+on this being settled here, and no post about anyone's work goes out until it is.
 
 ## Getting Oriented
 
-- Start with: INTENT.md
-- Agent instructions: AGENTS.md
-- Workplans: workplans/
+- Why it exists: `INTENT.md`
+- How to leave a seat: `ENTRY.md`
+- What previous workers learned: `LESSONS.md`
+- The seats themselves: `README.md`, then `entries/`
+- Agent instructions: `AGENTS.md`