--- id: INFD-WP-0001 type: workplan title: "Founding specs and approver-UI ownership" domain: infotech repo: informed-decision status: active owner: claude topic_slug: netkingdom created: "2026-09-09" updated: "2026-09-09" reviewed_at: "2026-09-09" reviewed_against_commit: "ee2cca5" reviewed_note: >- Reviewed against approval-engine's INTENT, SCOPE, layer.yaml, APPROVAL-WP-0002 and docs/keycape-service-registrations.md; the accepted NetKingdom security layer model v0.7 and companion v0.2; the repo-classification and project-repository-flavor standards; and the Decision Memo schema, state-transition tables and canonicalization vectors in history/20260909-initial-exploration. Repo-owned specification work can proceed. T05 and T07 remain externally gated on the gate-house ruling requested as INFD-IN-0001; T08 is additionally gated on APPROVAL-WP-0002-T01 and a deployed approval-engine. origin: founding origin_ref: history/20260909-initial-exploration/InitialExploration.md state_hub_workstream_id: "a985a65a-08f7-5a39-8645-b618ea022657" --- # INFD-WP-0001 — Founding specs and approver-UI ownership Establish `informed-decision` as a governed repository in the NetKingdom estate, settle who owns the browser-facing approver UI that `approval-engine` deliberately does not contain, and produce the specification set that Stage 1 implementation will be built against. The trigger is concrete and dated. On 2026-09-08 `key-cape` (`KEY-WP-0013-T02`) asked `approval-engine` for the human approver client's `client_id` and callback URI. `approval-engine` correctly declined to invent them and recorded in `docs/keycape-service-registrations.md` that the human approver flow *"belongs to whichever browser-facing approver UI presents `approval:approve` tokens to this engine. That component is not in this repo."* `APPROVAL-WP-0002-T01` remains `progress` partly because of it. This workplan closes that gap by naming the owner and shipping the contract. **Reviewed 2026-09-09; the plan is active.** Reviewed against the contracts listed in the frontmatter. T02 remains the gate for the *architecture*: if `gate-house` places this component differently, T05 and T07 are rewritten before they are written. T03, T04 and T06 are independent of the ruling because they describe what the surface must do and what the evidence must contain, neither of which changes with the catalog row. Scope boundary for this workplan: **specification and contract, plus one walking skeleton**. Full L3 product build is residual and belongs to `INFD-WP-0002`. ## Establish the founding documents ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T01 status: done priority: high state_hub_task_id: "abe83f6a-18d2-5fe5-bd01-56b6fd0babbe" ``` Write the repository's stable statements of purpose and current stage, derived from the founding exploration rather than reinvented. Acceptance: `INTENT.md` states purpose, the Decision Memo concept, ownership and non-ownership against the named estate repositories, design principles, wrongness conditions and success criteria; `GOAL.md` states the Stage 1 outcome, exclusions, invariants and definition of done; `README.md` orients a new reader in under a minute; `history/20260909-initial-exploration/` is preserved unmodified as the provenance record. Completed 2026-09-09: `INTENT.md`, `GOAL.md`, `README.md`, `SCOPE.md`, `AGENTS.md` and `.repo-classification.yaml` written; repo registered in the State Hub and `INFD-WP-0001` indexed by `fix-consistency`. Two corrections made during the same task, recorded rather than silently fixed: - `GOAL.md` first declared `repo_flavor: project`. That is wrong. `project-repository-flavor_v0.1.md` reserves the `prj-` flavor for bounded cross-repo coordination efforts and states that durable products use `INTENT.md` and an ordinary category. This is a durable product; `.repo-classification.yaml` sets `category: product`. `GOAL.md` is retained as the *stage* statement, which the flavor standard does not forbid. - `SCOPE.md` was initially deferred to T06 on the reasoning that a scope file written before the layer ruling describes an imagined boundary. The Repo Manager requires it (C-35), and the reasoning was better served by writing an honestly empty one: the shipped `SCOPE.md` states plainly that nothing is implemented and that T06 rewrites it. T06 now rewrites rather than creates. ## Settle layer placement and approver-UI ownership with gate-house ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T02 status: done priority: high state_hub_task_id: "4f94134b-2260-5404-84e0-12f2b08ef565" ``` Take the ownership question to `gate-house` as doctrine rather than asserting a catalog row. The proposal to argue: `informed-decision` owns the browser-facing approver surface, the presentation record and the evidence of informedness; it is **PEP-shaped** under statute §6.4 and companion §5 because it is browser-facing and causes a protected side effect on the far side of a decision; it supplies exactly one PIP-like fact — *what was presented* — as a claim, and never evaluates it. Raise explicitly, and do not paper over: - §17 has no request-claim schema owner assigned. A `view_hash`-bearing presentation claim must yield to that schema when it exists rather than inventing a permanent local shape. - `approval-engine`'s claim already carries *"a digest over the same canonical binding the decision point already computes"*. Whether `view_hash` is that digest, a sibling of it, or a distinct presentation attestation is a real question and the wrong answer creates two competing canonicalizations of the same act. This is the single highest-risk unknown in the workplan. - A surface that renders both the question and the answer is adjacent to the self-dealing objection that kept the object out of `access-engine`. State why it is not the same failure: this repository holds no state a decision reads as authority. Acceptance: an intake is filed with `gate-house`; a ruling or a recorded decision exists; `layer.yaml` is written from the ruling and matches the catalog row, not this workplan's prose; `INTENT.md` and `GOAL.md` are amended if the ruling differs from the proposal; the `view_hash`-versus-binding-digest relationship is recorded as a decision, not left implicit. Blocking for T05 and T07. ## Product Requirements Document ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T03 status: done priority: high state_hub_task_id: "86465a35-1af5-5956-a767-57ad838dffa9" ``` Write `docs/specs/ProductRequirementsDocument.md` for Stage 1: the L3 approval approver surface, scoped to one real consumer. Must cover: the personas (approver holding a mandate, requester, observer/auditor); the disposition vocabulary and which verbs are legal on which step kinds; the required-highlight acknowledgment gate; the pre-sign/awareness split as it appears in the UI; the evidence bundle as an export; accessibility and locale (DE/EN, given the *Umlaufmappe* framing); and the explicit non-requirements from `GOAL.md` — no mandate graph, no QES, no notification transport. State the anti-requirements as first-class: no dark patterns, no dwell timers, no keystroke analytics, and a UI that makes unmistakable that the whole instrument is bound rather than only the acknowledged highlights. Acceptance: every requirement traces to either a `GOAL.md` definition-of-done item or a named external contract; each requirement is testable; the document names what it is deliberately not requiring and why. Completed 2026-09-09: `docs/specs/ProductRequirementsDocument.md`. 30 numbered requirements, each with a `trace:` line to a `GOAL.md` DoD item, an `INTENT.md` principle or wrongness condition, a state-transition guard, or a named external contract, and each with an observable pass condition. Anti-requirements (PR-70..75) are stated as testable absences: no dwell timers, no attention analytics, no dark patterns, no auto-approval, no approval-state caching, no authorization endpoint. Four known limitations are recorded up front rather than discovered later — chiefly that `escalate` without a mandate graph is forwarding (L-01) and that `view_hash` is computed by the renderer, so a compromised surface can present X and attest Y (L-02). Four open questions are left for review rather than answered by assumption. ## Use Case Catalog ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T04 status: done priority: medium state_hub_task_id: "00a83db5-fe0e-522a-b885-6f9ef034bc07" ``` Write `docs/specs/UseCaseCatalog.md` covering the full depth spectrum L0–L5, with Stage 1 scope marked, so that scale invariance is testable as a design property rather than a claim in a vision statement. For each level: actor, trigger, requested act, binding level, the verbs that must be available, the evidence produced, and the estate repository that is the counterparty. Include the L0 login banner and the L2 ADR accept in full even though they are out of Stage 1 build scope — their purpose here is to constrain the schema so the object cannot fork later. Include the negative cases: `accept` on a Kenntnisnahme step (illegal by design), a bind attempt with unacknowledged required highlights, an agent attempting a disposition, and a tenant switch requiring a new bind. Acceptance: every use case maps onto the single Decision Memo schema with no level-specific object; each negative case names the invariant it protects; the catalog states for each level which estate repository would consume it. Completed 2026-09-09: `docs/specs/UseCaseCatalog.md`. Six use cases L0-L5 with counterparty and stage, ten negative cases each bound to a guard or isolation vector, and a closing section naming the four changes that would fork the object — a level-specific status, multiple questions per memo, a per-level packet model, and an approvals-inbox entity that acquires state. Each case records what it contributes as a *constraint* on the shared schema, so the scale-invariance claim is checkable rather than asserted. ## Architecture Blueprint ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T05 status: todo priority: high state_hub_task_id: "20ea118e-0657-5054-8aa2-b316444f4000" ``` Write `docs/specs/ArchitectureBlueprint.md`. Depends on T02 — the layer ruling determines what this component is permitted to be. Must cover: the component boundary and its position in the security layer model; the call graph to `key-cape` (OIDC authorization-code + PKCE for humans), `approval-engine` (bearer `approval:approve`, never `approval:consume`), `access-engine` (decision, never rendered here) and `audit-core` (evidence emission); the storage posture for memos, presentations and dispositions; the deployment shape including the Ingress and external origin that `approval-engine` explicitly does not have; and the failure modes — what the surface does when `approval-engine`, `key-cape` or `audit-core` is unavailable. Fail-closed is the default and must be stated per dependency. A surface that degrades into showing a memo it cannot bind is acceptable; a surface that degrades into binding without evidence is not. Acceptance: no component in the diagram renders an authorization decision; the token audiences, scopes and principal types match `approval-engine`'s `docs/keycape-service-registrations.md` exactly; every external dependency has a stated unavailable-stance; the blueprint names which parts are Stage 1 and which are placeholders. ## Evidence model, schema promotion and canonicalization under test ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T06 status: progress priority: high state_hub_task_id: "47cb3f7a-e349-5c81-a304-86275e058a85" ``` Promote the exploration artifacts from `history/` into governed, tested repository assets, and write `docs/specs/EvidenceModel.md`. Move `decision-memo.schema.json` to `schemas/`, `canonicalize.py` into the package, and the fixtures in `vectors/` into the test suite. `history/` stays untouched as provenance; the governed copies are the ones that change. The four isolation properties from the exploration become tests that must stay green: 1. shuffling object keys does not change either hash; 2. editing an awareness field does not change `view_hash`; 3. changing `binding.target` does change `view_hash`; 4. selecting a role after login emits `session.hat_selected` and does not rewrite `view_hash`. `EvidenceModel.md` covers what an evidence bundle contains, how it verifies offline, its relationship to `audit-core`'s archive, and — carried over from `approval-engine`'s reasoning rather than rediscovered — the honest statement that a hash chain proves records were not altered after arrival and cannot prove a record was never sent. **Rewrite** `SCOPE.md` as the last step of this task. The version shipped in T01 is honestly empty — it states that nothing is implemented. Replace it with the real implemented-and-first-cut boundary once the layer ruling and the specs have fixed it, and drop the T01 status banner. Acceptance: schema, canonicalizer and vectors live outside `history/` and are exercised in CI; the three published expected hashes reproduce byte-for-byte; `EvidenceModel.md` states the residual it does not close; `SCOPE.md` describes the implemented-and-first-cut boundary rather than the aspiration, and no longer carries the T01 "nothing is implemented" banner. 2026-09-09 — substantive half done; task stays `progress` because the `SCOPE.md` rewrite is gated on T02. Delivered: - `schemas/decision-memo.schema.json` plus both worked examples; `informed_decision/canonicalize.py` as the governed canonicalizer, with the ad-hoc `__main__` block replaced by `python -m informed_decision`; fixtures under `tests/vectors/`. `history/` is untouched. - `tests/test_canonicalize.py` — 20 tests, all green. The three published hashes reproduce byte for byte, and all four isolation properties are pinned. - `docs/specs/EvidenceModel.md`. - `pyproject.toml`, `Makefile` (`make test`, `make check`). Two things worth recording rather than burying: - Isolation properties 1, 2 and 4 are all *negative* — they assert the hash does **not** change. A canonicalizer returning a constant would pass all three. Property 3 plus per-field variants over `question`, `requested_act`, `binding_level` and `packet` are what stop the suite being vacuous. - `test_governed_vectors_match_the_preserved_history_copy` asserts the governed fixtures have not drifted from the founding copies, so quietly editing a vector to make a failing test pass is itself a failure. Remaining for `done`: rewrite `SCOPE.md` after the T02 ruling. ## Publish the OIDC browser-client contract to key-cape ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T07 status: todo priority: high state_hub_task_id: "38a83a76-f152-55bf-8a9a-6132fd6d9642" ``` Own and publish the two strings `approval-engine` could not supply: the human approver client's `client_id` and its full callback URI. Depends on T02 for the ownership ruling and on T05 for the deployment origin. The registration is an authorization-code + PKCE public or confidential browser client — not `client_credentials` — and the resulting access token must carry `aud=approval-engine`, `principal_type: human`, `tenant: tenant:platform` and scope `approval:approve`. Redirect URIs match exactly at `/authorize`, so the origin must be a real deployed origin, decided in T05, not a placeholder. Do not request `approval:consume`: `approval-engine` refuses it for human principals, and consumption belongs to the PEP that causes the side effect. Acceptance: `docs/keycape-client-registration.md` publishes both strings and the expected token shape; the contract is sent to `key-cape` referencing `KEY-WP-0013-T02`, and to `approval-engine` referencing its `docs/keycape-service-registrations.md` follow-up; a token issued against the registration is accepted by `approval-engine`'s verifier; `KEY-WP-0013-T02` is unblocked. **This is the task that discharges the gap that created this repository.** ## Walking skeleton — one approval, end to end ```task id: INFD-WP-0001-T08 status: todo priority: medium state_hub_task_id: "b5c1d329-9580-5672-9640-2930cbbb729a" ``` Prove the specs against reality with the thinnest possible L3 path: sign in via `key-cape`, list approvals awaiting this principal from `approval-engine`, render one as a Decision Memo with brief, packet and highlights, acknowledge the required highlights, and submit an approval entry with a stored presentation record carrying `view_hash`. `return` and `discuss` are in this skeleton, not deferred. They are the differentiator; a skeleton with only approve/reject proves the wrong product. Acceptance: one approval is approved by a real human through this surface against a deployed `approval-engine`; the approval entry is reconstructable from a stored presentation; a bind attempt with unacknowledged required highlights fails closed; `return` produces a structured reason and is distinguishable from `decline` in the record; no code path in this repository evaluates whether the act is permitted. Gated externally on `approval-engine` `APPROVAL-WP-0002-T01` reaching `done` and on the service being deployed with an origin this surface can reach. ## Known risks - **T02 is a hard gate.** Writing the blueprint before the layer ruling risks building a component the statute does not permit in that shape. - **Two canonicalizations.** If `view_hash` and `approval-engine`'s binding digest are not reconciled in T02, the estate ends up with two hashes over the same act and no rule for which one is authoritative. - **Deployment origin is on someone else's critical path.** T07 cannot complete without a real external origin, and this repository does not yet own an Ingress. This is the most likely cause of slip. - **Scope pressure toward an approvals inbox.** The fastest way to close `KEY-WP-0013-T02` is to build a queue with two buttons. That would satisfy the dependency and abandon the thesis. T04 exists to make the cost of that visible.