informed-decision/docs/gate-house-decision-request-layer-vocabulary.md

Decision request — is §3's layer vocabulary closed, and what is surface?

Intake: INFD-IN-0006 To: gate-house (owner of §11 and of the security layer model) Standard: net-kingdom/canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.8.md (proposed) Prior ruling this builds on: GH-DEC-2026-012 (answering INFD-IN-0001) Raised by: the custodian's estate-wide sweep, the-custodian/docs/assessments/2026-09-21-layer-declaration-boundaries.md, extending flex-auth's boundaries review (FLEX-WP-0030, 2026-09-20, corrected 2026-09-21). Not a finding this repository received directly, and not one anyone had raised with it before 2026-09-21.

Derived-artifact note (§12). This document restates §3, §6.4 and §11 of security-layer-model_v0.8.md and quotes GH-DEC-2026-012. It is derived from those bodies at net-kingdom v0.8 as published 2026-09-09 and gate-house decisions/decisions.md as of 2026-09-21. Where it and they differ, they govern.

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1. What was found

informed-decision declares layer: surface in INTENT.md frontmatter and in layer.yaml. §3 of the security layer model enumerates four layers — Taxonomy, Tooling, Engines, Staff — and surface is not among them. flex-auth's conformance validator reads the vocabulary as closed and admits only {Staff, Engine, Tooling}, so this repository fails it on the value.

Two facts about the finding, stated so the ruling is not made on a wrong picture:

• This repository is internally consistent. Both files carry surface, in the same casing. The nine repositories in B1 of the boundaries review disagree with themselves between INTENT.md and layer.yaml; informed-decision is not one of them and the precedence question (which form governs) does not arise here. Whichever form gate-house rules authoritative, this repository gives the same answer.
• informed-decision has no §4 catalog row. The standard does not name it. It declared its layer ahead of being catalogued, on the strength of §11's "who must declare" and GH-DEC-2026-012. So the ruling asked for here is not only about a word in a file; it is about what row this repository would take if §4 were extended to it.

2. What surface was meant to denote

surface names the presentation-and-binding tier: the place where a decision rendered elsewhere is shown to a named human, and that human's identity is bound to the act — together with the evidence that the presentation actually happened. It is the position INTENT.md opens on: "every layer of the NetKingdom estate has an owner except the one a human actually touches."

It was not a casual word and it was not a synonym for "frontend". It was written on 2026-09-09 in commit f6376dd, in this repository's own voice, immediately after GH-DEC-2026-012, whose R1 ends:

"Being PEP-shaped does not move a repository out of its layer (§6.4). Its layer is its own to declare in its own voice; this ruling settles its shape, which is what was asked and what was blocking."

That sentence left the layer value to this repository — and left it with a vocabulary in which no value was true.

Why not Engine. GH-DEC-2026-012 R1 ruled it, in terms: "It is not an Engine and takes no catalog row as one. It holds no state another layer reads at runtime to reach a verdict, which is the test, and it renders no decision." This repository asked for that ruling and argued for it against itself (docs/gate-house-decision-request-layer-placement.md §3, the self-dealing objection). Declaring Engine now would contradict a standing gate-house ruling.

Why not Staff. §3.4 makes Staff "interactive and non-deterministic", working "through agentic capability", producing "specifications, decisions, workplans, and tasks". This repository's core artifact is a hash over a rendered view: the same approval rendered to the same principal in the same role yields the same view_hash, asserted by test. Determinism is the standard's primary cut (§3), and this falls on the deterministic side. §3.4 also says Staff "MUST NOT hold state that another layer depends on at runtime" — presentation records are exactly state audit-core depends on, so a Staff declaration would be self-violating on the day it was made. And AGENTS.md carries never let an agent bind: only a human completes a disposition. A repository whose hardest rule is that no agent may perform its protected act is a poor fit for the layer defined by agentic capability.

Why not Tooling. §3.2 is "deterministic infrastructure: data structures, persistence, and the consistent, performant, scalable keeping of state." This repository persists nothing another layer reads; approval-engine owns the approval object and audit-core owns the archive. It is a client of both.

Why not Taxonomy. §3.1 is terms and semantic contracts with "no runtime position". This repository is nothing but a runtime position.

So surface was chosen because each of the four §3 values is false of this repository, one of them by gate-house's own ruling. Faced with picking a false value to satisfy a validator or writing the true word and carrying the finding, this repository wrote the true word. That is the same order it used in INFD-IN-0001 — ruling first, architecture second — and the same disposition as declaring GH-DEC-2026-010 an inherited open gap rather than describing the decision path as validated.

role: pep-shaped is a separate key and carries the §6.4 shape. surface was never intended as a restatement of "PEP" in the layer slot; §6.4 is explicit that PEP is a shape and not a layer, and this repository accepted that in full.

3. This repository's position

informed-decision holds that surface names a real tier §3 does not enumerate. The argument is the elimination above, and its sharpest form is this: GH-DEC-2026-012 ruled this repository out of Engine, and §3 offers nothing else that is true of it. If the vocabulary is closed at §3's four values, then a standing ruling and a closed vocabulary together leave this repository no conforming declaration available. That is the defect the standard has now corrected several times in its own text — "a rule that assigns an obligation the holder cannot discharge is the §9.1 defect applied to conformance rather than capability" (§11) — and it would be produced here by the interaction of two correct rules rather than by either being wrong.

But this repository does not claim the ruling must go its way, and does not ask for §3 to be amended in its favour. It asks for a ruling, and states now what it will do on each answer:

Ruling	What informed-decision does
§3's vocabulary is open, and surface (or a gate-house-chosen name for that tier) is enumerated in a future §3	Adopt the enumerated spelling in INTENT.md and layer.yaml in one commit, update tests/test_layer_conformance.py to pin it, and take the §4 row that comes with it.
§3's vocabulary is closed, and gate-house names which of the four this repository takes	Change both files to that value in one commit, same day, with no argument — and record in layer.yaml the reasoning above as the history of what was believed, so the change does not read as if the word had been careless.
§3's vocabulary is closed and gate-house declines to name a value	This repository cannot pick one. It would carry an undeclared violation it has no move against, and would rather be told than guess.

One request attaches to the closed outcome. If gate-house rules the vocabulary closed, this repository asks that the ruling say which value and how §3's determinism cut reaches it, given GH-DEC-2026-012 R1. Not as a condition — the value changes either way — but because the next repository in this position will reason from the ruling, and "not Engine, and also Staff" is a result that needs its derivation shown. approval-engine's inbox, this repository's own existence, and key-cape's blocked client_id all came from the same gap: the tier a human touches had no owner. A vocabulary that cannot name it will produce the gap again.

4. Two observations offered to the ruling

(a) The validator's vocabulary is not §3's. flex-auth's validator admits {Staff, Engine, Tooling} — three values. §3 enumerates four: Taxonomy, Tooling, Engines, Staff. So the custodian's "two repositories declare values outside the §3 vocabulary" resolves into two different findings:

• railiance-master's Taxonomy is in §3. It fails the validator, not the standard. That is a defect in the validator's enumeration, correctable without any ruling on whether §3 is closed.
• surface is outside §3 itself, and is the only surveyed value that is.

Separating them narrows the question gate-house has to answer, and means the Taxonomy case should not be read as evidence that repositories invent layer names. (railiance-master has its own agent and speaks for itself; this is a reading of the published standard, not a statement on its behalf.)

(b) Engines versus Engine. §3's table row is plural. Declarations and the validator use the singular. If §3's vocabulary is ruled closed, the closed set should be written out as declaration values rather than inferred from table row labels — otherwise the same class of ambiguity B1 found between two files reappears between the table and the key. This is offered alongside the case-sensitivity question (boundaries-review question 2), which has the same shape.

5. What this repository has not done

It has not changed layer: surface in either file. Changing it before the ruling would pre-empt gate-house on a question gate-house holds, and would destroy the evidence of what this repository actually concluded — which, if the tier is real, is the thing the ruling needs most. layer.yaml now carries a pointer to this request so the value is not read as unexamined.

6. Position summary

1. surface denotes the presentation-and-binding tier — the runtime a human touches, deterministic, holding no state for a verdict, rendering no decision, and evidencing what was shown.
2. It was chosen by elimination against §3, with Engine excluded by GH-DEC-2026-012 R1, and written in this repository's own voice because that ruling said the layer was this repository's to declare.
3. informed-decision holds that this is a real tier §3 does not enumerate.
4. It will change the declared value without argument if gate-house rules the vocabulary closed and names the value.
5. It asks that the ruling, if closed, show its derivation — and that the validator's three-value set be corrected to §3's four independently of it.