ops-warden/.claude/rules/finding-routing.md

# Finding routing (risk-nexus) and policy publication (policy-nexus)

Two estate repos exist that did not when most of ops-warden's practices were
written. Both are owned by `the-custodian` and both are **downstream by
construction** — the same rule ops-warden's own catalog lives under.

| Repo | Owns | ops-warden's relationship |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `risk-nexus` | Findings, severity, disclosure timing, escalation, regulatory intake. Serves `risk.coulomb.social` | **Route findings to it.** It does not fix; ops-warden fixes what ops-warden owns |
| `policy-nexus` | Publication of canon and ADRs at permanent addresses. Serves `policy.coulomb.social` | Source repo. It publishes; it never writes back |

## When a session discovers or receives a defect, route it

**A design question is not a finding. A defect is.** The distinction matters
because ops-warden receives both through the same channel — the State Hub inbox.

This was gotten wrong on 2026-08-17. `flex-auth` reported directly to ops-warden
that `/v1/check` authenticates no caller — a live authorization bypass in the
service ops-warden's own pre-sign gate consults. ops-warden answered the design
question well and wrote the recommendation into
`wiki/NetKingdomSecurityMap.md`. It did not route the finding. `rapp-postgres`
filed it as `RISK-F-0001`, which is why that record reads
`reported_via: rapp-postgres` and not `ops-warden`, despite ops-warden being a
first-hand recipient and the affected PEP.

The failure mode is exactly the one `risk-nexus/INTENT.md` names: *"findings
landed in whichever document was open."* A wiki section answers the question; it
does not carry a severity, an owner, a date, or a review that fires when nobody
looks.

**So: when an inbound message or a session turns up a defect — in any repo —
answer it *and* route it.** They are not alternatives.

### How to route

Write the finding file into `~/risk-nexus/findings/` following
`RISK-F-0001`/`RISK-F-0002`, and commit it there. This is the established
pattern: a repo routes a finding by writing the record.

Leave `severity`, `disclosure`, and `escalation` **unset**. They are
`risk-nexus`'s to set, not the reporter's. The reporter says what is true; that
repo says how bad it is and who hears about it. State exposure only as far as
you can support it — do not infer a mitigating control (a NetworkPolicy, a
deployment flag) on a system you do not own; say it should be verified.

### What does not go there

`risk-nexus/INTENT.md` is explicit that a register nobody can read is worse than
none: *"if a finding would not change anyone's decision, it is a note, not a
risk."*

The **delegation register is not a findings feed.** `warden route gaps` lists
interim lanes with an intended owner, a blocker and a review date — that is
already tracked, already legible, and already ops-warden's. Do not bulk-file it.
What goes to `risk-nexus` from ops-warden is a defect or an exposure, not a
known gap that is being worked under a workplan.

Also re-read a *blocker* before trusting it. A blocker is a claim about the
world at a date; `RISK-F-0001` invalidated one of ops-warden's in a day and
nothing would have re-checked it.

## Escalation: ops-warden already solved this shape

`risk-nexus` carries an unwritten escalation duty — deciding what reaches the
operator personally rather than sitting in a register — and says the rule
*"must be written down rather than exercised by instinct"*.

ops-warden shipped that classifier for the credential domain in WP-0029.
`warden plan "<need>"` returns `autonomous` / `founder_required` / `unroutable`,
and when it escalates it returns a **typed act** (`approve`, `login`,
`provision`) plus the `reasons` that produced the verdict, with `warden desk` as
the surface that actually executes the act. The transferable design properties:

- escalation is decided by **properties of the thing** (lane type, status,
  request signals), not by the assessor's judgement in the moment
- every verdict carries its `reasons`, so the rule is auditable after the fact
- there is a typed act, so "needs the operator" says *what the operator does*
- there is a real surface for the act, so escalation is not just a flag

Offer this rather than let a second, incompatible escalation vocabulary grow.
Do not implement it for them — routing work is theirs to own.

## ADR gap (open, not yet resolved)

`policy-nexus` publishes canon and ADRs — roughly 68 ADRs across 18 repos.
**ops-warden has none**, and it carries binding rules that govern other repos'
behaviour: the no-double-source catalog rule (CI-enforced), conduit-not-broker,
interim-by-default with a named owner, the agent read-boundary on `risk: high`
lanes. These live in wiki prose and workplan files, so they are unaddressable
and unpublishable — a reader outside ops-warden cannot cite them or tell whether
they are current.

Do not create an ADR corpus unilaterally; it is a structural decision for the
operator. Raise it when ops-warden next records a rule of that kind.