# Which of ops-warden's two layer declarations governs — unruled, and not ours to rule

**Status: open, waiting on gate-house. ops-warden will not change either file
until the ruling lands.** Route: `WARDEN-WP-0034-T06`.

## The fact

ops-warden carries both forms §11 of `security-layer-model` permits, and they
state different values:

| File | Value |
| --- | --- |
| `INTENT.md` frontmatter | `layer: Staff` |
| `layer.yaml` | `layer: staff` |

§11 accepts either form and does not say which governs when both exist and
disagree. A conformance run reading `INTENT.md` and a run reading `layer.yaml`
reach different answers for this repository, and **both are following the
standard**. That is the finding.

## What this is not

It is not a disagreement with anybody else. flex-auth's first published B1
(2026-09-20) reported that the estate spells `layer:` three ways *across*
repositories and that ops-warden was among the repositories that would fail a
validator on casing. flex-auth withdrew that on 2026-09-21: it came from a shell
pipeline that took the first `^layer:` match per repository across two files
without recording which file it came from, so it reported one value where there
were two. They rebuilt it as `tools/survey_layer_declarations.go` with a receipt
(`flex-auth docs/evidence/2026-09-21-layer-declaration-survey.json`), and running
it falsified the finding it was built to reproduce.

Nine of nine repositories carrying both forms do exactly what ops-warden does.
The split is *within* each repository and universal, not careless.

It is also not a typo. Either spelling is defensible: the custodian's
estate-wide sweep records that §3's own table capitalises, which makes the nine
lower-casing `layer.yaml` files the divergent ones against the standard's
spelling — and separately that §3 and §4 disagree inside the standard itself
(`Engines` in §3's table, `Engine` in §4's catalog rows). Neither of those is
settled either.

## ops-warden's position

1. **We are not aligning the two files on our own initiative.** Two questions
   are open at gate-house — which form governs, and whether the §3 vocabulary is
   case-sensitive — and they have different answers. Aligning now means picking
   one, and picking one before the ruling is ops-warden authoring a ruling it
   does not own, in the same move §11 forbids when it says a layer stated *about*
   a repository by another repository is not a declaration.

2. **A unilateral fix would also destroy the evidence.** The finding is
   *observable* precisely because nine repositories exhibit it. A repository
   that quietly normalises its own files makes the estate look more conformant
   than it is and shrinks the population the ruling is being made against.

3. **Neither value is in doubt.** ops-warden is Staff, declared in its own voice
   in `ADR-0010`, and no reading of either file makes it anything else. What is
   in doubt is only which file a mechanical check should read. No behaviour of
   this repository depends on the answer.

4. **When the ruling lands**, whichever form it names, ops-warden changes the
   other file to match in one commit, together with a regression test asserting
   the two agree — so the next divergence is caught rather than surveyed.

## Why this page exists rather than an inbox thread

gate-house's own observation, recorded against ops-warden in another lane: a
correction that only matters months from now is badly housed in a message
thread, because a correction we merely read is one we can only get right by
remembering. A later session asking "why do these two files disagree, shall I
just fix it?" needs to find this page, not reconstruct the reasoning.

## References

- `net-kingdom/canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.8.md` §3, §11 (proposed)
- `the-custodian/docs/assessments/2026-09-21-layer-declaration-boundaries.md`
  — estate-wide view; questions 1, 2 and 3 are the ones that reach this page
- flex-auth message `719b3e9e` (correction), `docs/conformance/boundaries-review.md`
- `docs/adr/ADR-0010-ops-warden-is-staff.md` — the declaration itself
- `WARDEN-WP-0034-T06` — the live record of the wait