risk-nexus/workplans/RISK-WP-0004-run-the-register.md

id	type	title	domain	repo	status	owner	topic_slug	created	updated	depends_on_workplans	state_hub_workstream_id
RISK-WP-0004	workplan	Run the register: make the cadence actually happen, and close the gaps the first week found	infotech	risk-nexus	finished	the-custodian	risk-nexus	2026-08-20	2026-08-20	RISK-WP-0001	aeb4047e-6a43-5922-9a31-6de9bc79327a

RISK-WP-0004 — run the register

Draft. RISK-WP-0001 built the instruments. This one is about the register being operated, which is a different thing and the one that fails quietly.

Goal

Nine findings, two notes, a regulatory record and an adaptive cadence exist. Nothing currently performs a check. make check says what is due; a person or an agent has to read the finding, ask the five questions, and record the outcome. If that does not happen, every finding sits at instant forever and the ladder becomes decoration.

Done means: checks happen on their own schedule without the operator remembering, the register's own known gaps are closed, and the failure modes found in the first week cannot recur silently.

What the first week actually found

Every task below traces to something that happened, not something imagined.

What happened	Task
Graded RISK-F-0001 critical while its fix notice sat unread in the inbox	T02
RISK-F-0003 returned as mitigated, a word the tooling did not know, and vanished from the nag	fixed ad hoc; T03 generalises it
ops-warden and this register both used RISK-F-0004	fixed ad hoc; duplicate check now in make check
Two gradings rest on file comparison because an operator token is expired	T05
RISK-F-0007 accepted with an on-request path nobody has exercised	T04

Tasks

T01 — Something performs the checks

id: RISK-WP-0004-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "e8f5b149-48a5-5875-9ff6-23ba51880a84"

tools/record_check.py moves a finding along the ladder and writes the dated line. What is missing is the thing that calls it on schedule.

Options, in ascending order of how much this repo should want them: a scheduled agent session that runs make check, works the due list, and records outcomes; a cron that only reports; a human habit. The first is the only one that survives the operator being busy, which is the condition the whole ladder is designed for.

Whatever it is, the check must remain a judgement — re-read the grade, re-check every stated blocker, read the owner's tracking record. A job that stamps clean without doing that is worse than no job, because it manufactures a stability signal that is false. That is the RISK-F-0002 failure mode applied to this repo's own instruments.

Completed 2026-08-20, in two halves. The procedure exists (docs/method/check-procedure.md), make due prints the work list, and make checked records an outcome. What does not exist is the thing that runs it on schedule, and this register does not get to arm a standing compute commitment on the operator's behalf. The doc names the three options and says which survives the operator being busy. The operator chose the scheduled agent, on activity-core, and it is written:

• activity-definitions/hourly-register-inbox-watch.md — hourly at :05, fires only when an unread message is waiting for risk-nexus. The inbox is the trigger rather than the clock: an unread message is by construction a claim that something in the register may have moved, and 2026-08-19 proved the register will otherwise grade without looking.
• activity-definitions/daily-register-check-sweep.md — daily at 07:15, unconditional. The floor that guarantees the question gets asked.

Both emit an instruction to a session that can exercise judgement. Neither grades, closes, publishes, escalates nor records an outcome, and both say so in their own text: stamping clean without doing the five questions produces a 1q rung that is a lie about stability — RISK-F-0002's failure mode turned on this register's own instruments.

Residual, routed rather than worked around: no context resolver knows what this register has due, so the instruction says "run make due" instead of naming findings. A risk_register_due query in activity-core would let the daily sweep fire only when something is actually due. It works without it; it is just louder than it needs to be.

The definitions are the ADR-001 source of truth. Live rows pick them up on the next make sync-activity-definitions, which runs on the Railiance deployment and not from this checkout.

T02 — Inbox before grading, as a check rather than a habit

id: RISK-WP-0004-T02
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "59196b2c-df84-5e35-abc3-a22ce18da882"

RISK-WP-0001's residual says: if it slips again, make it a check. It has slipped once, on the register's first day, and cost a wrong grade and a nearly sent escalation.

make check should compare each finding's last_checked against the newest message this repo has received about that system, and report any finding whose inbox has spoken more recently than its register has. That is mechanical and does not require the tooling to understand the message.

Completed 2026-08-20. tools/inbox_check.py, wired into make check. Compares each finding's last_checked against messages this repo has received about that system, and reports any finding whose inbox has spoken since the register last looked. Mechanical: it matches timestamps and names, reads nothing, decides nothing. Verified against the actual failure — replayed at the moment of the 2026-08-19 grading it surfaces all three flex-auth/rapp-postgres messages that were already waiting. An unreachable hub reports UNREACHABLE rather than silently passing, because a check that cannot see the inbox cannot be certified current.

T03 — Fail loud everywhere else too

id: RISK-WP-0004-T03
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "4cc53842-7221-5f25-89cc-d3916c18f212"

The mitigated defect was one instance of a class: the tooling quietly tolerating something it did not expect. Sweep for the rest — unknown disclosure states, unparseable dates, a constraint_on pointing at a finding that does not exist, an embargo_condition on a finding that is not embargoed.

Every one of them should be reported by name and keep the finding watched.

Completed 2026-08-20. make check now reports, by name and without ever silently ignoring: unparseable dates, a cadence that is not a rung, an undefined disclosure state, a severity off the scale, a constraint_on or related pointing at a finding that does not exist, an embargo condition on a finding that is not embargoed, an embargo with no condition, and an escalation with no trigger. Nothing is malformed today, which is the answer that only means something because the check exists.

T04 — Exercise the on-request verification path once

id: RISK-WP-0004-T04
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "681e7bab-f645-5be4-a028-ec6f5b65923a"

RISK-F-0007 is accepted until production on the strength of a path nobody has used. A route that has never been walked is a plan, not a route.

Pick one named consumer boundary, request verification through the documented path, and see what actually happens: who answers, what evidence comes back, whether the finding's likelihood moves for that consumer, and what the record looks like. The value is in the friction it exposes.

Completed 2026-08-20 as far as this repo can complete it. RISK-V-0002: verification of user-engine's tenant boundary requested through the documented path. user-engine was chosen because they are a consumer with a boundary and not already carrying a finding about one — using tenant-engine or audit-core would have tested the path against systems already known to fail it. The outcome is pending and all three outcomes are useful, including silence, which would tell the estate that RISK-F-0007 is being carried on an assumption that asking works.

T05 — The verification credential

id: RISK-WP-0004-T05
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "ffdfd3b3-a026-5705-8dad-a0aa3c07df33"

RISK-F-0009 and RISK-F-0003's mitigation both rest on comparing files because ops-warden's operator token is expired and bao policy read cannot be run.

That is not a finding — nothing is wrong with the estate because a token expired — but it means the register is grading deployed controls from their source. Establish what this repo can legitimately verify itself, and what it must always take from owners. If the answer is "nothing", that is worth knowing and writing down, because it bounds every grade in the register.

Completed 2026-08-20, by trying rather than reasoning. docs/method/verification.md. Cluster reads work from this host; OpenBao returns 403, the same wall ops-warden hit. So the register can check what the cluster admits and cannot check what the secret store permits, and every grade touching an OpenBao policy is a grade on a document. That asymmetry is recorded rather than closed — a risk register holding production secret-store credentials would have traded a verification problem for a worse one. First use produced RISK-V-0001, which confirmed RISK-F-0001's ingress claim against the live cluster, contradicted the egress: [] claim in the same message, and surfaced a third NetworkPolicy with no ingress rules that bears on whether ops-warden enabling its gate would fail closed.

T06 — Regulatory records on the same ladder

id: RISK-WP-0004-T06
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "bff86b2b-28ce-53fe-8417-dee92c94fd3f"

Duplicate of RISK-WP-0003-T04, kept here as a pointer rather than a second copy. Whichever workplan reaches it first does it; the other closes with a reference.

Completed 2026-08-20. Regulatory records ride the findings ladder rather than getting a second review mechanism: RISK-REG-0001 carries cadence, clean_streak, last_checked and next_check, and make check reports regulatory records due exactly as it reports findings. RISK-WP-0003-T04 closes by reference.

Non-goals

• No dashboard. REGISTER.md and make check are the surface, and the register is supposed to stay small enough to read.
• No automated grading. A machine may schedule, list and record. Severity, disclosure and escalation stay judgements this repo makes.
• No monitoring of other systems. RISK-N-0003 records that everything here was found by reading rather than watching; this workplan does not attempt to change that, and a register that grows probes becomes a second engineering team.

Risks

A scheduled check becomes a rubber stamp. The whole value of the ladder is that a 1q rung means something. Mitigation: T01 treats stamping without judgement as a defect, and clean_streak makes a suspiciously smooth climb visible.

The register spends its attention on itself. Six tasks about the register's own machinery, none of which fix a defect in the estate. Mitigation: T01, T02 and T05 all exist because the register got something wrong in week one; if week two produces no such items, this workplan should shrink rather than grow.