Night Market Change Control

Night Market Change Control

Every change to this repo passes through a fixed law stack, a

classification step, and a gauntlet of automated gates. This skill tells

you which class your change is, which gates it must pass, and which

rules are non-negotiable because a past incident made them so. Nothing

here may be routed around: if a gate fails, fix the cause, never the

gate.

Jargon used below: a "gate" is any automated check that can block a

commit, PR, or release. An "ADR" is an Architecture Decision Record in

docs/adr/. The "Iron Law" is constitution rule 3: no implementation

without a failing test first.

The law stack

When two documents conflict, the higher one wins.

| Rank | Source | Contents |

|------|--------|----------|

| 1 | CONSTITUTION.md | 10 immutable rules, override and amendment process |

| 2 | .claude/rules/ | 8 project rules (markdown style, read budgets, slop gates, invariants) |

| 3 | docs/adr/ | 17 numbered decision records (0001 to 0017) |

| 4 | Guides in docs/ | quality-gates, testing-guide, plugin-development-guide |

A skill, hook, or agent instruction that says "skip rule N" without an

explicit user grant or a merged amendment is itself a defect

(CONSTITUTION.md, Override mechanism section).

The ten constitution rules

One line each. Where a rule was written in blood, the incident column

names the blood.

| # | Rule | Motivating incident |

|---|------|---------------------|

| 1 | Disclose AI involvement in every PR; never strip real or add fake AI attribution | Enforced by hook plugins/imbue/hooks/vow_no_ai_attribution.py |

| 2 | AI commits over 200 changed lines need a spec, ADR, or plan doc first (lockfiles, fixtures, snapshots excluded) | Size = scrutiny principle; see the unbloat incident under non-negotiables |

| 3 | Iron Law TDD: failing test before implementation for plugin Python. Skills and prose need structural tests (test_skill_<name>.py) | Design principle, no single incident |

| 4 | One identity leak ("As a large language model") in any committed artifact is an automatic revert | Pattern catalog in scribe slop-detector |

| 5 | Quality claims ("fast", "production-ready") need in-repo evidence or deletion | Design principle |

| 6 | No bypassing gates: no --no-verify, no SKIP=hook, no unauthorized force push, no bare suppression comments without a stated reason | Neutered-mypy incident (CHANGELOG 1.9.12); bulk-ignore revert 06b9b1db |

| 7 | New dependencies need justification; 18 months unmaintained is presumed abandoned; verify AI-suggested package names against the registry | Slopsquatting defense; hook guard_package_hallucination.py (imbue) |

| 8 | Docs cost reader-time (audience x frequency x per-read time); writing effort must match | Design principle |

| 9 | Prefer deletion over rewriting; AI slop is overwhelmingly additive | Design principle |

| 10 | Errors are not optional: propagate by default, no bare except, safe-to-discard needs an inline "why" comment | Silent-failure sweep 666171c3; ecosystem bare-except campaign |

Change classification

Classify before the first commit. The class decides the paperwork.

| Change | Required process |

|--------|------------------|

| AI-generated diff, 200 changed lines or fewer | Plain PR through the standard gates |

| AI-generated diff over 200 changed lines | Spec, ADR, or planning doc BEFORE the code (rule 2) |

| Load-bearing design decision | Numbered ADR in docs/adr/ (next number after 0017) |

| New project-wide rule | New file in .claude/rules/ via plain PR; existing rules cite an origin issue or discussion (#454, #457) |

| Constitution amendment | PR titled constitution: amend rule N, a summary of what changes and why, sign-off from the repo owner |

| Release | Version bump, changelog section, v-prefixed tag (lifecycle below) |

The change lifecycle

1. Branch

Branch from master (the main branch) using <topic>-<version>:

git checkout master && git pull
git checkout -b my-topic-1.9.16

Live examples in git branch -a: ai-slop-1.9.4, bugfixes-1.9.5,

discussions-fix-1.9.14. Never delete backup/unbloat-* branches.

They are the recovery points for past deletion campaigns

(backup/unbloat-20260328 is how the 2026-03-28 over-deletion was

undone).

2. Local gates before committing

make lint          # ruff format + ruff check --fix + bandit
make typecheck     # per-plugin strict mypy (all plugins)
make test          # per-plugin pytest via scripts/run-plugin-tests.sh
make validate-all  # plugin structure validation

Plugin tests MUST run per plugin (make <plugin>-test or

make -C plugins/<plugin> test). Root pytest excludes plugins/* to

avoid import-path collisions.

3. The pre-commit gauntlet

git commit runs .pre-commit-config.yaml hooks in this order

(verified 2026-07-02):

• Suppression guards: check-noqa (blocks bare inline lint

suppressions), check-docstring-quality, check-json-utils-drift,

check-per-file-ignores.

• Hook registration: check-hook-registrations,

check-plugin-hooks.

• Code gates: run-plugin-typecheck --all (strict mypy on every

plugin, not just changed ones), run-plugin-tests --changed.

• Skill and plugin validation: validate-skill-descriptions, one

validate-<plugin>-plugin hook per plugin,

check-context-optimization, validate-description-budget,

check-markdown-links, capabilities-sync-check,

check-skill-graph-drift, check-skill-exit-criteria-drift.

• Standard file hygiene (trailing whitespace, YAML/TOML/JSON syntax,

merge conflicts, debug statements).

• bandit security scan.
• ruff-format, ruff-fix, ruff-check.
• Pin freshness: check-ruff-version, check-pinned-versions.

The typecheck gate runs --all deliberately. It used to run

--changed, and a global mirrors-mypy hook silently disabled 13 error

codes. Both were fixed in 1.9.12 (CHANGELOG). Do not weaken either

setting.

4. PR flow

Run in this order (all are sanctum slash commands):

• /sanctum:prepare-pr updates docs, runs tests, drafts the PR.
• /sanctum:pr-review reviews scope, requirements, and code.
• /sanctum:validate-pr builds and executes a diff-derived test

plan, and proves revert-tests are genuine guards.

• /sanctum:fix-pr and /sanctum:resolve-threads handle feedback.

For plugin-touching changes, add abstract:plugin-review at the

matching tier:

| Tier | When | Scope | Time |

|------|------|-------|------|

| branch | Default during work | Affected and related plugins | ~2 min |

| pr | Before merge | Affected and related plugins | ~5 min |

| release | Before version bump | Every plugin | ~15 min |

5. Release

• Bump the ecosystem version. .claude-plugin/marketplace.json is

the source of truth; the bumper fans it out to every plugin's

plugin.json, metadata.json, openpackage.yml, pyproject.toml,

and __init__.py:

   python3 plugins/sanctum/scripts/update_versions.py 1.9.16

Or use the sanctum:version-updates skill, which runs a

git-workspace-review preflight first.

• Move [Unreleased] entries in CHANGELOG.md into a dated version

section (Keep a Changelog 1.1.0, SemVer). Never rewrite or de-slop

historical entries.

• Update the docs of record: docs/api-overview.md version

reference, plugin READMEs, and the generated capabilities reference

via /sanctum:sync-capabilities.

• Run abstract:plugin-review --tier release.

• /sanctum:create-tag pushes a v-prefixed tag. The tag matching

v* triggers .github/workflows/cross-framework-publish.yml

(semver validation, cross-framework build, tarballs, GitHub

release). Pushes to master separately trigger

trust-attestation.yml (full test run plus SLSA attestation).

Landing a change: checklist

| Step | Action | Gate satisfied |

|------|--------|----------------|

| Classify | Match the change against the classification table | Rule 2, amendment process |

| Branch | <topic>-<version> off master | Convention |

| Test first | Failing test before implementation | Rule 3 (Iron Law) |

| Local gates | make lint && make typecheck && make test | Rule 6 |

| Commit | Plain commit, no bypass flags, honest attribution | Rules 1 and 6 |

| PR | prepare-pr, pr-review, validate-pr; disclose AI involvement | Rule 1 |

| Plugin review | abstract:plugin-review at branch or pr tier | Plugin quality |

| Merge | All CI checks green, review threads resolved | CI |

Non-negotiables

Each row is a settled battle. Re-litigating one requires new evidence

stronger than the incident that settled it.

| Non-negotiable | Rationale | Incident | Evidence |

|----------------|-----------|----------|----------|

| Never bypass or weaken a gate | A green gate that skips checks is worse than no gate: it certifies broken code | mirrors-mypy silently disabled 13 error codes; typecheck ran changed-only; bulk ruff ignores hid 73 real violations | CHANGELOG 1.9.12; commit 06b9b1db |

| No swallowed errors, ever | catch-and-continue in a scanner drops findings silently and reports clean | Scanners B1-B4 returned clean results on malformed input for months | commit 666171c3 (PR #521, issue #575) |

| Deletion campaigns need a backup branch and a markdown-reference scan | Python import graphs miss scripts referenced only from skills and commands | Tier-3 unbloat deleted 182 files (66K lines); skill-referenced scripts had to be restored | commits a3f11323 (delete), 3f280334 (restore); branch backup/unbloat-20260328 |

| No DRY consolidation across plugin boundaries | Plugins are independent deployables, and shared code couples their release cycles | tasks_manager consolidated to a shared script, reverted, then differentiated per plugin | commits 054e2679, 29961cd2, d89a55c7 |

| No speculative infrastructure | Unused abstraction is pure carrying cost | LSP proxy landed without a consumer and was reverted in PR #193 review | commit bc318947 |

| Identity leaks are an automatic revert | One leaked phrase proves unreviewed AI text shipped | Constitution rule 4 | CONSTITUTION.md |

| Historical CHANGELOG entries are never edited | The changelog is a record, not prose to polish | Codified as an anti-goal in the slop rules | .claude/rules/slop-scan-for-docs.md (anti-goals) |

When NOT to use

• A gate is failing and you need to diagnose why: use

night-market-debugging-playbook.

• You want the full story behind an incident named above: use

night-market-failure-archaeology.

• You need the mechanics of running tests, lint, or the release

scripts (flags, artifacts, environments): use

night-market-operations.

• You are judging whether a design fits the architecture: use

night-market-architecture-contract.

• You are deciding what evidence a test must provide: use

night-market-validation-and-qa.

Exit Criteria

• [ ] The change is classified against the classification table, and

any over-200-line AI diff has a spec, ADR, or plan doc committed

before the implementation.

• [ ] make lint, make typecheck, and make test pass locally, and

no bypass flag (--no-verify, SKIP=, force push) appears in

the branch history.

• [ ] The branch name matches <topic>-<version> and is based on

master.

• [ ] The PR description discloses AI involvement (authored,

co-authored, or reviewed).

• [ ] For a release: marketplace.json, the dated CHANGELOG.md

section, and the pushed v* tag all carry the same version.

• [ ] Any constitution change is in a PR titled

constitution: amend rule N with repo-owner sign-off.

Provenance and maintenance

Compiled 2026-07-02 against repo v1.9.15 (10 constitution rules, 8

project rules, 17 ADRs). Re-verify volatile facts before relying on

them:

rg -c '^### [0-9]' CONSTITUTION.md          # expect 10
ls .claude/rules/ | wc -l                    # expect 8
ls docs/adr/ | wc -l                         # expect 17
rg -n '"version"' .claude-plugin/marketplace.json | head -1
rg -n '      - id:' .pre-commit-config.yaml  # current gate order
rg -n 'v\*' .github/workflows/cross-framework-publish.yml
rg -n 'amend rule' CONSTITUTION.md           # amendment title convention

Commit hashes cited above were verified with `git log --oneline -1

<hash>` on 2026-07-02. Unverified/candidate: the exact count of files

restored after the unbloat incident (commit subjects confirm the

delete and restore, not the restored-file count), and whether

docs/api-overview.md holds a version table or a single version

reference (one version mention verified).