Activation Contract

Load when the frontmatter trigger terms apply to a defect workflow.

This skill guides public collaboration. It does not grant issue approval, label, review, exception, or merge authority.

Hard Rules

• Check the user-owned RDD kill switch first. When disabled, do not start receipt reviews or fabricate approval; follow ordinary policy and report disabled/unmanaged.
• Require an approved issue (status:approved) and clean current main reproduction before implementation. Audit existing PRs for supersession or conflict; stop or narrow stale claims.
• Group by causal authority invariant. Use one issue and one PR or explicit chain per independent invariant and rollback boundary. Split independent causes; never merge a superseded or conflicting authority line.
• Inventory every operator flow claimed by the issue or PR, including entry, mode, environment, expectation, and negative controls. Require one truthful black-box bench journey per CLI or lifecycle flow, or actual runtime E2E proof when the core bench cannot represent it. Synthetic proxy coverage never proves another runtime.
• Use CodeGraph-first impact mapping, a dedicated worktree, and behavior-first tests. Run source-mutating normalization before candidate freeze.
• Forecast authored changes before edits. The hard limit is 400 additions plus deletions; above it, STOP for a chain or explicit maintainer-approved exception.
• Only when RDD is enabled, bind the review candidate identity, lineage, correction, and recovery records exactly. Keep bounded review defects in one correction transaction; ordinary repository policy decides delivery.
• Require independent read-only candidate validation before publication. Validation cannot edit source or authority; findings require a new candidate.
• Keep communication humane and evidence-based. Repository labels and workflow metadata are maintainer-owned, never evidence of contributor blame.

Decision Gates

Execution Steps

1. Check mode, approval, PR conflicts, and current-main reproduction.
2. Name invariant and rollback; isolate the worktree; CodeGraph-map code, tests, evidence, docs, distribution, and registration.
3. Inventory flows and controls; add failing tests and the smallest correction.
4. Normalize, enforce budget, run tests, and record each flow's exact candidate, command, scenario, and result.
5. Freeze, validate read-only, and give the verdict, evidence, and one humane next action.

Output Contract

Return rdd_mode, issue_pr, causal_invariant, operator_flows, journey_runtime_evidence, changed_line_budget, tests, rollback, and unresolved_authority_decisions.

Identify approved and superseded/conflicting authority lines; every flow, negative control, and candidate-bound proof; additions plus deletions and chain/exception; test results; independent rollback; and unresolved maintainer decisions.

References

No supporting files. Current repository policy remains authoritative.