Skills carry the records they cite, and the map records what nothing checks

.claude/skills/README.md

@@ -19,9 +19,32 @@ Each skill here is subordinate to a canonical authority — its design record
 the reverse. A paraphrased copy is drift, not an implementation — consumers
 cite the record, they do not restate it. These copies also sit under the
 house ordering **code > glossary > prose**; they bind nothing that code or
-the glossary contradicts. The owner keeps personal mirrors under
-`~/.claude/skills/` for use outside this repo; those and these are kept
-byte-identical, and neither is authority over the record.
+the glossary contradicts. `~/.claude/skills/` reaches these by **symlink**
+into this directory rather than by copy, so the owner's out-of-repo
+invocations load these exact bytes; `loop-orchestrator` is in-repo only, and
+`harness-traps` and `spark-probe` live only at the user level and are not
+versioned here.
+
+## Bundled reference material — `references/`
+
+A skill that cites a record carries that record beside it, mirrored
+**byte-for-byte** under `<skill>/references/`, so the skill directory can be
+lifted out of this repository and still resolve every citation it makes. Four
+skills carry mirrors — `judge-composition` (13 records), `complexity-convocation`
+(9), `loop-orchestrator` (5), `self-play` (4) — and each folder's `README.md` is
+the manifest: canonical source path, byte count, and SHA-256 per file, against
+the commit they were taken at.
+
+Mirrors are snapshots, not the record, and **no sync check is installed** — the
+authority ordering above decides every divergence, and a stale mirror is
+replaced from source rather than edited. Nothing is appended inside a mirrored
+file: byte-identity to the source is what makes the manifest's hashes
+verifiable, so provenance lives in the manifest instead of in a header.
+
+`spark-steering/references/` is a different thing under the same name — original
+authored material, not mirrors, and it carries no manifest. The remaining
+skills — `prompt-engineering`, `hypershot-protocol`, `subagent-composition`,
+`density-chain` — cite no in-repo record and are already self-contained.
 
 Versioning a skill here is an owner act
 (`docs/product/epistemic-support/JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md §10`, open item

.claude/skills/complexity-convocation/README.md

@@ -37,18 +37,18 @@ drift between the two, **the record wins and the skill is corrected**
 — never the reverse. The binding sources, cited by section header, not
 reproduced here (a paraphrased copy is drift, not an implementation):
 
-- [`JUDGE_COMPOSITION_CEREMONY.md`](../../../docs/product/epistemic-support/JUDGE_COMPOSITION_CEREMONY.md)
+- [`JUDGE_COMPOSITION_CEREMONY.md`](references/JUDGE_COMPOSITION_CEREMONY.md)
   — the six-stage ceremony (characterize → compose → gate → judge →
   audit → dispose) this skill runs in the harness.
-- [`JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md`](../../../docs/product/epistemic-support/JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md)
+- [`JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md`](references/JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md)
   §6 — the twenty binding rules, cited by number in `SKILL.md`.
-- [`STANDING_MODEL.md`](../../../docs/product/epistemic-support/STANDING_MODEL.md)
+- [`STANDING_MODEL.md`](references/STANDING_MODEL.md)
   — the signed ternary (`clean | drawback | abstain` = `+1 | −1 | 0`)
   and the user gate the skill's disposition obeys.
-- [`FOUR_JUDGE_BASIC_MODEL.md`](../../../docs/product/epistemic-support/FOUR_JUDGE_BASIC_MODEL.md)
+- [`FOUR_JUDGE_BASIC_MODEL.md`](references/FOUR_JUDGE_BASIC_MODEL.md)
   — the four registries and the YAML judge schema the composer draws
   from.
-- [`RECONCILIATION.md`](../../../docs/product/epistemic-support/RECONCILIATION.md)
+- [`RECONCILIATION.md`](references/RECONCILIATION.md)
   §7.1 — composition supersession: "there are no base judges and no
   default cast."
 
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ reproduced here (a paraphrased copy is drift, not an implementation):
   anchors are composed per artifact by the Stage-2 composer, from the
   Stage-1 characterization. **There is no default cast** — the
   Session-71 standing-roster rollback
-  ([`JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md`](../../../docs/product/epistemic-support/JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md)
+  ([`JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md`](references/JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md)
   §6.1) is the cautionary case, and a judge that outlives its ceremony
   has rebuilt exactly that.
 
@@ -74,8 +74,7 @@ The engine's convocation machinery (`src/core/graph/*`, PR #134) is
 zero-paid and arithmetic-gated, and emits no token or cost counter.
 This skill lives one layer up, in the harness, where the `Agent` tool
 returns **real per-run telemetry** — the composition-from-primitives
-that the July-19 note in
-[`../judge-composition/README.md`](../judge-composition/README.md)
+that the July-19 note in the `judge-composition` skill's own `README.md`
 says "must be built and tested." Until these composition meta-prompts
 are tested against real artifacts, the system is **trusted or
 simulated, never assumed**; `SKILL.md`'s `simulate` path and the

.claude/skills/complexity-convocation/SKILL.md

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ description: Assess whether something is excessively complex and return interpre
 
 This is the **harness-orchestration form** of the judge-composition ceremony, on one driving question: **is this complexity warranted, and if not, what specifically should change?** It spawns sub-agent judges — composed fresh for the artifact, never a standing cast — and a judges-judge that audits their runs on **real run telemetry** (`subagent_tokens`, `tool_uses`, `duration_ms`, transcript paths) the zero-paid engine cannot see.
 
-The law lives in the record, not here. Canonical, in `docs/product/epistemic-support/` of the Trellis repo:
+The law lives in the record, not here. Canonical in `docs/product/epistemic-support/` of the Trellis repo, and mirrored byte-for-byte in [`references/`](references/) so this skill runs with the repo absent — read them there, by the section each citation names ([`references/README.md`](references/README.md) carries the provenance and the section-read idiom):
 
 - `JUDGE_COMPOSITION_CEREMONY.md` — the six-stage ceremony this skill runs.
 - `JUDGE_COMPOSITION_GAME.md §6` — the twenty binding rules, **cited by number below and never paraphrased** (a paraphrased copy is drift, not an implementation).