docs(intelligence): audit merge candidate decisions

[eamirian]

ACE 0.6.0 Measured Intelligence merge-candidate audit evidence (v1)

Status: bounded candidate evidence. This is not a merge, issue closeout, package-version
decision, tag, publication, SI4 pass, or ACE 0.6.0 release claim.

Recorded: 2026-08-11

Live source and review state

The audit refreshed GitHub and both remotes after the convergence drafts opened.

Surface	Exact live result
Core source	be5e76c79715bb34bcbdcae9a0471a5c317fafe7 -> 37e6c8a6da0fc95e378c1be50d8704c00dd96415; strict ancestry
Core PRs	#88 -> #89 -> #90 -> #91; all open, draft, mergeable; zero submitted reviews and zero inline review threads
Core issues	#38 and #49 open; neither had an issue comment at audit time
Original World stack	#6 -> #7 -> #8 -> #9 -> #10 -> #11 -> #12 -> #13 -> #15; all open drafts with zero submitted reviews and zero inline review threads
World divergence	Live main advanced to 8de1027c4c995582b42c4a1f936a72e2c42878a0; bottom PR #6 is not mergeable against that new base even though later internal stack links remain mergeable
World direct-main candidate	PR #17, head 2d7a0ace72bed4d175b0884c8a9b81b6ec063d56, base main; open, draft, mergeable; release-readiness run 31503593324 passed

No existing PR branch was rebased, force-pushed, merged, closed, or retargeted.

Direct-main World artifact result

The World candidate replayed the thirteen measured-intelligence commits over the exact new live
base and retained the merged AI Command Center lineage proof. The only replay conflict was
documentation; both evidence links and claim boundaries were preserved.

Artifact	SHA-256
Core wheel	29752aa751570286794ff2abd1071a43f622883d4778e161687e10363f76f6c3
Reference action-adapter wheel	9c600d4b3e0d19525f1e04629bd231d8d6913d2ad11bc63fa2858e7da396f8f1
World Federal Register source-adapter wheel	1b80cc598b467a8ab0f47aabb5f01bd0cb1c7709b48aa02352a0ef802988b4fe
World wheel	a067b3106772437d2dcfee890dc7d89005d3f7afd9e6dc0cbed027327bea9cae
Canonical World convergence JSON	b70f972e6b7e86ddce09eb3feaa3cd89eede2b236d3e592ee5417dda4d3e95f7

The two repeated World-owned wheel builds were byte-identical. Two fresh installed-artifact journey
runs emitted byte-identical canonical JSON. Repeated sdist gzip containers were not byte-identical,
so no reproducible-sdist claim is made and final release artifacts remain an open gate.

World verification after live-main reconciliation:

combined AI lineage + P2C3-P2C10 + convergence: 37 passed
complete candidate-Core World suite: 120 passed
Federal Register adapter suite: 62 passed
release contract: 7 passed
post-format AI/source controls: 66 passed
Ruff check/format and git diff --check: pass

Core verification inheritance

This audit changes documentation only; Core implementation remains exactly
433e3d16c5458c975557dcd1552824fb959d4d12. Its frozen convergence evidence remains:

focused Core impact/disposition/boundary: 45 passed, 2 sandbox-only DB skips
kernel boundary: 4 passed
locked non-E2E/non-extension lane: 7456 passed, 50 skipped, 260 deselected
ordinary-clone historical baseline: 7 passed
loopback checks outside sandbox: 4 passed
clean candidate-wheel catalog check: 1 passed
Ruff check/format, whitespace, and pip-audit: pass; no known vulnerabilities

The audit packet reran the focused documentation-adjacent Core gates: 45 passed, 2 skipped where
both skips were the restricted sandbox denying the local SurrealDB socket; kernel boundary was
4 passed. Whitespace passed and a scoped credential-pattern scan found no match. This packet does
not relabel the inherited full result as a new implementation run.

Issue #49 disposition required

The code audit found:

• F1 still preflights cognition_head generation before its transaction and relies on the v169
  unique activation-generation index as the atomic race backstop; exact loser reconciliation from
  durable review/head/proposal receipts is not yet a demonstrated real-database path.
• F3 has ceilings for recipes, routes, resources, task actions, and grounded-state adapters, but
  tools, verify checks, briefing sections, unsupported registrations, and delegated registration
  remain non-atomic; a late extension failure can leave earlier global mutations behind.
• F5 still selects and updates ONLY <record>$id, so a caller-controlled record coordinate is not
  pinned to the self_optimizer_proposal table before the same-product check.

Recommended owner disposition: implement F1 and F5 before 0.6; re-date F3 to 2026-11-05 with the
trusted-package, kill-switch, compatibility, and disable-on-partial containment recorded in the
work packet. These are recommendations, not accepted decisions. F1, F3, and F5 remain open 0.6
release gates; not waived, deferred, resolved, or re-dated until the authenticated owner updates
issue #49.

What is now proved and what remains

The exact Core candidate and live-main World integration candidate are technically converged for
review. The public World artifact still classifies the frozen correction rule as useful and emits
only a non-effective, non-selectable, unapplied promotion proposal. The independent Market
candidate remains separately expressible through the unchanged neutral contract.

ACE 0.6 remains blocked on review/merge order, issue #49 owner decisions and any selected hardening,
merged-source Core/World/Market compatibility and security, final version/artifact identities,
public-index installation, publication, and final release-owner acceptance. No causal, population,
human-benefit, live-monitoring, proposal-application, SI4-pass, or release claim is made.