Phase 8: repository publication + solo→team transition (deferred)

[macanderson]

Phase 8 — repository publication + solo→team. (Deferred.)

Frontmatter mapping; Markdown-as-canonical with a DB mirror (already seeded by stella memory promote, which writes .stella/rules/*.md). The solo→team transition.

⛔ HITL gate: Markdown-canonical confirmation + owner-routing policy. Adopt .stella/rules/*.md as the single authority (ADR 0008); do not introduce YAML as a second authority.

Blocked by Phase 6. Part of Epic #469.

[macanderson]

Triage 2026-07-26 — the frontmatter reader shipped; the writer did not

Built, and it is the only Phase-1-era type family that is actually wired. stella-core/src/rules/metadata.rs:95-118 implements the spec's field list in full — schema_version, record_id, record_kind: RuleRecordKind, scope_paths, enforcement: RuleEnforcement, confidence: u8, origin: RuleOrigin, supporting_evidence_ids, observed_at, valid_from, valid_until — with a real validation error taxonomy at :122-136 (duplicate keys, unsupported schema version, non-RFC-3339 instants, valid_until <= valid_from). Reachable via stella-core/src/rules.rs:73 and stella-cli/src/rules.rs.

Not built — the writer. render_rule_markdown (stella-core/src/rules.rs:786-807) emits only description: and the three guard-* keys, then the body. So stella memory promote produces a rule file that the metadata reader will find metadata-free — the two halves do not currently meet.

Markdown-as-canonical is already true de facto (ADR 0008; .stella/rules/*.md is the load path via load_rules/rule_search_dirs), and no YAML second authority was introduced — so that part of the phase is satisfied.

One trap worth recording before this is built: the DB mirror is not what this phase means. stella-store's rules table (ddl.rs:176) is documented at lib.rs:1806 as the extension-authoring seam "without touching .stella/rules/" — a second independent source, not a mirror. Publication must reconcile with it or the repo ends up with three authorities.

Nothing of solo→team exists: SharingScope is inert, GovernanceMode::Team is unread, there is no owner-routing policy. HITL gate still unrecorded.

Suggested rescope: note the frontmatter schema + reader as shipped; residual is the writer, a genuine file↔DB mirror with a declared authority direction, owner routing, and the transition.

[macanderson]

Superseded by the four-phase adaptive-context plan merged in #692 (docs/design/adaptive-context-plan.md), which replaces the eleven-phase roadmap and the 2026-07 spec bundle this issue was written against.

Disposition — old Phase 8 (repository publication + solo→team): deferred, named explicitly in spec §9 so it is a decision rather than an omission.

Needs the Markdown-canonical policy (ADR 0008) exercised by a real team first. Solo governance ships in Phase 3 (#714); team comes after.

Closing as superseded rather than abandoned — see the old→new table in the plan's Tracker reconciliation section. Epic #469 has been rewritten around the four phases.