RFC 0174: v2 governance — terminal states used, the Accepted predicate as a machine, waiver authority checked at merge, the front door under budget

Summary

164 RFCs and zero Superseded, Withdrawn, or Rejected; an Active → Accepted rule that lives in a README sentence with no predicate; a waiver ledger that checks presence and not authority; 27 register pairs outside the directory the README says they live in; a gap row that carries itself and passes; eleven Status: Draft documents whose graduation predicate already fired, one of which forbids what its own RFC permits; 43 prose gap tables that the one gap namespace never ingests; a 225,858-word corpus with an 854-word front door that says "read this instead". v2 governance makes each of these a rule with a gate: states are used, Accepted is computed, authority is checked, registers are data in one place, banners are derived, the core is bounded, and the gap tables become rows.

Motivation

• Terminal states are unreachable in practice. RFC 0001 §3 lists six states; three have never been used (RFCS/*.md status grep: 0). Corrections happen by amendment-in-place, strikethrough, and renumbering (RFC 0158's own header records a 0162 → 0158 renumber).
• No Accepted predicate. RFC 0001 §6 mentions "a checklist"; RFCS/README.md:24 says "once the implementation lands"; GOVERNANCE.md:70–73 requires a tier and a bundle. Nothing computes it. spec/v1/self-hosted-runner.md:3 still says "RFC 0122 is Active, not Accepted: no host may advertise" while RFCS/README.md:253 records RFC 0122 Accepted with "Hosts MAY now advertise" — the document forbids what the RFC permits. Four of the eleven Status: Draft documents cite a graduation predicate that has already fired (RFCs 0097, 0098, 0117, 0122 are Accepted).
• Waivers are audited for presence, not authority. check-waiver-ledger.mjs derives the waived set from the literal comment window waived and checks a ledger row exists; RFC 0147 §A.6 forbade waiving high-risk windows and was itself waived, and docs/ASSURANCE-STATUS.md:15 counts 48 waived RFCs with 0 ratified retrospectives.
• Registers are half data. Tokens and gaps.json landed (RFC 0166), but RFCS/README.md:102 says registers live under registers/ while 27 pairs (0106–0143) sit in RFCS/ root; RFCS/0106-realtime-voice-session-profile.gaps.md:17 reads "CLOSED" in prose and carries carried:openwop.gap.0106.7 — itself — as its token, which check-registers.mjs accepts. 43 spec/v1/*.md "Open spec gaps" tables are a second gap namespace generate-gaps.mjs never reads; several rows there defer to an Active → Accepted whose RFC is already Accepted (agent-deployment.md:94, agent-roster.md:61, agent-org-chart.md:64); artifact-type-packs.md:195 says a test does not exist that does.
• The front door is a footnote. docs/IMPLEMENT-CORE.md (854 words) says "read this instead of the corpus"; the two largest documents are a test-seam manual (16,021 words) and host-capabilities.md (14,642). /v1/goals, /v1/export, /v1/import are in Accepted RFCs, published schemas, and a security invariant, and absent from api/openapi.yaml.
• Residue. RFC 0155 §D's budget is repealed (RFC 0166 §C.3) but its UQ1 and an acceptance checkbox still ask whether 12/4 is right. RFC 0156 R4 is open with the queue published and no reviewer.

Proposal

§A. States are used

§A.1 A superseding RFC MUST flip the superseded RFC's Status to Superseded and add the forward pointer in the same PR; check-rfc-status-coherence.mjs fails a tree where an RFC names another in Supersedes while that RFC is not Superseded. §A.2 A declined proposal is filed as Rejected with the reason in Updated (RFC 0166 §D.1); a proposal discussed in an issue or a plan and not filed is not a decision. §A.3 A number is never reserved without a file; a renumber is a Withdrawn file at the old number with a forward pointer, never a hole (RFC 0001 §3 already says numbers are not reused; the hole at 0160–0162 is recorded as G1 and left, because filing three Withdrawn stubs after the fact would be theatre). §A.4 Amendment-in-place remains legal for editorial corrections and for register sweeps; a normative change to an Accepted RFC is a new RFC that Supersedes the section, never an edit.

§B. Accepted is a predicate; authority is checked

§B.1 Active → Accepted is computed by scripts/check-accepted-predicate.mjs (Phase 3 for v2 RFCs; v1.x RFCs are grandfathered as recorded): every acceptance-criteria box ticked or carrying a stated reason (the existing rfc-lifecycle-coherence leg); no open gap row (RFC 0166); a tier named in Updated (GOVERNANCE §"Acceptance evidence tiers"); a cited bundle whose ledger contains at least one executed-pass row for each requirement id the RFC's falsifiability table names (RFC 0148); for a program child, the parent Active. A flip that fails the predicate fails the gate.

§B.2 Waiver authority is checked at merge: scripts/check-waiver-authority.mjs reads each waived RFC's Compatibility class and the rules it names as overridden, and fails when (a) a safety-fix RFC waives the §3 90-day window without an embargo citation, (b) a high-risk RFC (RFC 0147 §A.6 surfaces) waives its window without naming §A.6 as overridden in the header, or (c) an RFC amends the decision rule without naming the approval-count waiver. A rule takes effect on the RFC that introduces it: this RFC is the first tested.

§B.3 GOVERNANCE.md §"Sole-steward operation" gains one sentence: the two-approval requirement in §"Amendments" is waived and recorded while one maintainer exists, with the same retirement condition as the window waiver.

§B.4 The host-inventory deprecation rule (COMPATIBILITY.md §5, 2026-09-02) is restated normatively: v1 support ends at the later of every INTEROP-MATRIX host's non-vacuous v2 bundle plus 90 days, and 18 months from the v2 release if and only if an independent host is in the matrix at release. Phase 5 computes the date from the matrix; nothing else may.

§C. Registers are data, in one place

§C.1 Every register pair lives under RFCS/registers/; the 27 stray pairs move in this PR (git mv, no content change); check-rfc-status-coherence.mjs fails a register outside the directory. §C.2 A carried:<own id> on a terminal-status RFC is the RFC 0166 backfill's default and 388 rows carried it at filing; refusing them outright would re-adjudicate 36 registers in one PR. Instead: the count is a ratchet (docs/witness-baseline.json selfCarried, may only fall; check-rfc-status-coherence.mjs), a self-carry whose own prose says CLOSED is refused (machine and prose must agree — 45 such rows, RFC 0106 G7 among them, are re-tokened closed in this PR), and in v2 a carry MUST name a different open row or a tracked surface (gaps.schema.json's "the gap's own id" target is withdrawn for v2 RFCs). §C.3 RFC 0155 UQ1 and the unticked budget checkbox are closed with a pointer to RFC 0166 §C.3. §C.4 RFC 0156 R4 stays open with the honest note that the queue is published and no second organization exists; this RFC does not pretend otherwise.

§D. Banners are derived

§D.1 A spec/v1/*.md Status: banner MUST agree with its owning RFC: a document whose graduation predicate names an RFC that is Accepted MUST NOT read Draft on that ground. check-rfc-status-coherence.mjs parses the banner's RFC NNNN references and fails on Draft … graduates when RFC NNNN reaches Accepted where NNNN is Accepted. The eleven banners are corrected in this PR (four graduate to Stable; self-hosted-runner.md:3 and :117 are corrected to permit what RFC 0122 permits; the rest keep Draft with a predicate that has not fired). §D.2 A gap-table row that defers to Active → Accepted MUST name the RFC; the check fails a deferral whose RFC is Accepted. The stale rows at agent-deployment.md:94, agent-roster.md:61, agent-org-chart.md:64, artifact-type-packs.md:195, and host-capabilities.md:2110 are corrected here.

§E. Maturity template, front door, gap tables

§E.1 RFC 0158's ladder (durable-single-instance → multi-instance → multi-region-qualified, each rung named with its evidence, no discovery field) is the template for every per-host maturity claim in v2: a rung is evidence, never an advertisement. §E.2 spec/v2/core/ is under 25,000 words (check-core-budget.mjs, Phase 3); every spec/v2/ext/<name>/ document declares witness and both maturity axes in its header; a MUST with witness: unwitnessable may not appear in core/; a document whose only witness is "deferred to Active → Accepted" enters ext/ or is deleted. /v1/goals, /v1/export, /v1/import enter api/v2/openapi.yaml or their RFCs' MUSTs are demoted — decided in C.1 with the seams profile. §E.3 The 43 "Open spec gaps" tables are absorbed into gaps.json in Phase 3 (generate-gaps.mjs gains spec/v2/** as a source with a 2-column adapter) and deleted from prose; a gap citing an artifact that contradicts it fails (C.11).

Migration table

Persisted-data disposition

No persisted host data. Corpus files only: 54 register files move (history preserved by git mv); eleven banners and five gap rows are corrected.

Compatibility

breaking (v2) as a child; the v1.x items are process and hygiene: no schema, OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, or prose MUST on the wire changes. Correcting self-hosted-runner.md:3 relaxes a prose prohibition ("no host may advertise") — that prohibition contradicted its own Accepted RFC and RFCS/README.md:253; the correction restores the RFC's decision and is recorded as a Class-3 editorial correction under COMPATIBILITY §3's precedent list, not as a relaxed MUST.

Conformance

Corpus gates, not host scenarios: check-rfc-status-coherence.mjs (supersession pairs, register location, banner-vs-RFC, stale deferrals), check-registers.mjs (self-carry refusal), check-waiver-authority.mjs. Phase 3: check-accepted-predicate.mjs, check-core-budget.mjs, the gaps.json prose adapter.

Falsifiability — one row per normative requirement

Adversarial review

1. This RFC changes the decision rule and GOVERNANCE §"Amendments" demands two approvals an RFC cannot supply with one maintainer. Disposition: named in the header; §B.3 records the approval-count waiver under the sole-steward paragraph with the same retirement condition; §B.2's checker treats an unrecorded approval waiver as a failure, so the rule bites its own introducer first. 2. Refusing carried:<self> on terminal RFCs would fail 388 existing rows — the RFC 0166 backfill's own default. Disposition: a ratchet plus a contradiction rule, not a blanket refusal; the 35 rows whose prose already said CLOSED are re-tokened here; the remaining 343 fall as registers are swept (G2 records the baseline). 3. Moving 54 register files breaks sources[].file in gaps.json. Disposition: generate-gaps.mjs --write regenerates the source paths; spec/v1/gaps.json ids are (rfc, local)-derived and do not change. 4. Relaxing "no host may advertise selfHostedRunner" is a prose MUST relaxed (§2.2). Disposition: the prohibition was a document contradicting its own Accepted RFC; restoring the RFC's decision is a correction, recorded under the §3 precedent list, and the register row says so. 5. Deriving banners from RFC status hides a document that is genuinely still draft after its RFC is Accepted. Disposition: the check only fails a banner whose stated predicate has fired; a document may stay Draft with a different, unfired predicate. 6. The Accepted predicate needs bundle ledger rows per requirement id, and no gaps.json row has a requirementId today (558 of 558 null). Disposition: that is C.11's row-binding work; §B.1 is a Phase 3 gate for v2 RFCs and does not re-adjudicate the 158 Accepted v1 RFCs. 7. The hole at 0160–0162. Disposition: left as a recorded gap; filing Withdrawn stubs for numbers never authored would be a paper trail for nothing.

Alternatives considered

1. Keep Accepted as a maintainer judgement with a checklist. Rejected: the checklist is unenforced today and the stale banners are the result. 2. Add a Status: field to every document that the generator writes. Rejected for v1 (a rewrite of 60 headers); adopted for v2 in ext/ headers (§E.2). 3. Leave the prose gap tables and index them. Rejected: two namespaces for one thing is the RFC 0166 defect one layer up. 4. Do nothing. Rejected: 0 terminal states in 164 RFCs is the measurement.

Unresolved questions

1. Whether check-accepted-predicate.mjs should also re-run over the 158 v1 Accepted RFCs as an advisory report (not a gate). Recommended: yes, advisory, so the Phase 3 retrospective has a number.

Implementation notes (non-normative)

This PR: RFC 0001 §3/§5 text; GOVERNANCE sentence; README register-location sentence; git mv of 54 files; RFC 0106 G7 re-token; RFC 0155 residue closed; eleven banners and five gap rows corrected; check-rfc-status-coherence.mjs, check-waiver-authority.mjs, the check-registers.mjs self-carry refusal, wired into openwop:check step 4. Phase 3: check-accepted-predicate.mjs, check-core-budget.mjs, the gaps.json prose adapter.

Acceptance criteria

• [x] Draft → Active: RFC text; RFC 0001 and GOVERNANCE amendments; register relocation; self-carry refusal with the sweep; the two new checks green; banners and stale deferrals corrected; ledger row; adversarial review. (This PR.)
• [ ] Active → Accepted (Phase 3): check-accepted-predicate.mjs and check-core-budget.mjs in the gate; the 43 prose gap tables absorbed and deleted; spec/v2/core/ under budget with every ext/ header declared; §B.4 restated in spec/v2/core/. — met at the RC: both checks run in scripts/openwop-check.sh stage 10; the 43 prose gap tables are absorbed into spec/v1/spec-gaps.json (196 rows across 43 documents, both row shapes mapped, ids (doc, row-order)-derived) and deleted from prose, each document left carrying its absorption pointer, which generate-gaps.mjs --check verifies; spec/v2/core/ measures 20,899 of 25,000 words across 20 documents and every one of the 13 ext/ families declares witness and both maturity axes in its README header (check-declaration.mjs leg 5); §B.4 is restated at spec/v2/core/overview.md §"v1 end-of-support". deferred: nothing.

References

• RFC 0167 §A (Axiom 4), §B.7, §C, G1; RFC 0001 §3–§6; RFC 0166 §A/§C.3/§D; RFC 0155 §D; RFC 0156 §B, G3, R4; RFC 0158 §D–§E; RFC 0147 §A.6; RFC 0122; GOVERNANCE.md §"Acceptance evidence tiers", §"Sole-steward operation", §"Amendments"; COMPATIBILITY.md §3, §5; RFCS/README.md §"Process", §"Companion gap & risk registers"; docs/IMPLEMENT-CORE.md; docs/RETROSPECTIVE-QUEUE.md; docs/WAIVER-RETROSPECTIVE-REGISTER.md; scripts/check-waiver-ledger.mjs, check-waiver-retrospective.mjs, check-registers.mjs, generate-gaps.mjs.