Orchestration: Driving the Campaign Execution Protocol

/orchestrate is the runnable layer that executes docs/orchestration-protocol.md over a live validated DAG. The protocol document is the spec — the exact procedure, the exit-code routing, the four [HUMAN SEAM]s. This skill does not restate that procedure; it lifts it to a state machine a runner walks and wires its abstract steps to concrete repo commands. Where the spec says "assert the structural gate exits 0," this skill says which command, with which arguments, and what each exit code branches to.

It slots between campaign's §DISPATCH and §RECONCILE — the two steps campaign already delegates by reference to the protocol. Until this skill is invoked, the composer drives the protocol by hand; invoked, it drives DISPATCH ⇄ RECONCILE as a loop a cheap-tier runner can replay.

[!IMPORTANT] Non-duplication pointer. This skill does not re-specify campaign mechanics. campaign/SKILL.md §6 DISPATCH and §7 RECONCILE own the narrative (what the council decides, the tier routing, the worker IBC contract); docs/orchestration-protocol.md owns the deterministic procedure (the pseudocode + exit-code rules). This skill is strictly the driver: it names protocol steps and sequences their commands. If you find yourself explaining why a step exists or how the council judges, you have left orchestration space — that prose lives in campaign and the protocol, link to it.

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Inputs (the driver's contract)

The protocol declares the inputs an orchestrator needs (protocol §"inputs", lines 19-24). This skill makes them an explicit, parameterized contract — the protocol's pseudocode and ledger/derive/layers.ncl reference the project-state DAG by a fixed path; a driver run binds that path, it does not hardcode it.

Parameter	Binds	Default (this repo)
DAG	the validated DAG artifact (YAML instance) — must pass ledger/contracts/dag_apply.ncl (Dag ∘ DagNoConflict) via nickel export DAG --apply-contract ledger/contracts/dag_apply.ncl	.ledger/state/dag.yaml
LAYERS	the Kahn-layering derivation that imports DAG	ledger/derive/layers.ncl
PLAN	the campaign plan (node intents, tier routing)	the campaign working set's PLAN.md
PROMPTS	the per-node worker IBCs handed at DISPATCH	prompts/<node-id>-*.md
TOPIC	the campaign topic — names the integration branch campaign/<TOPIC> and the sketch	the active flight-recorder slug
MODE	AUTONOMOUS (resolve seams by policy / escalate) or INTERACTIVE (surface seams to the head)	INTERACTIVE
FORGE	whether the origin remote resolves to a forge the project accepts contributions through — when present, the forge skill is INVOKED at driver start (a named discipline loads, it is not remembered) and the forge wiring below applies	auto-detected

layers.ncl imports DAG internally; pointing the driver at a different DAG (e.g. a demonstration graph) means binding the import that LAYERS resolves, not editing the derivation. The driver never improvises a schedule — it nickel exports LAYERS and reads the result.

Where the driver lives — the flight-recorder convention (machine-known)

The driver must LOCATE its own recorder and REACH neighboring context. The convention is fixed, so both are mechanical, not discovered:

• One sketch/ledger repo per org/project-umbrella. The recorder is a git repo (here .ledger/, a nested repo) — not loose files.
• Each project's history is a distinct branch of that repo. The active campaign's project is the current branch of the recorder (git -C <recorder> branch --show-current; in this repo, the branch named for the project umbrella).
• Sibling-project context is sibling branches. A driver reaches "neighboring context" — a related project under the same umbrella — by reading another branch of the same recorder (git -C <recorder> log <sibling-branch> -- log/), never by leaving the repo or guessing paths.
• Flight-recorder files live under log/ of the recorder; project-state artifacts (the DAG, reconcile log) under state/.

This lets the driver resolve its recorder, its branch, and its siblings by query — and lets it enforce the convention (a campaign that writes loose sketch files outside the recorder repo is malformed).

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Campaign setup (once, before the first dispatch)

Three environment hazards recur in worktree-per-node campaigns; each is foreseeable, so each is closed at setup, never discovered under pressure:

• Shared build output for compiled toolchains. A campaign spawns many concurrent worktrees; a compiled-language project (Cargo, Go, …) left to its defaults builds a full per-worktree artifact tree and can silently consume the disk mid-campaign. Configure a repository-scoped shared build-output directory (e.g. a .cargo/config.toml at the project root — inherited by every nested worktree via config resolution) plus a build-parallelism cap that leaves the head's own concurrent work headroom. Repo-scoped, never machine-global: a machine-global cache collides with unrelated projects the head is developing on the same box.
• Permission preflight. Enumerate the sensitive actions the campaign will foreseeably need — above all the head-authorized final push of the integration branch — and ensure the harness permission environment allows them, so a mid-campaign classifier block never becomes the arbiter. A block that fires anyway is surfaced to the head as an environment gap; it is never routed around (in particular, never through a forge merge API).
• Hook content runs from the main checkout. Installed hooks are symlinks into the main checkout's tracked sources, live in every worktree with no reinstall — but a campaign branch that edits hook or gate sources is not live until those edits reach the main checkout. Nodes depending on changed gate behavior must account for that.

State

The orchestrator's entire state is reconstructable from git + the sketch checkpoint (rules.md §2 Prime Invariant 5; protocol §State). Per node: STATUS ∈ {PENDING, DISPATCHED, LANDED, ACCEPTED, REWORK, QUARANTINED, INVALIDATED}, its worktree and branch. Globally: shared_branch (the integration branch), tip (the commit the current layer branches from), layers (the derived Kahn schedule). No state lives only in the runner's memory — every transition lands in git or the sketch.

Resume = log-first temporal hygiene

Resuming a partial campaign is reconstruction, not recall (rules.md §7, sharpened for episodic memory). The procedure is log-first and it is a hard rule, not a convenience:

1. The git log of the recorder is the index — the timeline. Read git -C <recorder> log --oneline -- log/ and the live git log (project tree). The recorder's campaign-lifecycle commits are subject-tagged: an episode opens with a log: open <topic> … commit and closes with a log: close <topic> … commit (the convention the sketch discipline writes). The log says what happened, when, with what status — which layers landed, which nodes are ACCEPTED, where the run halted.
2. Discriminate CLOSED from in-flight by the log, not by reading the sketch. A topic is closed iff its log: history contains a close commit for it with no later open: git -C <recorder> log --grep='^log: \(open\|close\) <topic>' --format='%s' — if the most recent matching subject is a close, the episode is finished (index entry only); if it is an open (or the topic has an open with no close), the episode is in-flight. This is the field the gate keys on; the sketch is never opened to decide it.
3. Open ONLY the active campaign's sketch. For the single in-flight episode (the topic whose latest log: marker is open, matching TOPIC / the current branch), full-read that sketch alone. Reconstruct STATUS, tip, shared_branch, and the RECONCILE_LOG cursor from it + git.
4. Never exhaustively read prior sketches. A completed campaign's flight recorder reads as in-flight to a naive walker — absorbing a finished goal's sketch as if it were live is a context-pollution defect. The log marker (step 2) gates whether a sketch is even opened: a sketch whose latest log: marker is close is an index entry, not working context. Only the in-flight episode is loaded.
5. Boot-gate the reconstruction before resuming. A reconstructed state is a CLAIM about history; validate it against the record before any dispatch: (a) the bound DAG still exports under dag_apply.ncl; (b) the reconcile log still exports under reconcile_apply.ncl — every recorded ACCEPT names its evaluator; (c) adherence_audit.sh <baseline> <shared_branch> exits 0 — every non-merge commit traces to a node branch; (d) status↔git coherence — every ACCEPTED node's branch is merged into shared_branch (git merge-base --is-ancestor), every DISPATCHED node's worktree exists. Any check failing → HALT and surface to the head: resuming past a corrupted or tampered record compounds the corruption. (Prior art: librecode's journal boot-gate, which replays the whole trajectory against its model invariants before any resume.)

The log is the map; exactly one sketch is the territory. (Prime Invariant 5, "reconstruct, don't recall.")

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The driver state machine

The protocol's pseudocode (DRIVE / RUN_LAYER / RECONCILE_AND_MERGE / SURFACE_EXCEED / CLOSE) lifts to a state machine: each protocol step is a state, each exit-code rule is a transition. The runner walks the table; it never chooses the next action — the table + the exit code compute it.

The DERIVE state writes the active-dag pointer ($root/.ledger/active-dag, one line = the bound DAG path, relative-to-$root or absolute) once the structural gate exits 0 — from that point every worker-worktree commit and integration-branch commit enforces authority against the active plan (the commit gate's authority overlay, hooks/pre-commit §4, reads line 1 of this file). CLOSE — and any campaign-ending halt — clears it (rm -f $root/.ledger/active-dag) so post-campaign ordinary commits revert to structural-only.

State	Lifts (protocol)	Action (the wired command)	Transition
DERIVE	DRIVE head, "Derived schedule"	nickel export DAG --apply-contract ledger/contracts/dag_apply.ncl (structural gate — DAG is a .yaml instance); then nickel export LAYERS → {layer_count, layers}; on rc 0: printf '%s\n' "$DAG" > $root/.ledger/active-dag	export rc≠0 → HALT (the DAG is malformed; not a driver decision). rc 0 → create shared_branch from HEAD, tip := HEAD, k := 0 → RUN_LAYER
RUN_LAYER	RUN_LAYER step 1 (PARTITION)	read layers[k]; split into serial (nodes with serialize=true) and parallel := layer \ serial — a read of the validated DAG, not a fresh conflict computation (DagNoConflict already proved the parallel set disjoint)	→ DISPATCH for the parallel set
DISPATCH	RUN_LAYER step 2, DISPATCH	per node: git worktree add .scratch/worktrees/<id> -b node/<descriptive-slug> <base> — the worktree directory stays the generic node <id> (so dirs don't proliferate), but the branch is a descriptive slug so stacked branches/PRs self-describe; hand the worker ONLY PROMPTS/<id>-*.md + its discipline, opened with the dispatch header — verbatim, every dispatch; STATUS := DISPATCHED	all dispatched → AWAIT
AWAIT	RUN_LAYER step 2, AWAIT	workers run autonomously, commit in their worktree under their discipline's commit gate, never push; collect each return under the supervision invariants (idle = stopped; verify state directly; stalled → fresh handoff)	a worker FREEZE (surface-exceed) → SURFACE_EXCEED; FREEZE (refuted premise) → REALIGN; any other reserved halt → [HUMAN SEAM]; all returned → RECONCILE
SURFACE_EXCEED	SURFACE_EXCEED	authorized.py --collision-check --path <req> --against-surfaces <concurrent surfaces>	rc 0 (WIDEN) → widen node surface, re-validate DAG (nickel export dag.yaml --apply-contract ledger/contracts/dag_apply.ncl), resume worker → AWAIT. rc 3 (SERIALIZE) → mark serialize: true in the YAML, re-validate, re-schedule into serial → RUN_LAYER
RECONCILE	RECONCILE_AND_MERGE (1)-(5)	for each LANDED node in node-id order, run the boundary checks (below); compute VERDICT. Process-adherence gate (first node only): bash ledger/gate/adherence_audit.sh <baseline> <shared_branch> — rc 1 → HALT (accidental flat-commits detected — commits with no node/* branch witness; surface diagnostic to human before any merge proceeds)	ACCEPT → MERGE; REWORK → emit corrective delta IBC, re-dispatch from current tip, STATUS := PENDING → DISPATCH; ESCALATE → REALIGN or [HUMAN SEAM]
MERGE	RECONCILE_AND_MERGE (5) ACCEPT	Merge-consent gate (before any git merge): bash ledger/gate/council_consent.sh <decision-ledger.yaml> — rc≠0 → HALT (a 'merge decision lacks the lead maintainer's recorded assent; green gates are necessary but never sufficient — the maintainer must affirmatively consent before the branch lands). Then merge the accepted node branch(es) into shared_branch with the strategy the situation calls for: a standard merge, or an octopus merge when a concurrent sibling layer lands together (the octopus legitimately makes a node branch the first parent — this is correct, not a bypass). Any merge strategy is valid; the adherence audit verifies worktree isolation by branch reachability (every non-merge first-parent commit traces to a node/* branch), not by merge shape. STATUS := ACCEPTED; mark mitigated findings	→ CHECKPOINT
BOUNDARY	LAYER_BOUNDARY	(1) cumulative-diff coherence gate: coherence_impact.sh --removed <cut-set> over the layer's cumulative diff. (2) DAG vs goal re-examination (campaign §Goal Supremacy): does the remaining DAG still serve the goal? Warranted amendments are TIERED by the contract (campaign §Amendment tiers): MECHANICAL (closed M-list; contract provably preserved) applies on the architect's recorded assent; LOAD-BEARING surfaces as [HUMAN SEAM] — new work is a boundary the human signs off on before any affected node is re-dispatched; uncertainty defaults load-bearing.	coherence rc 1 → ESCALATE. rc 0, no amendment → advance the tip. rc 0, mechanical amendment → apply, record in the decision ledger, re-export DAG + LAYERS, advance the tip (third mechanical amendment on one node → tripwire, surface to the head). rc 0, load-bearing amendment → [HUMAN SEAM]: halt, surface; on ratification re-export DAG + LAYERS, then advance the tip.
CHECKPOINT	RECONCILE_AND_MERGE (6)	append a RECONCILE_LOG round (judged verdicts, freshness, realignments) to the active sketch; commit it in the recorder (git -C <recorder> commit)	more nodes in layer → RECONCILE; layer done → BOUNDARY; BOUNDARY rc 0 and k+1 < layer_count → tip := shared_branch HEAD, k++ → RUN_LAYER; last layer → CLOSE. BOUNDARY rc 1 → ESCALATE → architect seat realigns the plan/DAG (PLAN), then re-dispatch
REALIGN	REALIGN	rewrite the node's premises/surface to current HEAD; if topology/surfaces change, re-export DAG + LAYERS (schedule may change); STATUS := PENDING; log it	→ DISPATCH (or RUN_LAYER if the schedule changed)
CLOSE	CLOSE (Dual-CLOSE Invariant)	(a) Deterministic path: assert every finding MITIGATED/accepted + every node ACCEPTED; run the full deterministic surface over shared_branch, including gates/check_internal_ids.sh <baseline>..<shared_branch> (the whole-campaign ID-leak sweep over every line the campaign added — per-node checks cannot see a leak a later rework re-introduced); process-adherence gate: bash ledger/gate/adherence_audit.sh <baseline> <shared_branch> — rc 1 → HALT (accidental flat-commits in history — commits with no node/* branch witness). (b) Adversarial path — sufficiency review: dispatch decorrelated, context-free reviewers to audit whether the gate machinery is wired in and sufficient ("what does no gate check, what is defined-but-unwired, what claim is hollow?") — route findings to follow-up nodes or tech-debt records before acceptance. Integration-drift sweep: ONE final decorrelated MBSS sweep over the cumulative diff for cross-node integration drift no single boundary could see. Retrospective + close record: emit the retrospective to .ledger/log/ (commit log: close <topic> retrospective — content per campaign §CLOSE); the retrospective MUST include a ## Sufficiency Review section with substantive content (reviewers, convergence, findings — the orchestrator's content responsibility). recorder-close gate: bash ledger/gate/recorder_close_check.sh <topic> — rc≠0 → HALT (verifies BOTH the close entry AND that its ## Sufficiency Review section is present with non-empty content; a hollow heading fails the structural floor — content quality is the adversarial reviewer's job, not the gate's); produce the campaign report; rm -f $root/.ledger/active-dag	→ [HUMAN SEAM]: HALT for human final acceptance + any push

sort is node-id order throughout: a fixed reconcile order makes the run replayable — re-running from a checkpoint reproduces the same sequence.

The dispatch header (mandatory)

Every dispatch prompt OPENS with this header — a literal template the composer fills with the node's values, never prose re-derived per node (inconsistent application is exactly how workers end up acting in a stale sibling worktree):

WORKSPACE — confirm before any other action:
  cd <exact absolute worktree path>
  git branch --show-current          # MUST print: node/<slug>
  git merge-base --is-ancestor <base-tip-sha> HEAD   # MUST exit 0
  Any mismatch: HALT and report. Do not proceed under an assumed identity.

SANCTION: you run unattended in auto mode; no human is at your console —
the composer is your only channel. This dispatch under the active campaign
DAG is your standing authorization to commit at every logical boundary
within your declared file_surface. Leaving finished work uncommitted at
handoff is a protocol violation.

EVALUATORS: capture every exit code explicitly (`cmd; echo EXIT=$?`);
never report a status read through a pipe.

REPORT: end your walk by SENDING your final report through the channel
this dispatch arrived on — findings, verdicts, captured exit codes, and
where your artifacts and deposits live. Nothing you write is visible to
the composer unless you send it; a deposit does not deliver itself, and
stopping without a delivered report reads as a stall.

Supervision during AWAIT

Three hard invariants govern the wait — each a recurring field failure when left to judgment:

• Idle means stopped. An idle notification from an agent that has not delivered its final report means the agent has STOPPED and is waiting. Respond with an immediate status/report request — no lookback heuristic, no deferral. There is no "idle but still computing."
• Verify state directly. Before trusting any status message — and before accepting any "green"/"done" self-report — inspect the worktree: git log, git status, process state, disk timestamps. Piped exit codes and worker self-reports are not evidence; the header's explicit-capture rule exists because the piped-status failure recurred across independent workers.
• A stalled worker gets a fresh handoff. No report despite pings, and direct inspection shows no progress → dispatch a NEW agent into the same worktree and branch with a handoff brief (what is committed, what was claimed but unconfirmed, what remains). The composer never finishes or verifies the work itself — the role boundary holds precisely when breaking it looks small.

JIT per-layer IBC authoring

The DISPATCH state hands each dispatched worker PROMPTS/<id>-*.md — but not all IBCs are authored at the initial ORCHESTRATE pass. The rule:

• Layer 0 IBCs (nodes with no dependencies) are authored at the campaign's ORCHESTRATE step and approved in batch before the driver starts.
• Later-layer IBCs are authored just-in-time at DISPATCH for that layer, with the node's S1 premises re-verified against the layer's current tip (the integration-branch HEAD after the preceding BOUNDARY step).

Why. A later-layer IBC authored at ORCHESTRATE time makes S1 claims about a world that does not yet exist — the upstream nodes have not landed. By the time the driver reaches layer k, the integration branch carries k-1 layers of accepted work; the JIT IBC describes that world, not the pre-campaign snapshot. This is what makes the Premise Freshness invariant (campaign §Premise Freshness) mechanically honest at the IBC-authoring boundary, not only at the RECONCILE freshness-check.

What the driver does. At BOUNDARY, after tip is advanced and before k++:

1. For each node in layers[k+1] (the next layer), author or finalize its IBC with S1 premises verified against the new tip (cheapest tier — this is a mechanical freshness check, not a council judgment).
2. Gate each authored IBC: nickel export with -I ledger/contracts against worker_ibc.ncl (Worker ∘ WorkerIBC) must exit 0. An insufficient IBC is not dispatched. 2b. Probe each authored IBC (boundary §Comprehension Probe): a zero-context cheap-tier dry run against the new tip — unanswered questions or canary bites route the IBC back to authoring, never forward to dispatch. The contract gate (2) checks shape; the probe checks that a stranger can actually walk it. 2c. Lint the surface: python3 ledger/gate/authorized.py --dag <exported-DAG.json> --ibc-surface-check <id> --ibc <exported-ibc.json> — every path-bearing context_map entry must fall under the node's file_surface or carry an explicit (read-only) marker. rc 1 routes the IBC back to authoring (widen the surface or mark the entry), never forward to dispatch: this was the single most common IBC-authoring defect in the field, and every occurrence cost a worker HALT plus a full widen/re-dispatch round-trip that this lint closes for free. 2d. Classify the review tier: run the four review-tier triggers (campaign §5 ORCHESTRATE) against the node's surface and the validated DAG; record tier + fired trigger + convened seat in the routing-table row. No trigger → ROUTINE → the lead-maintainer's merge gate is the node's entire seat list. 2e. Red-baseline check (implementation nodes): for each acceptance criterion whose evaluator is a test command, run the evaluator against the pre-node tip (cmd; echo EXIT=$?) and require FAILURE — a criterion already green before the work exists is not testing the work. Tests that do not yet exist route a test-worker dispatch BEFORE the implementation dispatch, into the node's own worktree and branch — the same workspace the implementer will then enter. The sequence is exact: test-worker commits the red suite on the node branch and returns → red-baseline gate confirms failure at that tip → implementation worker dispatches into the SAME worktree and branch, its workspace header naming the post-test-commit tip as its base. The two walks never run concurrently in the worktree; the sequence is the isolation, and the node's file_surface covers the test paths from authoring. (Shared campaign fixtures/golden vectors that multiple nodes cite are the exception — they belong to a fronted layer-0 evaluator node with its own worktree and merge.) Drafting the failing acceptance tests is a protocol step, not implementation-worker discretion, so it cannot be skipped by a worker that "forgot" TDD. The implementation worker then receives the red suite as part of its boundary and must earn green without weakening it — a weakened or deleted acceptance test is a REWORK verdict at RECONCILE step (1), not a judgment call.
3. In INTERACTIVE mode, surface next-layer IBCs to the head before k++ advances to RUN_LAYER for that layer.

The routing table (ORCHESTRATION.md) records tier assignments for all layers upfront; only the full IBC text is deferred. A driver resuming from a checkpoint re-reads the routing table and re-authors any pending IBCs against the reconstructed tip.

RECONCILE — the per-node boundary checks (the wired commands)

For each LANDED node (in node-id order), the RECONCILE state runs, in order (protocol §RECONCILE_AND_MERGE):

# (1) JUDGE THE CHANGESET — the worker's self-report is not evidence.
#     Re-run the evaluators the node's IBC names in its acceptance criteria
#     against its worktree. Any evaluator non-zero -> VERDICT := REWORK.

# (2) SURFACE HONESTY — derive the actual touched set, reconcile vs declared.
touched=$(git -C .scratch/worktrees/<id> diff --name-only <base>..HEAD)
python3 ledger/gate/authorized.py --dag <exported-DAG.json> \
    --reconcile-node <id> $(printf -- '--path %s ' $touched)
#   rc 0 -> stayed within declared surface
#   rc 1 -> undeclared touches: run SURFACE_EXCEED on each before proceeding

# (3) BIDIRECTIONAL COHERENCE-IMPACT — does this landing break landed/pending?
bash ledger/gate/coherence_impact.sh <repo-root> [--removed <workflow> ...]
#   rc 1 -> INCOHERENT (a machine-check failed): VERDICT := REWORK
#   rc 0 -> machine-surface coherent; record any decorrelated-review DISPATCH
#           lines and their converged verdict before ACCEPT (adversarial path)

# (3b) INTERNAL-ID LEAK — no campaign token in the lines this node ADDS.
bash gates/check_internal_ids.sh <base>..HEAD   # run in the node's worktree
#   rc 1 -> an added line cites a node/finding token: VERDICT := REWORK
#           (rewrite in repository terms; the record lives in .ledger, not
#           the artifact). Range mode scans added lines only — prior debt in
#           a touched file is not this node's verdict. Standing gate, not an
#           ad hoc close-time grep.

# (4) PREMISE-FRESHNESS — re-verify EVERY pending node against the new HEAD.
for p in <pending nodes>; do
  bash ledger/gate/premise_fresh.sh <p-id> <p's tripwire spec>
  #   rc 1 -> p INVALIDATED: REALIGN p's IBC before it dispatches
  #   rc 0 -> p stays FRESH
done

# (5) VERDICT: ACCEPT (1-4 incl. 3b clean, reviews converged) -> MERGE;
#     an acceptance evaluator that CANNOT RUN (absent or broken checker —
#     an absence, not a red result) -> QUARANTINE (see below);
#     else REWORK/ESCALATE.

QUARANTINE — the degraded-gate path

A landed node whose acceptance evaluator cannot run — the checker is absent, broken, or its fixture is missing; an absence, not a red result — is neither accepted nor reworked. It is QUARANTINED: the landed work is retained and the quarantine durably recorded in the reconcile log, but the node is NOT proven. Two consequences, both hard:

• A quarantined node blocks its dependents. The dispatch precondition is dependencies ACCEPTED, and quarantine is not acceptance — the schedule genuinely does not advance past a pending gate.
• The only exits are explicit. DISCHARGE — the evaluator restored and re-run green, or the criterion closed by a converged decorrelated review (the adversarial path, reviewers named in the record) — routes to ACCEPT; a failed discharge routes to REWORK. Quarantine is never silently aged into acceptance, and no dependent's deadline argues it into one.

(Prior art: librecode's reference state machine, where this path is property-tested — a pending deposit can never be marked proven, and a dependent cannot dispatch past a quarantined parent.)

BOUNDARY — semantic coherence over the cumulative diff (not just file-surface)

[!IMPORTANT] File-surface disjointness ≠ semantic independence. DagNoConflict proves the parallel set's file surfaces are disjoint — it cannot see that a node's cut or rename orphaned a reference living in a surviving file owned by nobody in this layer. This campaign learned it the hard way: removing a workflow left dangling references the conflict gate was structurally blind to, and they surfaced at CLOSE instead of at a boundary. So the LAYER_BOUNDARY step (protocol §LAYER_BOUNDARY) runs a semantic/reference-coherence gate over the layer's cumulative diff, for the campaign's whole cut-set — not merely the per-node surface honesty of RECONCILE step (2). This is a genuine evolution of the protocol the spec now carries.

At each layer edge, before advancing the tip, BOUNDARY runs one command — coherence_impact.sh already runs the contract export, the orphan gate (check_orphans over the cut-set, internally at coherence_impact.sh:88), and the markdown-link gate, so no separate check_orphans call is needed:

# coherence-impact over the LAYER's cumulative diff for the campaign's cut-set.
# Internally: contract export + orphan gate (over --removed) + link gate.
bash ledger/gate/coherence_impact.sh <repo-root> --removed <cut-1> --removed <cut-2> ...
#   rc 0 -> the layer is semantically coherent; advance the tip.
#   rc 1 -> INCOHERENT: a cut/rename orphaned a cross-node reference. The fault
#           is NOT localizable to one node (the broken ref and the cut that broke
#           it live in DIFFERENT nodes' surfaces), so it does NOT route to
#           single-node REWORK. It routes to ESCALATE -> PLAN: the architect
#           seat realigns the plan/DAG for the cross-node coupling, then
#           re-dispatches the affected nodes. (This campaign's own cross-node
#           couplings were resolved exactly this way — an architect-seat
#           plan-fault, not a node fault.)

This is a boundary gate (cumulative diff, whole cut-set), not the per-node check — it catches cross-node orphaning a single node's reconcile cannot see. Because index-sensitive evaluators give false failures while a worker has uncommitted changes, BOUNDARY runs only at a quiescent layer edge (all of this layer's worktrees merged or idle).

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Forge wiring

When FORGE is present, the driver surfaces the campaign per the forge skill — that skill owns the prose rules; this section wires its acts to driver states:

Driver state	Forge act
DERIVE (after gate rc 0)	create the shared integration branch from the baseline and push it (covered by the campaign's recorded push authorization — preflighted at setup). Open NO PR — a PR needs content to merge and the branch is empty until the first node lands; opening one here is the recurring bootstrap failure (forge §1)
MERGE / CHECKPOINT	surface each finished node as a node PR targeting the shared branch (forge MCP preferred; gh CLI fallback — forge §0); its consented merge lands in git and the push closes it. At the first node merge, open the tracking PR (draft, shared → default) with its checklist body (forge §2 — one #N item per node PR, checked as each merges), the first item already checked; thereafter keep the checklist and body accurate against the branch's current state, and post review findings + triage as PR comments (forge §3) as they occur, not retrospectively
CLOSE	mark the PR ready; the composer runs the forge audit (forge §5) over the final forge surface — the maintainer's consent covers the code, never the prose; the merge lands per forge §4 (in git, on the head's say-so; any push only under the head's recorded per-campaign authorization — rules.md §3's one exception) — the driver never merges or pushes

No forge → this table is skipped in full; nothing else changes.

Demonstration (the example test)

demo/ is a recorded end-to-end run of this driver over a small synthetic DAG (demo/dag.yaml: 2 layers, a conflict-free parallel pair, one serialize edge), with demo/layers.ncl the live schedule derivation bound to that fixture. demo/TRANSCRIPT.md records every command and its actual gate exit code: schedule derivation → worktree dispatch → the authorized.py reconcile checks → the --collision-check serialize/widen routing (rc 3 / rc 0) → premise_fresh.sh → the node branch merge → the LAYER_BOUNDARY coherence gate (GREEN rc 0 and a RED rc 1 → ESCALATE). A reviewer reproduces the schedule with the nickel export commands at the top of the transcript (YAML DAG validated via --apply-contract dag_apply.ncl).

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Outputs (the driver's deliverables)

• A merged campaign/<TOPIC> integration branch — every ACCEPTED node arriving via a merge into shared_branch (any strategy — octopus, fast-forward, or standard merge; isolation is verified by branch reachability, not merge shape), in layer-then-node-id order, branched from the advancing tip.
• An appended RECONCILE_LOG in the recorder (state/reconcile_log.ncl / the sketch): one round per boundary — judged verdicts, freshness results, realignments, the gate that justified each ACCEPT.
• Sketch checkpoints committed in the recorder after every reconcile: a crash resumes from sketch + git alone.
• A CLOSE report (the campaign report from REVIEW.md → outcomes) plus the final MBSS sweep verdict — produced at CLOSE, withheld of any push.

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The hermes seam — AUTONOMOUS vs INTERACTIVE

This skill carries the autonomy seam as an abstraction point; it is not a programmatic hermes engine (out of scope). The protocol marks exactly four [HUMAN SEAM]s (protocol §automatability boundary); everything else is deterministic-or-dispatched. The table is EXHAUSTIVE: between seams the driver advances node after node, layer after layer, without pausing for permission — "continue to the next layer?" is not a seam, it is approval theatre (a proportionality violation; campaign §FORWARD_MOTION). At each seam, MODE decides:

Seam	Where (state)	AUTONOMOUS	INTERACTIVE
Final acceptance + push	CLOSE	resolve-by-policy is forbidden — a release is a sovereignty decision; HALT and escalate regardless	HALT; surface the CLOSE report; the head accepts, and any push runs only under the head's explicit per-campaign authorization — the law's one push exception (rules.md §3)
Non-resolvable reserved halt	AWAIT/DISPATCH	escalate to the head (a reserved predicate is, by definition, a head call)	surface the worker's freeze report
Decision-rights realignment	RECONCILE/REALIGN	resolve only if inside the IBC's declared sovereignty gates; else escalate	surface the realignment question
Non-converging adversarial review	RECONCILE step (3)	escalate (the dual escalates to human when decorrelated reviewers do not converge — rules.md §2 Invariant 1)	surface the divergence

Push and final acceptance are never resolved by policy in either mode: remotes belong to the human, and an agent pushes only under the head's explicit per-campaign authorization (rules.md §3). The other three seams resolve by policy in AUTONOMOUS only when the call is inside a declared sovereignty gate, and surface in INTERACTIVE.

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Prior art (OSR1)

The worktree-isolated, dependency-layered, merge-at-boundary execution pattern this driver implements is a well-established production pattern, not a novelty. The grounding references are recorded in the active campaign's flight recorder (the in-flight sketch under the recorder's log/, located by the resume procedure above — <recorder>/log/<active-topic>.md, its OSR1 prior-art block) per the Outward-Search Reflex and the prior-art procedure: parallel make -j and Apache Airflow (DAG-derived independent units run concurrently, dependents wait on upstreams) anchor the layering; Bazel's per-action execroot/ sandbox and git-worktree (one repo, many isolated working trees from a common object store) anchor the per-unit isolation. The driver's contribution is binding that pattern to git worktrees as the isolation primitive and the Verification Dual's gates as the merge-boundary check (the prior art integrates by artifact, not by a coherence-gated isolation check).

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See also

• docs/orchestration-protocol.md — the spec this skill drives (packaged-as note there points back here).
• campaign/SKILL.md — the architect-tier workflow whose §DISPATCH/§RECONCILE this skill makes runnable (the non-duplication anchor).
• forge/SKILL.md — the conditional forge discipline the forge wiring table drives.
• the gate scripts the states name: ledger/gate/authorized.py, ledger/gate/coherence_impact.sh, ledger/gate/premise_fresh.sh, gates/check_orphans.sh.