Record — Durable Categorized Records

Ambient — applies to every predicate-enabled walk, not campaign-only.

The RECORD primitive manages durable artifacts across three complementary substrates. What distinguishes it from generic note-taking is the category model: each category of durable artifact has a defined contract (machine-checkable shape), a .ledger home, and a trigger (when to record into it).

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Category model

Who holds the pen. One writer per node-kind-and-namespace, whoever it is (the pen law — docs/entries.md): testimony is signed by the walker who witnessed it and committed by that walker, append-only, into .ledger/deposits/<topic>/<signer>/; synthesis, decision, and narrative nodes — and every promotion — are the composer's. In a solo predicate walk there is no composer: the walker signs everything and executes this skill directly. Two writers interleaving one namespace is how a zettelkasten becomes a shoebox.

Each category = {contract, .ledger home, trigger}. Categories are extensible: adding a fourth later is cheap — add the contract, home, and trigger row.

category	contract	.ledger home	trigger
flight-log	narrative; no formal contract	.ledger/log/	at every significant step: decision, pivot, finding
tech-debt	skills/record/tech_debt.ncl	.ledger/tech-debt/	when a limitation is accepted rather than fixed
process-feedback	skills/record/process_feedback.ncl	.ledger/process-feedback/	when friction, a miss, an improvement, or a live process amendment is identified

The flight-log category (existing)

Narrative zettelkasten — linked, curated trail of how the space was explored: decisions, pivots, adjustments. NOT exhaustive; navigable graph. See Recording (continuous) and Promotion for the full flight-log model.

The tech-debt category (new)

A first-class, machine-shaped entry for a known limitation or deferred decision — absorbs the campaign's "accepted limitations / tail" so they are trackable and actionable rather than buried in prose log entries.

Fields: id (unique), claim (falsifiable statement), location (file:line, gate, or component), severity (critical|high|medium|low), why_deferred, signpost (what would resolve or invalidate it).

Instance format: YAML, validated via:

nickel export <file>.yaml --apply-contract skills/record/tech_debt_apply.ncl

Trigger: when you accept a limitation rather than fix it — record it here, not in prose. A signpost is required so the debt is not just named but actionable.

The process-feedback category (new)

Captures friction, missed signals, improvements, and AMENDMENTS. An AMENDMENT is the highest-stakes kind: the agent changed a live process rule and it was a good idea. This makes process changes durable rather than living only in conversation recall.

Fields: id (unique), kind (friction|miss|improvement|amendment), context (situation that triggered it), outcome (what changed or what it means).

Instance format: YAML, validated via:

nickel export <file>.yaml --apply-contract skills/record/process_feedback_apply.ncl

Trigger: when friction surfaces, a signal is missed, the process improved, or a live rule was amended. AMENDMENT kind requires that the rule change was nrd-approved or demonstrably beneficial — it is a record of accepted change, not a unilateral rewrite.

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Three substrates with distinct roles

substrate	role	character
scratch	exhaustive working detail; coherent context being built	default ephemeral; sometimes a draft staged for promotion
ledger (.ledger/)	all category homes: flight-log, tech-debt, process-feedback	curated, linked, durable; each category in its own home dir
repo/docs/	promoted durable artifacts (a design that graduated)	permanent

Promotion is the combinator promote(from, to) over {scratch, ledger, repo}. The destination is routed by purpose, not by artifact type.

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Recording (continuous)

At each significant step, classify the output and record it — this is a classification trigger, not a rulebook. Ask: what kind of thing just happened?

what happened	where it goes	minimum record
decision / pivot / adjustment	linked ledger note (flight-log)	what, why, which [[decisions/KUs]] it changes; link to superseded/resolved notes
finding (new R/I/U item)	update the live R/I/U tracker; ledger note if it pivots direction	tracker entry with grounding + last_validated + signpost
accepted limitation	.ledger/tech-debt/<id>.yaml	tech-debt record validated against tech_debt.ncl
process friction / miss / improvement / amendment	.ledger/process-feedback/<id>.yaml	process-feedback record validated against process_feedback.ncl
working detail / draft	scratch	no ceremony; stage for promotion when ready

Linking discipline (flight-log). Ledger notes are a zettelkasten: each note links (supersedes, resolves, blocks, see-also) to the nodes it affects. The ledger is a navigable graph, not a flat append log. Every-touch-commit (Sketch Commit Discipline) keeps the graph linear and reconstructable.

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Promotion

Destination routing (the combinator's dispatch table)

promote(from, to) routes by the artifact's purpose:

• needed to reconstruct how/why but not general documentation → ledger (zettelkasten; future agents in this exploration)
• a durable artifact useful to someone who never saw the exploration → repo/docs (a user / zero-context agent)
• cross-cases: scratch → ledger, scratch → repo, ledger → repo

The "stranger" for the zero-context sensibility read is parameterized by the destination's audience. The over-strip line moves with the destination:

• ledger stranger — a future agent reconstructing this campaign; still needs decisions + why
• repo stranger — a user who never saw the exploration; needs none of the session context

Gate 1 — structural readiness (machine-checkable)

The artifact must conform to its destination's contract before promotion:

• a tech-debt record must pass nickel export ... --apply-contract tech_debt_apply.ncl
• a process-feedback record must pass nickel export ... --apply-contract process_feedback_apply.ncl
• a draft IBC must pass worker_ibc.ncl export
• a DAG node must export cleanly against dag.ncl
• a skill draft must carry valid YAML frontmatter (this file's own gate)
• a doc must have valid local links and header structure

Does not export / does not conform → not ready. Do not proceed to Gate 2. This makes "structurally ready" machine-checkable rather than a judgment call.

Gate 2 — sensibility (zero-context multi-round read)

A quality mechanism, not a box to tick. Read the draft as a stranger with only its stated purpose; surface everything that is only meaningful in-session:

• references to "what we discussed" or "as above"
• implicit assumptions the reader cannot recover
• scratch-isms (abbreviations, shorthand, agent-internal labels)

Strip or make-explicit each; iterate until a context-free read is fully sensible.

Over-strip guard — strip only what is session-meaningful AND not needed for the stated purpose. Before stripping anything, ask:

Does a stranger with the stated purpose need this to understand / use the artifact?

Yes → keep and make explicit. "Merely discussed in session" → strip. Never strip load-bearing rationale. A sensibility read that removes rationale is a context-destroyer, not a quality pass.

Depth scales with stakes and destination:

• routine scratch note → ledger: self-administered flush-read
• architectural or doctrine artifact → repo: decorrelated agent review (refine REVIEW semantics)

Gate 3 — role authorization (privileged)

Promotion is role-gated:

artifact class	who may promote
testimony (deposits, assessments, findings) → ledger	the witnessing walker, signed
narrative / synthesis / promotion notes → ledger	the composer (solo: the walker)
full architecture / spec → repo/docs	architect-tier
doctrine edits (rules.md, ambient.md, formalism)	Reserved halt — human approval required before merge

A worker cannot unilaterally promote to durable doctrine. On doctrine promotion, emit the draft and halt for human review before touching the destination.

On promote: link the durable artifact

After promotion:

1. Strip ephemera (Gate 2 already handled this).
2. Write a ledger note recording the promotion: what was promoted, where it landed, and why it graduated. This keeps the zettelkasten honest about the artifact's provenance.

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Project-local validation

A project (predicate-self-hosting + downstream) records its own tech-debt and process-feedback through the project-local gate mechanism. Register a gate script in .ledger/gates/ that validates the records:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# .ledger/gates/10-validate-records.sh
# Validates all tech-debt and process-feedback YAML instances.
set -euo pipefail
root="${1:-}"
skill_dir="$root/skills/record"

for f in "$root/.ledger/tech-debt"/*.yaml 2>/dev/null; do
  [[ -f "$f" ]] || continue
  nickel export "$f" --apply-contract "$skill_dir/tech_debt_apply.ncl" >/dev/null \
    || { echo "tech-debt record failed: $f" >&2; exit 1; }
done

for f in "$root/.ledger/process-feedback"/*.yaml 2>/dev/null; do
  [[ -f "$f" ]] || continue
  nickel export "$f" --apply-contract "$skill_dir/process_feedback_apply.ncl" >/dev/null \
    || { echo "process-feedback record failed: $f" >&2; exit 1; }
done

The project-gates.sh runner discovers and executes this script automatically on each commit when a walk is registered. Projects with no .ledger/gates/ directory incur zero overhead (the runner is a clean no-op).

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Adaptive extension

This skeleton fleshes against the concrete R/I/U at hand. Minimum floor:

• Recording: classify the step; write the minimum record for its class.
• Promotion: pass structural readiness (Gate 1) before touching Gate 2.

Extend selectively when not converged: add rounds to the sensibility read when the artifact is high-stakes or the over-strip risk is real; add a decorrelated reviewer when promoting doctrine; tighten the linking discipline when the ledger is the primary reconstruction surface.

The skeleton supports shape AND flexibility — it does not prevent movement. Do not inflate it into an exhaustive script.

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Two-purpose inheritance

Following P-GROUND's two-purpose principle:

• Recording — formal gate: did you classify and record the step? (presence- checkable); substantive gate: is the trail reconstructable? (closed by review).
• Promotion — formal gate: does the artifact pass structural readiness? (machine-checkable via contract conformance); substantive gate: is the zero-context read fully sensible? (closed by the multi-round read + role-gated reviewer, depth-to-stakes).

The contract is the "did-they-try" floor that feeds the review; the review is where substance is judged. Do not fake a smarter contract.