Rendered from docs/obligations/0214-the-commit-gate-does-not-see-docs-taxonomies-readme-md-drift-from-its-vendored-copy.md in the Headwater corpus. Every document on this half of the site is typed by the taxonomy the descriptor names: corpus.json.

The commit gate does not see docs/taxonomies/README.md drift from its vendored copy

Context

Issue #994 reported this drift. The adjudication in run 20260924-0411 refused it as kind 2, because no reader outside this repository meets the drift. The owner accepted the refusal. This record carries the issue, which closes as recorded, not planned.

Obligation

.githooks/pre-commit runs headwater check --strict, and it exits 0 when docs/taxonomies/README.md differs from .headwater/packages/headwater-standard/bundles/README.md. A contributor learns of the drift only from the required "Engine tests" job. There, the_vendored_bundles_agree_with_a_fresh_publish_of_the_maintained_source in engine/crates/cli/tests/publish.rs compares the whole bundles/ tree. The drift happened twice, in #407 and in the #7 build of run 20260920-2058.

Since #350, the README is typed library_doctrine, and every rule of the house language regime reads it. So a fix of a language finding in it is an edit of the source, and the vendored copy then differs until the next republish. This change adds no drift check, and the obligation stays open.

The same comparison covers bundles/ only. The adjudication did not confirm that any test compares taxonomy.yml or conformance.yml under taxonomy-source/headwater-standard with the vendored copy.

Since #1139, the verb that the discharge example names exists, as taxonomy publish --from <dir> --check. It compares every member of the vendored copy with a fresh publish of the source, taxonomy.yml and conformance.yml included. The "Engine tests" job runs it. The hook does not run it, so the drift still reaches a contributor at CI and not at commit, and the obligation stays open.

Discharge

This record discharges when a local gate fails on the drift before a commit. An example is a hook line that runs taxonomy publish --from taxonomy-source/headwater-standard --check only when a staged path is under docs/taxonomies/ or taxonomy-source/. A comparison written into the hook is not a discharge, because a rule has no second copy in a script.

The question reopens as an issue when one of four conditions holds. The first is that "Engine tests" leaves the Protect main ruleset. The second is that an artifact an adopter receives comes from the vendored copy. The third is that a rule of check reads a file under bundles/ other than bundle.yml. The fourth is that a third late drift costs a run an iteration.