close

name	close
description	Use to formally close a slice once its phases are complete, audited, and reconciled — confirm the rollup, verify spec-coherence, harvest durable findings, reconcile lifecycle status, and land a clean final commit. Routed to from /reconcile.

Close

You are executing formal closure, not just marking work done.

Inputs:

• completed, audited, reconciled implementation phases
• the reconciliation review (RV) with every finding terminal and the ## Reconciliation Outcome recorded (see /reconcile)
• the governing slice id

Process

1. Pre-check:

   • Phase exit criteria (EX-) and verification (VT-) are met. Confirm the rollup: doctrine slice list should show the slice as X/X complete with no !N blocked, no ?N anomalous, no — untracked.
   • /reconcile is done (via /audit → /reconcile): the RV ledger is resolved, every governance/spec finding is dispositioned, and the RV carries a ## Reconciliation Outcome section. If the reconciliation brief was empty (no-op), the outcome confirms that explicitly.
   • Durable facts, patterns, or gotchas from the slice are harvested into notes.md, and reusable ones captured via /record-memory, before closure — or consciously rejected. Durable follow-up work the slice leaves behind (risks / issues / chores) is captured as backlog items with backlog new (the work / knowledge / decision boundary: using-doctrine.md), or consciously rejected.
   • doctrine check gate is green.

2. Spec-coherence gate — confirm reconciliation is complete before done: Before the terminal transition, verify every item from the audit's reconciliation brief is resolved through one of four paths:

   • REV done — governance/spec items covered by a done REV (revision status REV-N done). The REV rationale (revision-NNN.md) carries the reconcile narrative.
   • Withdrawn — finding withdrawn in the RV with rationale.
   • Tolerated — finding tolerated in the RV with rationale.
   • Escalated to design — slice transitioned back to design via the ADR-009 §1 back-edge (reconcile → design). Additionally:
   • Every per-slice direct-edit item is applied to design.md / slice-NNN.md and recorded in the ## Reconciliation Outcome.
   • The RV ledger is resolved (done · await=none). Zero-finding reviews may report active rather than done (known issue IMP-098); treat them as terminal — the absence of unresolved blockers is what gates the transition, not the derived status string.
   • The reconcile outcome is recorded (REV rationale and/or RV ## Reconciliation Outcome). No free-floating "rejected" disposition is permitted — every finding must land in one of the terminal states above. If any item is unresolved, refuse close and return to /reconcile. (The structural closure seam is the mechanical backstop; this gate is the substantive check — the verb enforces; the skill verifies.)

3. Commit cleanly: land .doctrine/** workflow artefacts in small, clean conventional commits scoped with the slice id, rather than letting them accumulate. Code and workflow edits go together or separately, whichever commits cleanly first.

   Stage the slug symlink. */new verbs lay out <kind>/NNN/ and a sibling slug symlink <kind>/NNN-slug -> NNN (slice, review, revision, rec, …). A path-scoped git add <kind>/NNN/ stages the dir but misses the symlink, stranding it uncommitted. Stage both — git add <kind>/NNN* — or add the symlink explicitly. Check git status for a dangling NNN-slug before the final commit. 3a. Dispatched slice — integrate the admitted OID (post-audit only). If the slice was driven by /dispatch, project the audited units now:

   # 0. Resolve the trunk delivery ref once (config-driven; default refs/heads/main):
   trunk=$(doctrine dispatch deliver-to)
   
   # 1. Admit a close_target candidate (if not already done during /reconcile):
   doctrine dispatch candidate create --slice <N> --label close-001 \
     --role close_target --payload code --base "$trunk" \
     --source refs/heads/review/<N>
   doctrine dispatch candidate admit --slice <N> --role close_target \
     --candidate refs/heads/candidate/<N>/close-001 --review RV-NNN
   
   # 2. Project onto trunk (--trunk is REQUIRED; omitting it is a dry run):
   doctrine dispatch sync --slice <N> --integrate --trunk "$trunk"
   

   When a candidate workflow is active this targets the immutable admitted close_target OID (and --edge the admitted review_surface OID) under a fast-forward-only CAS row — never a raw phase/*/review/* tip or the mutable candidate ref, and never a close-time merge. A moved trunk refuses (admit a superseding close-target candidate on the new base). This is the only place --integrate runs — never at /dispatch conclude, only here, post-audit.

   Verify (tree-true, ISS-030). After --integrate --trunk, both checks below must pass — do not proceed to step 4 unless they do:

   # (a) No phantom reverse-diff: the tracked working tree matches HEAD. A nonzero
   #     exit means integrate advanced the ref but desynced the live checkout — STOP.
   git diff --quiet HEAD
   
   # (b) The projected delta genuinely landed (not a silent dry-run): the committed
   #     journal's trunk row holds the planned tip; it must equal the trunk ref.
   trunk=$(doctrine dispatch deliver-to)
   planned=$(doctrine dispatch sync --slice <N> --show-journal-trunk-oid \
     --trunk "$trunk")
   git diff --quiet "$planned" "$trunk"
   

   (a) is the ISS-030 detector — the whole tracked tree, not path-limited (a phantom reverse-diff can span any file the slice projected, not just src/). (b) reads the trunk row's planned_new_oid from the committed dispatch/<N> journal — a tree-read, stable from this checkout (SL-121) — and diffs it against the resolved trunk delivery ref (doctrine dispatch deliver-to, default refs/heads/main); a difference means trunk does not hold the projected tip, so integration did not land.

3b. Split lineage — the payload reached trunk out-of-band (--record-integration). If the reviewed code already sits on trunk by a sanctioned route the dispatch journal never recorded — an operator direct-land, a manual --no-ff merge of the payload, an external integration — then --integrate (step 3a) cannot run: it advances trunk fast-forward-only, but a landed payload is an ancestor, not a descendant, of the trunk merge tip (non-ff → refused). The close gate still refuses done ("dispatched but no trunk row"). Record the earned row instead of hand-editing journal.toml:

trunk=$(doctrine dispatch deliver-to)
doctrine dispatch sync --slice <N> --record-integration --trunk "$trunk"

It resolves the earned trunk payload (phase-chain tip, or the admitted close_target when a candidate workflow is active — never review/<N>, a review surface SPEC-022 forbids as a trunk payload), asserts it is already an ancestor of trunk, and commits a single Verified trunk row — mutating no ref. Then slice status <N> done reads that row and passes. This is the sanctioned replacement for the SL-190 hand-written journal row (SL-211 / IMP-236); land the payload out-of-band as git merge --no-ff phase/<N>-NN (or the admitted candidate), not review/<N>. Deep recovery detail: doctrine memory show mem.pattern.dispatch.split-lineage-close-conflict-direct-land.

4. Transition lifecycle: confirm the slice is in reconcile (flip it with doctrine slice status <id> reconcile if /audit didn't), then doctrine slice status <id> done (<id> is the bare number, e.g. 40). The closure seam enforces the order and refuses while an RV targeting the slice carries an unresolved blocker. Re-run doctrine slice list and confirm the ⚠ divergence marker is gone — authored status now agrees with the rollup. (The terminal set is {done, abandoned}; closure here is the done path — abandoning a slice is a separate decision, not this skill.)
5. Close the originating backlog item: if a backlog item (ISS/IMP/CHR/RSK) spawned this slice, transition it too — doctrine backlog edit <ID> --status resolved --resolution fixed (or the resolution that fits). A closed slice with its origin still open is hygiene debt.
6. If a blocking finding remains unresolved, do not close — return to /reconcile. If closure depends on tolerated drift with material tradeoffs, /consult before normalising around it.

Drift discharge recipe

When slice status <id> done refuses with undischarged residual drift, each flagged requirement needs an accept REC owned by the closing slice that satisfies all three clauses:

• (a) move = accept — an affirm, not revise/redesign.
• (b) a [[status_delta]] naming the requirement whose to equals its current authored status (the status the refusal prints).
• (c) the REC's [[evidence_ref]] set ⊇ every distinct coverage key feeding that requirement's composite, so fresh contradictory evidence cannot be excused by a stale REC.

Author it, then hand-edit the two tables:

doctrine rec new --move accept --owning-slice SL-NNN --title "accept REQ-NNN"
# then hand-author the [[status_delta]] and [[evidence_ref]] tables

Full predicate, rationale, and a worked example: doctrine memory show mem.pattern.doctrine.close-drift-discharge-rec.

Outcomes

• The slice is done, with the rollup in agreement.
• The originating backlog item (if any) is resolved.
• Durable guidance is captured in memory or consciously rejected.
• The tree is clean and the workflow artefacts are committed.