contract-signoff

name	contract-signoff
description	Harden the current decision set into a clean, normative source of truth with no residual ambiguity, then persist the result in DECISIONS.md and TASK_STATE.md as explicit reviewable edits (no silent intent drift). Use when key decisions are already resolved, the task has a stable contract or policy direction, and the remaining work is to harden wording and remove interpretation risk before planning or implementation. Do not use when major ambiguities remain unresolved, the task still needs decision-interview or resolve-contract-gaps, or the task is still in broad discovery.
metadata	{"category":"contract-and-decision-hardening","primary-cursor-mode":"Plan","multi-repo-aware":false,"context-layers-consumed":["memory"],"context-layers-produced":["memory"],"tools":["Read","Write","Edit","Bash","Glob","Grep"],"x-wos-profiles":["core","full"],"provenance":"first-party","suggested-model":"claude-opus-4-7"}

Act as a senior/staff engineer finalizing the implementation contract for the active engineering task.

Goal: Harden the current decision set into a clean, normative source of truth with no residual ambiguity, then persist the result in the task repository as explicit, reviewable edits (no silent intent drift).

Mandatory context bootstrap (before any output):

• Read these sections in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md first:
  • ## LLM execution contract
  • ## Editor mode policy (mode definitions only; the tool mapping table is lazy-loaded in wos/editor-mode-mappings.md and needed only for non-Claude-Code tools)
  • ## Global output contract (including Adaptive handoff and Mode selection rule)
  • ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails
• Bootstrap tiers (ADR-0025): the light-weight commands (branch-commit, what-next, where-we-at, slice-closure, compact-task-memory) may skip ## Editor mode policy good-fits lists and ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails sequencing heuristics, reading only the mode definitions and the core guardrail rules (routing memory, command-less input triage, official command names, material change, no-op). The full tier is measured at 9610 tokens: the combined size of the four always-read WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md sections listed above. The reduced tier is a self-declared estimate of about 3,500 tokens for the trimmed subset above; it has not been independently re-measured by the same method, and should be read as an estimate rather than a fresh figure. The same reduced tier extends to the high-frequency execution commands implement-approved-slice and sync-task-state (v3 wave1 item D: the most-invoked commands pay the bootstrap most often; state-reconcile deliberately stays on the full tier, cross-artifact judgment needs the full guardrail context).
• Cache-amortized layer (ADR-0006): this bootstrap floor is a cache-amortized cost, not a per-command tax paid in full on every invocation. It sits in the prompt cache for the session and is paid at write cost once per cache TTL window, then at roughly 0.1x on cached reads inside that window. Account for it separately from any per-skill Load budget (the generated .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md body); the two are different layers and should not be summed into one figure.
• Session bootstrap reuse (skip-if-unchanged; v3 wave1 item D): WHEN this same conversation already performed this bootstrap read in an earlier turn that is still VISIBLE in the current context window AND WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md has not changed since, the command MAY skip the re-read and cite the earlier one instead, emitting one Command transcript line: Bootstrap: reusing turn <N> read, WOS unchanged. This is a scoped exception to the context-budget re-fetch rule (wos/context-budget.md, "The re-fetch rule"), justified because the bootstrap sections are one large, static, byte-identical read repeated every turn rather than a variable tool result; the re-fetch rule still governs every other tool result without exception. VISIBLE means the bootstrap section text itself is still present and quotable in the window right now, not merely that the record of an earlier read exists. On a harness that clears, a tool result can be emptied while the record that the tool ran survives (ADR-0114); a command that finds only that record, without the section text still readable, has not satisfied VISIBLE and must re-read. Self-declared memory after a compaction never qualifies (re-read instead), and a stateless-per-turn harness is excluded. The auditable-skip rule applies: the transcript line is mandatory; a silent skip is invalid output.
• Read additional sections only when relevant to this command's role.
• Read the commands/ directory command inventory to ensure command names and availability are current.
• Align all routing recommendations and next-command suggestions with the current command set.
• Official next-command names only: every recommended next command (including the handoff Run now line) MUST be the basename of an existing commands/<name>.md file in this workflow repository. Never invent names.

Required inputs:

• active task folder path
• TASK_STATE.md
• SOURCE_OF_TRUTH.md
• DECISIONS.md
• relevant real codebase context
• prior analysis artifacts, if relevant
• last completed step from TASK_STATE.md (command + summary)

Operating rules:

• Do not implement code.
• Handoff: end with the adaptive ### Handoff block per WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract (Mode A compact or Mode B full).
• Do not reopen broad discovery.
• Before producing output, verify that remaining work is truly wording/normalization rather than unresolved policy choice.
• If DECISIONS.md is already normative enough for safe planning, do not rewrite it for style; return a no-op and route forward.
• No-op rule for artifacts:
  • If DECISIONS.md would not materially change, do not rewrite it.
  • If TASK_STATE.md would not materially change, do not rewrite it.
  • Still output a minimal NO_OP trace note for traceability, but keep it short.
• Do not change already approved canonical decisions unless a direct contradiction still exists.
• Focus on:
  • removing ambiguous wording
  • replacing assumption language with canonical policy language
  • separating historical analysis from active rules
  • ensuring one policy voice across the document
• If any residual contradiction remains, call it out explicitly instead of silently rewriting intent.
• Keep DECISIONS.md normative, concise, and implementation-safe.
• Only apply semantic changes to DECISIONS.md when they are explicitly approved by the user in-chat or required to resolve a direct contradiction with evidence. Otherwise keep changes strictly editorial and reversible, or route back to resolve-contract-gaps / decision-interview.

Required output:

1. Residual ambiguities found
2. Exact wording changes recommended
3. Sections that are historical context only, if any
4. Sections that are normative / implementation source of truth
5. Exact DECISIONS.md content shown inline under its bullet in ### Artifact changes. Mark the file APPLIED when the changes are safe to apply this turn; mark it PROPOSED otherwise. Per the canonical no-nest rule, inline content goes directly under the file bullet, not inside a child header like ## PROPOSED DECISIONS.md block.
6. Exact TASK_STATE.md update block, or explicit TASK_STATE: NO_CHANGE
7. Final signoff assessment (one of READY / NOT_READY / BLOCKED plus a one-line reason)
8. Remaining blockers, if any
9. Recommended next command
10. Recommended editor mode
11. Why this is the correct next step
12. What should explicitly not be done yet

TASK_STATE.md update must reflect:

• canonical decisions
• current phase
• remaining blockers, if any
• recommended next step

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility)

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility). This block governs what you may assert and how you record it. It is keyed to the substrate section you are writing, not to which command is running, and it is INERT on any output that writes none of the claim-bearing sections below. Full contract and rationale: wos/active-epistemic-humility.md.

1. When this applies. This block fires ONLY while you are writing a claim-bearing substrate section: TASK_STATE.md ## Current known facts, ## Risks to watch, ## Observations, ## Active files in scope, ## Canonical decisions; DECISIONS.md ## Locked decisions; IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md ## Current gaps, ## Risks and mitigations; IMPACT_ANALYSIS.md; EXTERNAL_RESEARCH.md; REFERENCES.md; or any section whose content is a statement a later command or a human decision will act on. WHEN your output writes none of these, this block imposes nothing: skip it and proceed. This is the D-13 inert clause; a fully-grounded or claim-free output pays nothing.

2. The unit is the load-bearing claim. A load-bearing claim is one a downstream command or a human decision consumes. A passing aside is not load-bearing; a statement someone will act on is. Apply the rest of this block per load-bearing claim, not per sentence.

3. Ground it or abstain. Before you assert a load-bearing claim, trace it to the enumerable grounded set: a captured REFERENCES.md entry, a file read in this session, command output actually seen, or a passing deterministic gate. A claim supported only by model memory is OUTSIDE the grounded set, including when you are right, because that support is not observable. WHEN a load-bearing claim falls outside the set, do NOT assert it: either investigate until it is grounded, or abstain per rule 6.

4. Status records provenance, never confidence. WHERE you attach an epistemic status to a claim, the status names WHERE THE CLAIM CAME FROM: a REFERENCES.md entry title, a file path plus line, or the gate output it came from. It SHALL NOT express a degree of certainty. Do NOT add a confidence field, a numeric threshold, or a self-assessment prompt anywhere; a self-reported confidence signal is not a usable control signal (wos/active-epistemic-humility.md Part 1.3). A status whose referent slot is empty is read as UNKNOWN, not as a weak yes.

5. Persisted claims carry the status; chat-only claims carry it when they route. Every load-bearing claim you write into a task-memory artifact carries its provenance referent, and that referent travels with the claim so a later command reads it too; do not drop it at the write boundary. A load-bearing claim that appears only in a chat-turn output carries a status only when it crosses the grounding boundary and triggers a route (an abstention, an escalation).

6. Abstain as a routed continuation, never a bare refusal. WHEN you abstain, name the specific investigation that would settle the question AND route to the command that runs it (capture-references, code-locate, incident-triage, or the fitting one). A withholding that stalls the work is invalid output. Abstention is distinct from NO_OP: NO_OP means there is no work to do; abstention means there is work and the grounding to do it is missing.

7. An unfired gate is not evidence. The absence of a fired check does not mean grounding existed. Do not read silence here as a pass.

Standard output layout (required)

Produce the command output using this structure (English only):

Artifact changes

Follow ## Global output contract in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md for APPLIED / PROPOSED / SKIP rules.

Command transcript

Brief audit trail (max 4 lines; max 3 in no-op runs with NO_OP_TRACE).

Handoff

Use the adaptive ending format from WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract (Mode A compact or Mode B full per session state).

Definition of done (command output)

• Wording changes are non-semantic unless explicitly justified; contradictions are called out, not smoothed away.
• Each wording change is shown explicitly as a current → proposed pair with a one-line rationale; rewriting DECISIONS.md wholesale without showing the diff is silent intent drift and invalid output.
• DECISIONS.md ends normative, concise, and internally consistent.
• Anything historical is isolated from active rules.
• Output includes an explicit Final signoff assessment with one of READY / NOT_READY / BLOCKED plus a one-line reason; emitting the updated DECISIONS.md without an explicit signoff verdict is invalid output.
• Output ends with a complete ### Handoff block per the adaptive format in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract. A response that ends after the proposed DECISIONS.md content or after the signoff assessment without a complete Handoff is invalid output.
• Before declaring this output done, confirm it satisfies the shared Definition of done (command outputs) and Gate conditions in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md.

Quality bar: Optimize for unambiguity, consistency, and implementation-readiness.