Blocker Decision Brief

Blocked Repair

The strongest unresolved repair is candidate repair-8ab0ca9952d8, selected in releases/publication-readiness-candidate.json and described by releases/publication-readiness-report.md. Its product-side evidence reports passed reader evidence with no findings, a prior sealed review with no findings, and promotion_ready: true, while its release manifest remains status: candidate and publication_status: candidate-only. The blocked transition is the separately governed move beyond candidate-only status. The concrete blocker is that human approval is still open; readiness evidence is not approval and this brief does not authorize a repair, pilot, promotion, or publication.

Evidence

The decision packet is questions-for-the-human.md, releases/publication-readiness-candidate.json, releases/repair-8ab0ca9952d8/release.json, its validation.json, evidence/reader.json, and evidence/review.json. The human-question record says approval must be reviewed at the human gate and separately identifies controlled-pilot authorization as later authority. The selected candidate records explicit operator approval and evidence as its promotion policy; the reader recommendation is scoped to a product conclusion, not authorization. The preserved system-validator record for this step reports one passed command_succeeds result with exit status 0 and evidence hash 6199ece52622548300b9375f68b4ff4aa51e5fd9921ebe6a09532cd106eceb44; it is authoritative evidence and was not rerun here.

Authority Needed

Lee needs to review the sealed commissioning lineage and make the explicit human-gate decision on whether the affected, separately governed transition may proceed. That is the smallest required decision. The decision does not grant this repository authority to change sources/authority.json, routing, validator authority, activation rules, publication policy, or the governing repository. sources/authority.json records employee_may_modify: false, and the product evidence cannot supply platform-owned route, identity, validator, execution, evidence-chain, terminal, or approval attestations. If those attestations are required by the governing gate, they must be obtained from their platform owner rather than inferred from product readiness.

Reversible Default

Until Lee records that decision, leave repair-8ab0ca9952d8 parked and unchanged as a candidate. Keep publication/current-release.json unchanged; do not promote, publish, schedule, re-arm, or attempt rollback. This is reversible because the candidate packet and its linked evidence remain available for later review. The selected release records previous_release: null, rollback_target: null, and rollback_available: false, so older candidates must not be invented as rollback targets. This brief performs no transition and does not ask for any product-side mutation beyond retaining the current state.

Recommendation

Recommend that Lee review repair-8ab0ca9952d8 at the human gate and record the smallest explicit decision: allow the separately governed transition to proceed, or keep the candidate parked. The recommendation is supported by the newest sealed candidate's two-page coverage, passed product reader evidence with no findings, prior sealed review evidence with no findings, and explicit candidate-only facts. “Ready for controlled pilot” is only a product-side recommendation in the reader record; it is not Lee's approval, controlled-pilot authorization, platform attestation, promotion permission, or publication instruction. Missing authority remains a blocker, not a reason to infer consent.

Publication Boundary

The candidate remains behind the local publication boundary publication/current-release.json. The selected release and publication readiness records state candidate-only status, no pointer creation, no promotion, no publication, no scheduling, no rollback, and no live-directory write. This authoring step changes only this decision brief and does not alter the candidate, release pointers, generated projections, tests, source authority, governance, routing, or a live directory. Any later transition is outside this record and requires the applicable human and platform authority; candidate readiness must not be read as permission to cross that boundary.

Acceptance Checks

• AC-1 — The reader can identify candidate repair-8ab0ca9952d8 as the blocked repair and can trace the missing human approval and supporting candidate, validation, reader, review, and human-question evidence.
• AC-2 — The reader can state that Lee's explicit human-gate decision is required for the separately governed transition, while distinguishing that authority from product conclusions and platform-owned attestations.
• AC-3 — The reader can distinguish the reversible default of keeping the candidate parked and unchanged from the recommendation that Lee review it and record an explicit decision; no transition is performed by this brief.
• AC-4 — The reader can confirm the candidate-only publication boundary, including that no release pointer, promotion, publication, scheduling, rollback, or live-directory write occurred, without inferring later permission.