Governed Content Cycle Handoff

Purpose and Audience

This page is a practical Internal Knowledge handoff for Internal operators running governed content cycles. Use it to carry a bounded workstream choice through source and authority checks, deterministic product validation, reader evidence, independent review, registry synchronization, and a candidate-only transfer. The outcome is traceable product evidence, not a claim of approval, publication, deployment, customer capability, or platform attestation.

Compatibility Inventory

This page is paired with journeys/governed-content-cycle-handoff-compatibility-inventory.json, a product-side inventory for Internal operators running governed content cycles. The inventory keeps the page and its reader journey compatible with the sealed inputs without widening the page's authority.

Authority boundary: Read sources/authority.json as revision 2026-08-08. Its exact logical sources are source.naming-decision, source.documentation-boundary, and source.platform-delivery-contract; each matching record in registries/sources.json must remain public-safe, and employee_may_modify remains false.
Page boundary: Preserve page identity page.governed-content-cycle-handoff, title Governed Content Cycle Handoff, public visibility, the Internal operators audience, the three reading modes, an empty claim reference list, and the three sealed source references. No compatibility check creates or changes a claim.
Check boundary: The exact deterministic product command is python3 tools/validate_content.py. A declared command is permission to run that check, not execution evidence; retain its exact result separately from reader evidence, review evidence, and platform-owned attestations.
Repair boundary: If a later governed result names a bounded product mismatch, repair only this page or the dedicated inventory manifest. Keep missing or environment-specific evidence unresolved until its owning evidence path supplies it.
Transfer boundary: The result remains candidate-only. This inventory does not approve, promote, publish, schedule, roll back, create or change a release pointer, activate a route, or write a live directory.

Handoff Procedure

Select the internal workstream. Start with the supplied workstream comparison and select Internal Knowledge only when the recorded selection evidence supports it. For every in-scope item, record its queue identifier, observed queue age or age field, age source, review timestamp, and review status. If age is absent, malformed, stale, or conflicting, record the exact gap and do not invent a threshold, priority, or schedule.
Check source gaps and seal authority. Read sources/authority.json as a read-only baseline. The sealed record is revision 2026-08-08, lists source.naming-decision, source.documentation-boundary, and source.platform-delivery-contract, and sets employee_may_modify to false. Match every used logical ID to registries/sources.json and confirm its authority class, revision, digest, locator, and public-safe disclosure. A missing, stale, conflicting, or non-public-safe mapping is an unresolved source gap, not an invitation to edit the registry or fill the fact with prose.
Run the deterministic product check. Use only the exact non-empty command declared by the dedicated compatibility inventory: python3 tools/validate_content.py. Retain the exact command, exit status, observable stdout or stderr, time if available, and output or artifact location. A command listed in a manifest is permission to run that deterministic check, not execution evidence by itself.
Capture reader evidence and independent review. Give an independent reader the page, registry, source, contract, and journey inputs named by the manifest. The reader record must identify the journey, exact command, exit status, observed result, source references, and acceptance traces. A missing, failed, or environment-blocked reader result stays unresolved. Route the completed packet to an approved independent reviewer on a route separate from production; keep reviewer identity, route, verdict, findings, and evidence location separate from the author's conclusion.
Reconcile and transfer. Check AC-1 through AC-7, reconcile page metadata with its registry entry, inspect the deterministic projection, and retain every unresolved gap. Transfer only the resulting evidence packet to the candidate-only boundary after the required evidence and review records are present or explicitly unresolved.

Use the same receipt shape for every cycle: a selection record with the chosen workstream, in-scope queue identifiers, observed age fields, age sources, review timestamps and statuses; an authority record with the sealed revision, employee_may_modify value, logical source IDs, and source-registry mappings; check records with each exact command, exit status, observable output, and artifact location; reader and review records with journey IDs, commands, results, source references, acceptance traces, reviewer route, verdict, and findings; and a reconciliation record with the page metadata, registry entry, projection identity, unresolved gaps, and candidate-only disposition. A field that is absent or conflicting is recorded as unresolved in that receipt.

Current Evidence Boundary

The current platform-owned reader-gate evidence records one attempt for journey.resolve-reader-journey-harness-decision, using the exact command python3 tests/check_documentation_smoke.py. It exited with status 1 and reported Operation not permitted because the evaluator environment denied localhost socket access. This establishes an environment-specific evaluation blocker only; it does not establish a recurring product harness defect, a retry count, an affected claim, or a repair target. Keep the issue unresolved and route a permitted follow-up evaluation.

The selected workstream is Internal Knowledge. Until authoritative follow-up evidence supplies recurrence and product impact, affected work is limited to this evidence-routing question, the reader-journeys manifest (journeys/reader_journeys_manifest.json), and the candidate-only record. No public semantic page change or product claim change is established by the blocked evaluation.

Evidence and Registry Mapping

Treat the Markdown metadata, registries/pages.json, the journey manifest, the sealed authority, the source registry, and build/index.json as one traceable handoff. The page identity is page.governed-content-cycle-handoff; its path is content/governed-content-cycle-handoff.md; its title is Governed Content Cycle Handoff; visibility is public; its audience is Internal operators running governed content cycles; its reading modes are executive, engineer, and ai; its claim references are empty; and its source references are the three sealed logical IDs. The header uses claims and the registry uses the corresponding empty claim_refs; do not introduce an unsupported claim merely to make a mapping appear complete.

For each source mapping, preserve the registered identifier, authority class, revision, digest, locator, and disclosure. Produce build/index.json from the semantic sources and inspect its page identity, title, visibility, claim references, source references, and body digest; never hand-edit generated output. A command listed in the manifest is permission to run that deterministic check, not evidence that it was run. Record any result from the current step separately from reader evidence, independent review, and publication authority.

Candidate-Only Transfer

Transfer only the reconciled packet, its source mapping, deterministic results, reader record, independent review, acceptance matrix, and projection identity to a record explicitly marked candidate-only. Candidate-only means that evidence is staged for a separately governed decision; it does not mean approved, active, promoted, published, scheduled, rolled back, or ready for a live directory. If a required result is unavailable, retain the exact unresolved gap and its owner or permitted follow-up instead of asserting a pass.

This handoff strictly prohibits publication or release-pointer creation. Do not create or change publication/current-release.json, promote or roll back a release, schedule work, activate a route, alter governing controls, or write a live directory. Do not represent deterministic product validation, reader evidence, or independent review as a platform-owned attestation. The parked candidate remains reversible until the separately authorized authority and evidence path supplies any later transition decision.