New Contributor Evidence-Chain Walkthrough

Overview

This walkthrough gives a new agent-orch contributor one representative task: trace the source authority for a bounded onboarding page, compare its authored metadata with the synchronized page registry, and read the accompanying journey manifest. The task is about following evidence roles in order, not about asserting a platform outcome. The page is public-safe because it uses only the three approved logical sources: source.naming-decision, source.documentation-boundary, and source.platform-delivery-contract.

The starting boundary is the read-only sources/authority.json record. It identifies authority revision 2026-08-08, lists exactly those three logical source IDs, and records employee_may_modify: false. Their matching entries in registries/sources.json are the public-safe source boundary. If a source fact is absent or conflicting, the contributor keeps it unresolved rather than filling the gap with plausible prose or private governance material.

Trace the Sealed Evidence Chain

First, open sources/authority.json and follow each of its three IDs to the corresponding public-safe record in registries/sources.json. This is source provenance for the walkthrough, not permission to change authority or any separate governing control. Check that the page metadata and its one registry entry carry the same page ID, title, visibility, audiences, reading modes, empty claim references, and exactly the same three source references.

Next, distinguish the preserved deterministic validation from build/index.json. The validator record remains authoritative for its exact command and result; this walkthrough does not replace it with a worker assertion. build/index.json is generated projection output from the authored product sources; it is useful for inspecting the projection, but it is not semantic source, validator authority, approval, or a publication pointer. A later projection result must not replace preserved validation evidence or turn an unobserved result into a claim.

Then, distinguish reader evidence from independent review. Reader evidence records what a reader observed while following a named journey and has its own owner and trace. Independent review is a separate record, with its own reviewer, route, owner, and trace, that assesses the product conclusion. Neither record self-certifies the other, and neither reader or reviewer conclusion becomes a platform-owned execution or transition attestation. Keep those ownership boundaries visible when the task is handed off.

Finally, carry the evidence into the candidate-only boundary. A candidate is a bounded product package that can be examined while its facts remain unresolved; it is not evidence that a transition occurred. The contributor stops after recording the product evidence and does not infer a missing release fact from the page, registry, projection, reader result, or review result.

Candidate-Only Boundary

Candidate-only means parked for review within the product evidence boundary. A candidate is not publication, promotion, creation or movement of a release pointer, or rollback. It also does not imply approval, scheduling, activation, or a write to a live directory. Those actions have separate owners and are not performed by this walkthrough. The reader must keep prior-version identity, rollback-target identity, and rollback availability unavailable whenever no authoritative record establishes them; a null or missing fact is not a license to invent one.

The sealed source authority, deterministic validation, generated projection, reader evidence, and independent review each answer a different question. They can support a bounded product conclusion about this documentation route, but they do not enlarge the source list or create transition authority. The safe finish is therefore a synchronized page and reader contract with every gap visible, while publication, promotion, pointer, and rollback remain outside the task.

Acceptance Checks

• AC-1: Verify authority revision 2026-08-08, the exact three logical source IDs, and employee_may_modify: false; match all three IDs to public-safe registry records. Treat this as read-only source provenance and do not copy private governance material or add a source.

• AC-2: Distinguish the deterministic validation result from generated build/index.json. Keep the projection separate from semantic source, validator authority, approval, and publication-pointer status; do not use generated output to replace preserved validation evidence.

• AC-3: Identify reader evidence and independent review as separate records with separate ownership. Report product conclusions only within this walkthrough and keep platform-owned execution and transition attestations outside reader or reviewer self-certification.

• AC-4: State that a candidate-only package is not publication, promotion, release-pointer creation, or rollback. Preserve unavailable prior-version and rollback facts as unavailable, and confirm that this task exercises no approval, scheduling, activation, live-directory, or other transition action.