Operator Decision-Gap Analysis

Purpose and scope

This public-safe page is a bounded Internal Knowledge aid for Auto-Orch operators and reviewers. It explains which narrow decision a candidate-handoff preflight observation can support, which evidence must be inspected, and which single decision aid remains missing. It is read-only guidance: a declaration, expected result, or absent fact is not an execution attestation, product defect, approval, repair target, or transition authority. The sealed authority revision is 2026-08-08; its three public-safe source IDs are source.naming-decision, source.documentation-boundary, and source.platform-delivery-contract, with employee_may_modify: false.

Preflight observation

The current handoff manifest declares the documentation-validation route as python3 -B tests/check_documentation_smoke.py with expected exit code 1. That declaration is not evidence that the command ran. The supplied reader-gate observation instead records one attempt of journey.resolve-reader-journey-harness-decision using python3 tests/check_documentation_smoke.py, exit status 1, and observed Operation not permitted because the evaluator environment denied localhost socket access. The no--B observation must not be silently normalized into the allowlisted command. It describes an environment-specific evaluation blocker; it does not establish a recurring product harness defect, retry count, affected claim, or repair target.

Supported decision

The evidence supports one bounded documentation decision: keep the candidate-only handoff unresolved and identify a permitted follow-up evaluation as the missing evidence route, while preserving the original observation. A later record must retain the journey ID, exact allowlisted command, exit status, observed output, steps, source references, and acceptance traces. This page does not run that evaluation, select a repair, approve a handoff, or authorize any workflow transition. A product-contract check can support internal consistency only; it cannot substitute for a platform-owned execution or gate attestation.

Uncovered decision aid

One decision aid remains uncovered: an authoritative recurrence-and-impact record that distinguishes a product repair route from an environment-specific evaluation blocker. It must supply the journey ID and exact command, exit status and observed output, retry count or other recurrence evidence, relevant source references, affected work or claim, and the owning product, evaluator, or platform route. Those facts are unresolved. Do not infer a defect, affected claim, owner, or repair recommendation from the single localhost-denied attempt, from an expected exit code, or from a result produced by another route. The synchronized reader-journey manifest records the three required reader journeys and their acceptance traces.

Read-only boundary

This page records product-side evidence boundaries only. It does not modify the authority record, source registry, manifests, validators, tests, workflow state, candidate state, release records, publication pointers, or platform-owned controls. It does not infer or authorize a defect, approval, workflow transition, publication, promotion, release-pointer action, rollback, scheduling action, activation, or live-directory write. Keep unresolved facts and candidate-only status unchanged until separately governed evidence and authority exist.

Acceptance checks

• AC-1 — Supported decision: The reader can identify the declared and observed preflight routes, preserve their exact command and result fields, and state the one unresolved candidate-only decision without treating a declaration as execution proof.
• AC-2 — Uncovered decision aid: The reader can name the recurrence, causality, product-impact, affected-work, and owning-route evidence still required to distinguish an environment blocker from a product repair route, without inventing any missing fact.
• AC-3 — Read-only boundary: The reader can confirm that this page changes no workflow, authority, release, publication, pointer, scheduling, rollback, platform-attestation, or live-directory state and grants no transition authority.