[amaybaum]

Owner decision (amaybaum, Claude Code session chat, 2026-11-04):

Suspend the proposed removal operation. Do not prepare or execute a bulk-deletion PR. … Classify verification status explicitly. Distinguish independently verified results, partially verified results, exploratory evidence, and known-invalid findings. … Keep existing research records on main. Preserve positive results, negative results, inconclusive experiments, failed approaches, and supporting evidence. … Amend AGENTS.md accordingly. The requirement for complete verification should apply to claims presented as established findings—not to the storage of research evidence.

The owner's recommended policy:

main is the authoritative research record, not merely a collection of completed scientific results. Research evidence may be retained regardless of whether its programme is complete, provided that its provenance, assumptions, verification status and limitations are accurately documented. A claim may be presented as established only when its supporting evidence meets the required verification standard. Incomplete, negative and inconclusive results must not be represented as established scientific conclusions. Prefer annotation and correction over deletion. Removal requires a specific justification, dependency audit and separate owner authorization.

Change. One file, AGENTS.md. It adds a new section at the end, §A.46 "Research records on main and established claims", in two commits:

• 3a8920a8 adds the section;
• c97de3dd applies the independent review.

What the section says:

• Opening: main is the authoritative research record. Research evidence may stay whether or not its programme is complete, provided its provenance, assumptions, verification status and limitations are stated accurately. §A.42 item 5 and §A.28 limit what is added to main; they are no ground for removing what is already there.
• 1. Established claims: a claim is established only when its evidence meets the standard for its kind (§A.42; the Code Review Rules, "Keep verification layers distinct").
• 2. No promotion by retention: results that do not meet item 1's standard are not presented as established, and keeping or landing a record strengthens no claim.
• 3. Status is stated: a record distinguishes independently verified, partially verified, exploratory and known-invalid results. For a frozen record, this goes in a mutable record on main that cites it.
• 4. Correct the conclusion, keep the evidence: an unsupported conclusion is corrected in place, or by a new native round for a frozen record.
• 5. Removal: for research evidence, annotation and correction are preferred to deletion. A manuscript claim that loses its support follows §A.27 and §A.30. Removal needs a specific justification, a dependency audit and separate owner authorization.

For the owner to confirm (review finding F6). The owner's text says "Incomplete, negative and inconclusive results must not be represented as established". Read literally, that would stop a verified negative result from ever counting as established, which conflicts with item 1 and with §A.29 ("A route closed by controlled computation is progress"). Item 2 therefore says "… that do not meet item 1's standard". The owner can restore the literal wording if preferred.

Review.

• The first review, at 3a8920a8, returned CHANGES REQUIRED with two blocking findings:
  • F1: the conflict with §A.42 item 5 and §A.28;
  • F2: correcting frozen records.
• c97de3dd applies F1–F3 and nits F4–F9.
• A delta review of c97de3dd comes before the merge request.

Related.

• governance: AGENTS.md §A.42 item 8 (trace off-main references) and §A.46 (research records and established claims) #1097 (§A.42 item 8) edits a different part of the file, and the two PRs merge without conflict.
• evidence(§A.42, landing 1 of 3): bring the MR-1, PC-1 and F2-1 branch histories into main's ancestry (no file change) #1098, evidence(§A.42, landing 2 of 3): copy the branch-only sources that records on main rely on #1099 and evidence(§A.42, landing 3 of 3): land #1009's three SUBSTATE-1 Lean modules #1100 stay open and unchanged until their disposition is reviewed separately.
• No research file is removed or edited.

Checks.

• Voice, claims, duplicate and placement checks pass.
• Added lines are 100 characters or fewer.
• No tool pins this text.
• No closing keywords in the commit messages or this description.

Gates.

• Independent exact-head review.
• Green CI.
• Owner approval naming the exact head SHA.
• Merge commit only.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_013T6pfKuv5mi3MXtKjH2tZb

[amaybaum]

Closing without merging, combined into #1097 (owner request, amaybaum, Claude Code session chat, 2026-11-04: "Why do we need 2 separate open PR's for AGENTS.md file changes?", then "Yes please do").

• §A.46's two commits (3a8920a8, c97de3dd) are cherry-picked onto governance: AGENTS.md §A.42 item 8 (trace off-main references) and §A.46 (research records and established claims) #1097's branch as 0ad4bd0f and 25c7d8c0.
• The §A.46 text at 25c7d8c0 equals this PR's head.
• The delta review's nits N1 and N2 follow at 8fae35fa.
• This branch is kept at c97de3dd.

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