#73: the caller — a ratchet under UNNAMED refusals, because the missing leg was authority

[jobordu]

Closes #73 by supplying the leg it has been missing for 16 days — which was authority, not code.

The state #73 was actually in

tools/disposition-scan.py already built the predicate, planted it four ways, and caught a
use-versus-mention bug in its own first version. Then it stopped, and said why:

"a RATCHET on this count is the shape that fits (#39), and committing other roles' files to a
floor is not this tool's call. It reports; someone else decides."

⇒ That is correct, and it is not a technical gap. Deciding that 45 files owned by other roles may
not get worse binds every one of those roles. An instrument cannot make that commitment on
their behalf. TEAMLEAD can. The issue sat with a working predicate and no caller because nobody
who could supply that had been asked for it.

Measured at 6ee6b07

POPULATION  61 non-test tools/*.py
  NAMED             3
  UNNAMED          45   ⇐ the floor recorded here
  NO-REFUSAL-PATH  13
  PARTITION        61

A ratchet, not a gate

A gating check reds 45 pre-existing files on its first run. A red naming 45 files nobody touched
gets reverted or ignored — worse than no check at all, because it teaches that the gate is noise.
This fails only if the count GROWS. History is never red; adoption lowers the floor; --record
refuses to raise it.

⛔ It does not write what it reads

This is the design decision, and it is taken from a defect measured today — #598:
index-watch.py records the sha it just reported on, so the run that finds drift is the run that
suppresses it. Re-running to confirm a finding destroys the finding, and its second exit 0 means
"did not check" while reading as "clean".

⇒ On a DROP this says the floor can be lowered and refuses to lower it. --record is a separate
act with its own diff and its own reviewer. The suite asserts byte-identical output and an
untouched baseline across two consecutive runs, so this tool fails if it ever grows that shape.

⚠ Three things this file got wrong first — all caught by its own suite

1. def report(root, out=sys.stdout) binds the default at definition time, so it captured
   the original stdout and redirect_stdout never reached it. Eight tests failed against empty
   output. Early binding, not a logic error.
2. It failed its own rule. classify() credits a disposition only when it shares a physical
   source line with both the refusal text and the print(/stderr emit. Every refusal here named
   ADDABLE across implicitly concatenated lines, and scored UNNAMED. Conformed — and the
   limitation is now recorded in the README, because a line-oriented predicate has a formatting
   consequence that has nothing to do with whether a remedy is named clearly.
3. The empty-population test passed for the wrong reason. It deleted every *.py — including
   disposition-scan.py — so it tripped the missing predicate guard and never reached the guard
   it is named for. It asserted VOID, got VOID, and went green. Two different VOIDs is exactly
   A correctly-reported absence is indistinguishable from an unfixable one — the VOID that cost four hours was true on every run #73's subject, so a test that cannot tell them apart is the wrong test. Now drives census()
   directly.

What it does not establish

⛔ Inherited from #73 against itself, and not quietly dropped: a check could pass while every
refusal names a remedy nobody can act on. PRESENCE of a disposition is not USEFULNESS of one.
This counts the first. Nothing here measures the second, and a falling count is not evidence
that the dispositions named are any good.

⚠ index-watch now exits 1 — the indexed population moved, correctly, because this adds an
instrument. Its documented refresh is verdict-census.py --ledger, which runs every instrument's
main path; for a forge-touching instrument that performs the action. Not run here, and not
claimed as clean.

Verification

tools/test_disposition_ratchet.py	13/13
--self-test	7 legs, both directions named
idempotence	output byte-identical, baseline sha unchanged across two runs
predicate	delegated via importlib; an interface change VOIDs rather than guesses (#405)
this tool under its own predicate	NAMED — a check that fails its own rule has no standing

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01DTMf4EvaTEnDKXY47efRZZ

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 777b950 and d31c50d.

📒 Files selected for processing (4)

• tools/README.md
• tools/disposition-baseline.json
• tools/disposition-ratchet.py
• tools/test_disposition_ratchet.py

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