canon: codify preflight as a hard, enforced takeoff gate by git-repo-auth[bot] · Pull Request #267 · klappy/klappy.dev

git-repo-auth · 2026-07-08T17:32:42Z

Preflight as a hard takeoff gate

Makes the preflight checklist a pass/fail gate, not a habit. Five items — clock, canon reachable, tools present, tier correct, boarded — checked live every flight before any work, each green only when observed this flight (never from cache/memory). Fail any item → the flight does not take off; it aborts and reports the specific failure (cannot reach X — aborting) rather than simulating the result from recall. A cleared flight declares its preflight result at the top of its first substantive message; work reported without a passed, declared preflight is invalid. This is the START gate; recording-as-landing is the END gate. Both hard.

Closes the failure observed across the fleet all week: dispatched Code flights carried zero MCP connectors, could not reach canon, and flew anyway on recall.

What's here

canon/constraints/preflight-checklist-takeoff-gate.md (tier-1) — authoritative rule: five items, declaration, abort behavior, two-surface enforcement.
canon/bootstrap/model-operating-contract.md — new The Preflight — The Hard Takeoff Gate section (binding procedure).
canon/bootstrap/generic-boarding-pass.md + boarding-pass.md — the gate in the paste-ready project + account instructions; update discipline names it boarding-relevant law (re-paste settings).
DISPATCH.md (repo root) — binds every dispatched flight to the gate.
scripts/validate-preflight-declaration.py + soft preflight-declaration CI job — mechanical presence check for the declaration on flight artifacts ( opt-in). Per audit-gates-are-spawned-agent-sessions, this is the literal-presence half only; whether a declaration is true remains a spawned-agent judgment.
Governance markers — CHANGELOG 0.40.0 + release note. Behavior-affecting posture recalibration within E0010; no epoch bump.

Verification

Own preflight passed and declared before work (clock, canon hash ntc39x, tools, tier, boarded).
Frontmatter validator: ✅ on new docs. Retrieval-readiness: 0 new findings. Validator unit tests: pass. Workflow YAML parses. validate-preflight-declaration.py self-tested (passes good, fails missing-items/disposition, skips unmarked).
oddkit_challenge (execution) + oddkit_gate PASS 2/2 run on the draft.

Note for review

The dispatch referenced a BOARDING.md tier-check and an existing recording-as-landing rule/CI; neither exists in main. I grounded the work in the canon that does exist (operating contract, flight-deck-model, oddkit_preflight, governance-change-discipline) and wrote the declaration CI as the START-gate mirror of the recording-as-landing pattern. Flagging so the naming can be reconciled if those surfaces live on an unmerged branch.

🤖 Assisted by a dispatched first-officer flight under the E0010 flight-deck model.

Note

Medium Risk
Behavior-affecting governance for every session and dispatched flight; wrong adoption could block legitimate work or create declaration theater, though CI remains informational until hard mode.

Overview
Canon 0.40.0 turns E0010 preflight from habit into a pass/fail START gate: five live checks (clock, canon, tools, tier, boarded), mandatory declaration before substantive work, and fail-closed abort (cannot reach X — aborting) instead of flying from recall.

New surfaces: tier-1 preflight-checklist-takeoff-gate constraint, root DISPATCH.md for dispatched flights, operating-contract section, and updated paste-ready boarding-pass / generic-boarding-pass text (maintainers must re-paste settings).

Enforcement (soft CI): scripts/validate-preflight-declaration.py plus a preflight-declaration job in canon-quality.yml that scans opt-in flight artifacts () for a well-formed five-item declaration; journal/** is added to workflow path filters. Unit tests cover frontmatter not satisfying declaration keywords. Honesty of a passed preflight stays a spawned-agent judgment, not regex.

Governance markers: changelog entry, release note, and an example ledger flight record demonstrating the pattern.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 0f6b79a. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Make the preflight checklist a pass/fail takeoff gate rather than a habit: five items (clock, canon reachable, tools present, tier correct, boarded) checked live every flight before any work, each green only when observed this flight. Fail any item -> abort with an honest 'cannot reach X -- aborting', never fly from cache. A cleared flight declares its preflight result at the top of its first substantive message; work reported without a passed, declared preflight is invalid. START gate; recording-as-landing is the END gate. - canon/constraints/preflight-checklist-takeoff-gate.md (tier-1, authoritative) - model-operating-contract.md: 'The Preflight -- The Hard Takeoff Gate' - generic-boarding-pass.md + boarding-pass.md: gate in project + account text - DISPATCH.md: binds every dispatched flight to the gate - scripts/validate-preflight-declaration.py + soft CI job (mechanical presence check; truth-of-declaration remains a spawned-agent judgment per audit-gates-are-spawned-agent-sessions) - governance markers: CHANGELOG 0.40.0 + release note Grounded in canon/bootstrap/model-operating-contract, flight-deck-model, oddkit_preflight, and governance-change-discipline. Preflight passed and declared; oddkit_challenge + oddkit_gate (PASS 2/2) run on the draft.

github-actions · 2026-07-08T17:32:53Z

Canon Quality — Preflight Declaration ✅

Soft report for the START gate (klappy://canon/constraints/preflight-checklist-takeoff-gate). 61 file(s) scanned, 1 flight artifact(s) checked. Never blocks — informational until the gate flips to hard after the observation cycle.

All flight artifacts carry a well-formed preflight declaration (five items + disposition), or none are marked yet.

_{Validator: scripts/validate-preflight-declaration.py · Constraint: klappy://canon/constraints/preflight-checklist-takeoff-gate · Run: #317}

github-actions · 2026-07-08T17:32:55Z

Canon Quality — Frontmatter Schema ✅

All 49 file(s) in writings/ conform to klappy://canon/meta/frontmatter-schema.

_{Validator: scripts/validate-frontmatter.py · Canon: klappy://canon/constraints/frontmatter-validation-before-merge · Run: #317}

github-actions · 2026-07-08T17:32:56Z

Canon Quality — Homepage Surfacing ✅

49 essay(s) scanned. Soft report — never blocks; the hard field gate is the Frontmatter Schema job.

All published essays resolve to the homepage feed.

_{Report: scripts/surfacing-report.py · Canon: klappy://canon/constraints/frontmatter-validation-before-merge}

github-actions · 2026-07-08T17:32:56Z

Canon Quality — P0010 Retrieval-Readiness ⚠️

Soft report for klappy://canon/constraints/retrieval-disclosure-contract. 686 files scanned. Never blocks — informational until the corpus is ready to enforce.

Blocking-class findings: 15 (structural fields the contract would filter on)
Warnings: 0 (kind resolves to unknown)
Informational: 13 (exempt templates/archive/drafts)

Kind distribution: {'essays': 51, 'canon': 232, 'apocrypha': 38, 'docs': 299, 'journals': 60, 'unknown': 6}
Kind source: {'path': 551, 'frontmatter': 129, 'none': 6} (frontmatter-primary, path-secondary)
Default-include visibility: 582 visible, 104 hidden (journals/apocrypha/unknown)

By rule: {'audience-invalid': 2, 'exposure-missing': 5, 'tier-missing': 5, 'tier-invalid': 7, 'fm-missing': 3, 'kind-unresolvable': 6}

These are not schema violations (see the Frontmatter Schema job for those on writings/). They are corpus-readiness signals for the retrieval contract: invalid/missing audience, exposure, tier, and docs whose kind cannot be resolved. Fix in a corpus-cleanup PR before the contract flips to enforcing. See the retrieval-readiness-findings artifact for the full list.

_{Validator: scripts/audit-retrieval-readiness.py · Constraint: klappy://canon/constraints/retrieval-disclosure-contract · Run: #317}

github-actions · 2026-07-08T17:32:57Z

Canon Quality — `oddkit_audit` ✅

No dead klappy:// references or legacy link patterns found in writings/. 51 files scanned.

_{Spec: klappy://docs/oddkit/specs/oddkit-audit · Workflow: .github/workflows/canon-quality.yml · Run: #317}

…anding) First flight artifact under the new gate — carries the START-gate preflight declaration the CI check verifies and closes the END gate on the same flight.

cursor

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes using default effort and found 1 potential issue.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 0f6b79a. Configure here.}

cursor · 2026-07-08T17:50:54Z

+            path, "missing-disposition",
+            "flight artifact declares no preflight disposition — expected "
+            "'cleared for takeoff' (passed) or 'aborting' (aborted).",
+        ))


Abort substring passes disposition

Medium Severity

The disposition check treats any occurrence of abort as sufficient, without word boundaries. A marked flight artifact can mention abort policy or quoted abort text elsewhere while omitting an actual pass/fail outcome, yet still satisfy the disposition rule and avoid missing-disposition.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 0f6b79a. Configure here.}

git-repo-auth Bot assigned klappy Jul 8, 2026

ledger: self-record the preflight-takeoff-gate flight (recording-as-l…

480b0ec

…anding) First flight artifact under the new gate — carries the START-gate preflight declaration the CI check verifies and closes the END gate on the same flight.

cursor Bot reviewed Jul 8, 2026

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Comment thread scripts/validate-preflight-declaration.py

Fix preflight unreadable opt-in handling

0bfd98d

cursor Bot reviewed Jul 8, 2026

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Comment thread scripts/validate-preflight-declaration.py

Comment thread scripts/validate-preflight-declaration.py Outdated

Fix preflight declaration validation

8b7f102

cursor Bot reviewed Jul 8, 2026

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Comment thread .github/workflows/canon-quality.yml

Trigger canon quality for journal artifacts

0f6b79a

cursor Bot reviewed Jul 8, 2026

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canon: codify preflight as a hard, enforced takeoff gate#267

canon: codify preflight as a hard, enforced takeoff gate#267
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Preflight as a hard takeoff gate

What's here

Verification

Note for review

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github-actions Bot commented Jul 8, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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Canon Quality — Preflight Declaration ✅

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Canon Quality — Frontmatter Schema ✅

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Canon Quality — Homepage Surfacing ✅

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Canon Quality — P0010 Retrieval-Readiness ⚠️

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Canon Quality — oddkit_audit ✅

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Abort substring passes disposition

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git-repo-auth Bot commented Jul 8, 2026 •

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Canon Quality — `oddkit_audit` ✅