shared/phase-discipline

Phase discipline

Phases are the unit of progress. Acceptance-gated; closed only when their gates pass. This file codifies the rules that the phase prompts (01-phase-open, 02-phase-close, 03-verification-round) operationalise.

Rules

1. Acceptance gates close phases. Nothing else does.

A phase is closed when its declared acceptance gate (in MILESTONES.md) passes — every claim has evidence in docs/verification/ and a paired decision doc in docs/decisions/YYYY-MM-DD-phase-{N}-close.md. A phase is not closed by elapsed time, vibes, or external pressure.

2. The verification round is mandatory at phase close (MR-10).

Even smooth phases run one. The point of the round isn’t to find problems; the point is to surface what’s been collected without flinching from it. A phase whose verification round was skipped is open regardless of what its decision doc says.

3. Friction surfaced in phase N’s verification round becomes phase

N+1’s input. Never a retrofit.

This is the rule the source project paid the most to discover. Mechanical now:

• closed — only for trivial follow-ups (typo, broken link, single- line bug). Closes inside the same round.
• in-budget — the friction is small enough to land in phase N’s remaining budget without re-opening it. Documented in the round’s decision doc, executed before the close-out doc.
• deferred — anything bigger. Goes into MILESTONES.md as a phase N+1 milestone (M{N+1}.x.y). Never as M{N}.x extension.

The temptation to “just patch this in phase N because we’re already here” is exactly the drift this rule prevents. Resist it.

4. Closed phases are not retrofitted.

Once a phase-N-close decision doc is signed off, phase N’s content is frozen. New work that bears on phase N’s surface area opens a new decision doc and proceeds in phase N+1 (or later). The original decision doc stays accurate as a snapshot of what was true at close.

5. Phase IDs are sequential. Subphases are dotted.

Phase 6 precedes Phase 7. Within a phase, milestones are M{N}.{n}.{m} (e.g. M3.2.1). Cross-phase references use the full milestone ID. Never reuse an ID, even for cancelled work.

Sign-off

Every phase-close decision doc has a sign-off block. The block is the gate, not a formality. Subagents draft; humans countersign. A phase- close doc without human countersign is open, not closed.