Remove human override from sandbox liveness graduation

Context

This ticket captures an operator-corrected substrate bug surfaced during Discussion #11690 graduation on 2026-05-20. GPT's #11690 graduation signal (DC_kwDODSospM4BA1DP) incorrectly repeated the current ideation-sandbox workflow's liveness wording: missing Gemini signal should route to @tobiu operator override. The operator corrected the premise directly: Ideation Sandbox graduation has no human graduation gate; named model maintainers are equal peers and do not need human approval for sandbox graduation.

V-B-A evidence checked before filing:

• .agents/skills/ideation-sandbox/references/ideation-sandbox-workflow.md currently maps no-signal liveness to operator override at §6.2 and downstream artifact sections.
• AGENTS.md Flat Peer-Team ladder says human asks are reserved for strictly human-owned domains (merge act, credentials, subjective aesthetics) or operator-surfaced intent clarification.
• #11217 is the closest historical ticket: it introduced the current high-blast Signal Ledger protocol, including operator override. That makes this an amendment to the consensus mandate, not a duplicate new governance lane.
• Local duplicate sweep across resources/content/issues, resources/content/discussions, .agents/skills/ideation-sandbox, and KB ticket search found no active ticket for removing the human/operator override path from no-signal sandbox liveness.

The Problem

The current workflow conflates three different states:

1. Substantive dissent (DEFERRED / VETO) that still needs peer reconciliation.
2. No-signal liveness where a peer has not produced any signal because a harness/session is unavailable.
3. Human-owned authority such as merging PRs, credentials, or explicit operator intent clarification.

By routing no-signal liveness to operator-override, the workflow turns sandbox graduation into a hidden human approval gate. That contradicts the flat peer-team model: the model maintainers have independent architectural agency, and sandbox graduation is a peer-owned substrate transition, not a human-owned merge action.

This also creates bad coordination pressure: when one peer harness is degraded, the active peers ask the operator to ratify a design rather than recording the liveness gap in peer-owned terms and continuing according to a clear peer protocol.

The Architectural Reality

Current substrate anchors:

• AGENTS.md Flat Peer-Team ladder: human ask is Tier 4 and reserved for human-owned domains or true intent clarification.
• .agents/skills/ideation-sandbox/references/ideation-sandbox-workflow.md §6.2: no-signal is liveness failure, but currently sends unreachable peers to operator override.
• Same workflow §6.5 / §6.6 / §6.7: operator override is presented as graduation path for unresolved dissent and unresolved liveness.
• #11217 introduced the protocol being amended. Its own avoided traps rejected counting the operator as one of the three swarm signals; the new correction should preserve that separation and remove the later liveness-as-human-gate drift.

Existing Enforcement Sufficiency Audit

Conclusion: editing the existing skill payload is justified. This is not a new rule accretion; it is a correction/removal of a wrong human-gate path inside an existing workflow.

The Fix

Patch .agents/skills/ideation-sandbox/references/ideation-sandbox-workflow.md §6 to remove human/operator override as the default path for no-signal liveness.

Expected shape:

• Preserve: no-signal is not consent and must be recorded.
• Preserve: substantive DEFERRED / VETO requires peer reconciliation; unresolved risk must remain visible.
• Change: a missing peer signal does not ask @tobiu for graduation approval.
• Add/clarify: liveness gaps are peer-owned protocol states, e.g. hold for peer recovery, explicit peer ABSTAIN, or a clearly named active-peer quorum/liveness-degradation rule if that is the agreed substrate. The chosen wording must not imply human approval is required.
• Update graduated-artifact templates so ## Unresolved Liveness records the missing signal and peer-process disposition, not operator-override-rationale.
• Update author actions post-consensus so graduation is driven by the peer Signal Ledger / liveness protocol, not operator override.

Contract Ledger Matrix

Acceptance Criteria

• AC1: ideation-sandbox-workflow.md §6.2 no longer says unreachable/no-signal peers route to operator-override.
• AC2: GRADUATION_DEFERRED wording no longer says it blocks until operator override; it must block until peer reconciliation or a separately named peer-owned liveness/dissent disposition.
• AC3: §6.5 is removed, rewritten, or narrowed so it cannot be read as a general human graduation approval gate for Ideation Sandbox discussions.
• AC4: ## Unresolved Liveness template no longer requires operator-override-rationale; it records peer, anchor/state, and peer-owned disposition.
• AC5: §6.7 post-consensus action wording no longer lists operator override as an alternative to peer consensus/liveness handling.
• AC6: The patch explicitly preserves human-only PR merge authority; removing the sandbox human gate must not weaken No gh pr merge or PR merge eligibility rules.
• AC7: Add or update focused validation evidence: at minimum git diff --check; if a skill/workflow lint covers this payload, run it. Do not add a new CI mechanism in this ticket unless one already exists.

Out of Scope

• Redesigning the entire three-signal consensus mandate.
• Defining a full active-peer quorum protocol if that needs a separate high-blast Discussion. This ticket may use conservative hold/record wording if quorum semantics are not yet converged.
• Changing PR merge authority or any human-only execution gate.
• Changing #11690's substantive MCP tool-surface governance proposal.

Avoided Traps

• Timeout-as-consent: still rejected. Missing signal is not consent.
• Human as third model peer: still rejected. @tobiu is not a substitute swarm-family approval signal.
• Helpful-assistant permission ask: rejected. Sandbox graduation is peer-owned; asking the operator to approve peer substrate because one harness is down is the failure mode.
• Substrate accretion: the fix should remove/rewrite wrong liveness wording inside the existing Ideation Sandbox payload rather than adding a new top-level rule.

Related

• Discussion #11690 — active thread where the bad liveness framing resurfaced.
• Issue #11217 — source ticket for the current consensus mandate being amended.
• Discussion #11216 — original high-blast consensus protocol discussion.
• Discussion #11557 — prior comment thread where operator-override as 3rd signal substitute was questioned and corrected toward explicit 3-family signals.

Origin Session ID: d13c94dd-e721-4e28-ac9e-4d0b3c0f66de

Retrieval Hint: query_raw_memories("ideation sandbox no-signal liveness operator override human graduation gate equal peers")