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Remove citings of the owner from the library (comments, docs, changelog, messages, tests) - #65

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@sym-bot sym-bot commented Oct 17, 2026 •

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Owner

The library no longer cites its owner. Each decision and rule is stated as a fact; none says who gave it. Behaviour is unchanged.

What changed

  • Comments, docs, the CHANGELOG, test headers and test titles lose "founder ruling", "the founder's bug report", "founder canon", the quoted words of the owner and one local path that held a user name. A dated decision keeps its date: "(founder ruling 2026-08-04)" is now "(decision 2026-08-04)".
  • Both copies of the sym skill (.claude/skills/sym/SKILL.md, .agents/skills/sym/SKILL.md, still identical) no longer say "The founder is solo".
  • One shipped string changes: the IdentityHaltError text carried the owner's sentence verbatim. It now states the same rule in plain words and keeps the cause and the remedy. tests/identity-halt.test.js asserts the new wording.
  • New guard, tests/no-owner-citings.test.js: scans git ls-files (a directory walk when there is no .git) and fails on a ruling, a bug report, quoted words, a dated attribution or a personal name. "founder" is deny-by-default: each use must be covered by the allowed vocabulary (identifiers, SYM_FOUNDER_ANCHOR, the founder key/root/anchor role, nodes named 'founder', the detector's keywords). tests/fixtures/**, the lockfile and binaries are skipped.

Kept (vocabulary, not citings)

founderAction, _meta.founderAction, detectFounderAction and the words that describe that signal in lib/mesh-agent.js; SYM_FOUNDER_ANCHOR; the founder key/root/anchor role (CHANGELOG, SECURITY.md, docs/AUTHORITY-OPERATOR.md, lib/memory-store.js, tests/earned-authority-node.test.js); the task owner 'founder' in bin/sym-daemon.js; the node name in docs/AUTHORITY-OPERATOR.md; the source 'founder' in tests/audit-delivery-authorship.test.js.

Hits by the search pattern, by top-level directory

before after
.agents 1 0
.claude 1 0
CHANGELOG.md 13 6
SECURITY.md 1 1
bin 1 1
docs 5 3
lib 35 22
tests 18 2, plus 31 in the guard (its vocabulary samples and definitions)
total 75 35, plus 31 in the guard

Proof that only comments, docs and strings changed

Every changed JS file (26) was parsed before and after; with string values masked the syntax trees are identical. The string values that differ: the three pieces of the halt message, the regex that asserts it, and one test title ((founder ruling, #26) is now (#26)).

Beyond the search pattern

The plain search missed: a quoted instruction attributed to "user" (tests/product-name.test.js), two "CTO ruling" notes (lib/core/cmb-signing.js, lib/core/record-shape.js), a "CTO measured" and a "CTO gate" note (lib/core/record-shape.js, lib/node.js), and a scratch path holding a user name (tests/core-secure-final-review.test.js). All are rewritten. Left as they are: docs/role-vs-agent-id.md (author and reviewer roles of a design note), "Flagged to the CTO" in lib/core/cmb-encoder.js (a question, not a decision) and the reviewer rulings credited to codex. Against the tree before this change the guard reports every citing, including these.

Results

  • Changed test files, run singly: all pass. tests/no-owner-citings.test.js: 28 pass.
  • Full suite (--test-concurrency=2): 1679 tests, 1675 pass, 0 fail, 4 skipped (as before). Integration: 6 of 6. scripts/gate-two-stock-nodes.mjs: passed. npm audit: 0 vulnerabilities.
  • Guard check: against the tree before this change it reports every citing (44 lines); with a citing planted in lib/room-ownership.js it fails and names the line.

…and tests

State each decision and rule as a fact instead of naming who gave it. Comments, docs, the CHANGELOG,
test headers and test titles lose "founder ruling", "the founder's bug report", the quoted words of the
owner and one local path that held a user name; dated decisions keep their date.

One string changes: the IdentityHaltError text no longer carries the owner's sentence verbatim. It
states the same rule in plain words and keeps the cause and the remedy, and tests/identity-halt.test.js
asserts the new wording. No code changes: the AST of every changed JS file is identical with strings
masked, and the only string values that differ are that message, its assertion and one test title.

Kept as vocabulary: founderAction, detectFounderAction, SYM_FOUNDER_ANCHOR, the founder key/root/anchor
role, and the nodes, task owners and sources named 'founder'.
tests/no-owner-citings.test.js scans git ls-files (a directory walk when there is no .git, as in an
export) and fails on a ruling, a bug report, quoted words, a dated attribution or a personal name.
"founder" is deny-by-default: every occurrence must be covered by the allowed vocabulary (identifiers,
env vars, the founder key/root/anchor role, nodes named 'founder', the detector's keywords) or a
per-file allowance. tests/fixtures/**, package-lock.json and binaries are skipped.

The scanner is exercised on a planted tree: each kind of citing is caught, the vocabulary passes, and
a citing on a line that also holds vocabulary is still caught. Against the tree before the rewrite the
guard reports every citing, including the ones the plain search missed.
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chatgpt-codex-connector Bot commented Oct 17, 2026 •

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Codex Review Summary

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Review Status Commit Review trigger
📝 Code Review ✅ Completed 2026-10-17T12:32:16.844725Z ed0ebe3 PR opened
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