Core documentation

15. Pin a minimal verdict object in v0.1

Specification metadata

adr: 15
title: Pin a minimal verdict object in v0.1
status: accepted
date: 2026-06-16

§Context

The round-2 end-user lens (EU2-1/2/3) showed that every guarantee the developer experiences — why a commit was blocked, which server and trust tier flagged it, advisory-vs-gating, a guaranteed next-step, and whether a guardian silently went dark — lived only in the deferred spec/09 outer-seam stub. Freezing and certifying the inner-seam contracts first risked the first host inventing that experience ad hoc, with later contracts forced to accommodate it.

§Decision

Pin a minimal normative verdict object in v0.1 (schemas/verdict.schema.json, host obligations “Verdict object”). The host MUST, for any evaluation it surfaces:

stamp each finding with authenticated provenance (diagnostic.source) + the server’s trustTier, and mark its disposition (gating | advisory);
guarantee a nextStep on every gating finding — from the server’s fix/help/ codeDescription.href, or a host-synthesized fallback;
report coverage with a degraded list naming any server that failed open, was quarantined, or skewed.

Spec the shape, not the UI. The rest of the outer seam (harness-facing method surface, controls, rendering) stays deferred to spec/09.

§Consequences

“Failure names the next step” and “a dark guardian is visible to the user” become host guarantees backed by a wire shape, before contracts freeze.
The host owns synthesizing a nextStep when a server provides none.
Rendering remains outer-seam; only the data contract is pinned now.