[codex] 0.18: decontaminate packet planning and repair the substrate

[TheGreenCedar]

Outcome

Horizon A removes benchmark-shaped packet policy and repairs the trusted substrate without claiming that CodeStory 0.18 is useful or releasable yet.

The packet path now forwards ordinary wording unchanged to generic retrieval, admits at most sixteen stable identities from descriptor metadata before candidate hydration, exact-hydrates only those identities, and reports bounded source-backed evidence with answer_sufficiency: not_asserted. Repository-derived packet compilation is deliberately absent from this PR and remains owned by #2106.

Closes #2105
Refs #2098
Refs #2099
Refs #2104
Refs #2106

Base: a41e605ea01e9e2c8b400eb5ee5456efd05f060e

What changed

Packet decontamination and bounded admission

• Removed task-class steering, prompt taxonomies, answer-shape obligations, synthesized claims, evidence carriers/roles, benchmark-family deletion passes, and basename-only identity authority.
• Kept one prompt-blind interim route: the unchanged question and caller-supplied typed free queries enter generic retrieval. Typed exact probes constrain identity resolution only.
• Added descriptor-only packet admission using stable identity, path, versioned retrieval score, and a conservative source bound.
• Shared one packet-wide session across exact probes, initial retrieval, subqueries, and continuations. It admits exact typed selectors first, then retrieval descriptors, and stops at sixteen identities or 16 KiB of reserved source.
• Deferred all candidate source, graph-neighbourhood, node-body, and file-record hydration until after admission. Missing identities or source bounds fail closed.
• Replaced prompt-derived continuation text with stable typed selectors and objective count, byte, source, or ambiguity reasons.
• Enforced the complete public 16-row / 16-KiB response limit with a typed budget fallback. Public output never asserts answer sufficiency.

Publication, retrieval, and storage

• Added immutable core generations and pinned CoreReadSession reads.
• Made CorePublishTransaction return ordinary failure only before pointer replacement; post-replacement durability uncertainty is a committed result.
• Repaired incremental copy-forward and semantic-contract publication on immutable generations.
• Added bounded lexical deltas, reconciled incremental timing, observational cache inventory, and compact rehydrate through the generation pointer.

Explicit verification and installed timing

• Kept verify_indexed_direct_calls as a separately invoked advanced surface with automatic routing disabled.
• Moved call-path grammar, validation, proof projection, and shared result ownership into runtime/contracts; CLI and MCP remain adapters.
• Kept compact proof output at 4 KiB, fail closed on full output, and report provenance unavailable until Serve real proof provenance artifacts behind a capability registry #2104.
• Added cold core-only preparation with retry_same_request, read-only tool annotations, and proof-enabled November 2024 transport coverage.
• Replaced timing aliases with literal InstalledAgentTimingV1 intervals. Reused comparator rows remain timing-ineligible.

How to review

Start with:

• crates/codestory-contracts/src/compilation.rs
• crates/codestory-retrieval/src/candidate.rs and query.rs
• crates/codestory-runtime/src/agent/packet_candidate.rs
• crates/codestory-runtime/src/agent/retrieval_primary.rs
• crates/codestory-runtime/src/agent/orchestrator.rs
• crates/codestory-runtime/src/agent/packet_compiler.rs
• crates/codestory-store/src/core_session.rs
• crates/codestory-contracts/src/call_path_public.rs
• scripts/lib/packet-generalization-boundary.mjs
• docs/architecture/packet-generalization.md

The critical boundary is:

question + typed probes
  -> unchanged generic query plan
  -> descriptor-only retrieval
  -> packet-wide admission
  -> admitted candidate hydration
  -> bounded interim evidence projection

No step after generic retrieval may inspect prompt terms or assign answer roles.

Verification

Focused source checks completed on exact head
62bc6f3f8d1d7291c6258f2639efc912cfe06bba:

• cargo clippy --workspace --lib --locked -- -D warnings — passed
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-contracts --lib — 123 passed
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-agent --lib --tests — 76 passed
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-retrieval --lib — 403 passed, 3 ignored
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-runtime --lib — 824 passed, 4 ignored
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-store --lib — 282 passed
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-cli --lib — 456 passed, 1 ignored
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-cli --features proof-qualification-support --lib — 462 passed, 1 ignored
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-cli --test architecture_contracts — 56 passed
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-cli --features proof-qualification-support --test architecture_contracts — 57 passed
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-cli --test stdio_protocol_contracts — 66 passed
• cargo test --locked -p codestory-cli --test cli_golden_path — 18 passed
• packet generalization boundary — 32 tests passed; live scan passed across 102 production packet files
• routing conformance and qualification contracts — 41 tests passed
• installed A/B analyzer and timing contracts — 189 tests passed
• plugin static and skill syntax — passed in required exact-head CI
• documentation links — 86 files and 318 links passed
• workflow policy, cargo fmt --all -- --check, and git diff --check — passed

Independent adversarial review accepted exact head
62bc6f3f8d1d7291c6258f2639efc912cfe06bba against the named Horizon A
boundary matrix, and every required PR check passed. Broad source
stabilization, performance qualification, and product acceptance deliberately
do not run on this support PR.

Non-claims

• No evidence compiler or product-usefulness claim.
• No 0.18.0 version bump, calibration, source stabilization, qualification, promotion, tag, or release.
• No unseen accuracy claim from the historical 18-task, Dart, Q2, or 45/54 results.
• No Redis p50/p95, installed ABBA, sealed product acceptance, or packaging claim.
• No automatic verifier routing or new proof domain.

Those gates remain in #2106 and the 0.18 qualification plan. The published comparator remains 0.17.5.

[TheGreenCedar]

Horizon A is accepted at exact head 62bc6f3f8d1d7291c6258f2639efc912cfe06bba against base a41e605ea01e9e2c8b400eb5ee5456efd05f060e.

Independent adversarial review found no counterexample in the frozen boundary matrix. It directly covered renamed and encoded prompt steering, SQL synthesis and ranking, basename authority, magic evidence roles, pre-hydration admission of the seventeenth identity, unadmitted graph endpoints, the exact 16 KiB packet boundary, post-pointer committed/unconfirmed publication semantics, literal timing intervals, and the proof-enabled November 2024 transport path.

All focused exact-head checks and required PR checks passed. This accepts the Horizon A foundation only. It makes no unseen-accuracy, performance, product-qualification, version, calibration, packaging, promotion, or release claim. Those remain downstream of #2106 and the accepted 0.18 qualification plan.

The packaged CodeStory MCP was unavailable to the independent reviewer, so that review used ordinary source inspection and focused local tests.