Give a disproved claim a home the next round will read

[ptr727]

Clears the A Home for a Disproved Finding cluster from TODO.md. Its Checked anchor was re-verified against develop at 756a53e before anything was written: the file still says the reviewer is sometimes factually wrong, still requires a decline to carry evidence, and still keeps its list of known non-working request paths, with nowhere to put the proof itself.

The gap

A decline that carries proof proves something about this tree, and GOVERNANCE.md "Every Finding Ends in an Action" is right that the thread is where it belongs while the pull request is open. Afterwards the thread is the wrong place. The pull request merges, the next round starts with no memory of the last, and the second occurrence of the same claim reaches a maintainer with no way to tell it from a first.

Disproved Claims is a new ### under the runbook, so the three declared ## sections in spec/files.json are unchanged. An entry names the claim, what was run or read to disprove it, the revision it was proved against, and what ends it. It is deliberately not a list to append to: an entry outliving the code it was proved against becomes a reason not to check, which is strictly worse than proving the claim again, so an entry whose subject moves is deleted by the change that moves it rather than edited to look current. Two guards ride with it. The record answers a repeated claim and never dismisses a new one, so a finding is judged on its merits first and matched second, and a reply carries the proof re-read rather than a pointer to a file the reviewer cannot open. And the entries are this repository's own, so a repository holding a copy carries the shape and deletes an entry whose subject it does not carry.

The three worked examples

keys_unsorted requires jq 1.6. A suppressed finding on #555 against the normalizer in repo-config/configure.sh, reasoning by analogy from the walk/1 failure #553 fixed. Re-run in this session rather than quoted from the thread, on jq-1.5-1-a5b5cbe in ubuntu:18.04, the build that reproduces walk/1:

jq-1.5-1-a5b5cbe
$ echo'{"b":1,"a":2}'| jq -c 'keys_unsorted'["b","a"]
$ echo'{"b":1}'| jq -c 'walk(.)'jq: error: walk/1 is not defined at <top-level>, line 1:jq: 1 compile error

The write-guard's fallback parse, from #601. Declined on the ground that the arm cannot execute, since punctuation_chars arrived in Python 3.6, the module uses f-strings throughout, and install.py refuses below 3.7. That is exactly the kind of disproof that expires, which is why the entry names the floor as what ends it. It also records that the finding earned a test case rather than a change, since only ValueError from unbalanced quoting reaches that path in practice and nothing covered it.

The bare-SHA design, from #602. This one came from this repository's own backlog rather than from a reviewer, and it is here because a rejected method costs the same to re-propose as a declined finding costs to re-derive, while a backlog has a place for a claim the tree contradicts and none for a method a measurement rejects. Over the 25 most recent merged pull requests the bare-SHA arm raised four references and all four were correct prose, and a path arm flagged 54 of 215 backticked candidates.

Both #601 and #602 are folded under disposition Amends "Record what was tested and against which revision, and delete an entry whose subject changes." They land as the second and third worked examples in the shipped section rather than as Settled bullets, because the entry ships in the same change.

Verification

• python3 scripts/prose_lint.py . --diff develop clean, markdownlint-cli2 clean on both files.
• python3 -m unittest discover -s scripts reports 372 tests OK and python3 spec/audit.py --selftest passes, neither touched by this change but both run because the file is carried.
• Every factual claim in the new section was read against the tree at 756a53e: the keys_unsorted call in repo-config/configure.sh, _git_subcommand_arglists and _PUNCTUATION_CHARS in gh-write-guard.py, the (3, 7) floor in install.py, and the verb alternation in pr_review.py.

TODO.md

The cluster is deleted per the file's own step 9. What this change does not carry becomes a new ready cluster: GOVERNANCE.md outcome 2 ends at the thread and nothing agent-agnostic points at the record, so an agent that never opens the provider runbook posts a decline and has nowhere to put the proof. That is a byte-locked carried section and a fleet re-vendor, which is why it is a separate change rather than a second surface in this one.

Downstream

.github/copilot-instructions.md is carried whole at intent with appliesTo: "*", so this joins the re-vendor the ledger already lists. A repository taking it carries the section and its rules, and starts its own entries empty.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds a durable place in the GitHub Copilot review runbook to record disproved findings, and updates the TODO backlog entry to track the remaining governance-level routing gap (provider-agnostic contract does not yet point at the record).

Changes:

• Extend .github/copilot-instructions.md to direct that evidence for disproved findings should be recorded under a new “Disproved Claims” section (in addition to the PR thread).
• Add a new “Disproved Claims” section with worked examples, including what was tested, which revision it was proved against, and what would invalidate the proof.
• Update the corresponding TODO.md cluster to reflect that the remaining work is governance-level (byte-locked) guidance for non-Copilot reviewers/agents.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
TODO.md	Reframes the backlog cluster to target governance-level routing of disproof records beyond the Copilot-specific runbook.
.github/copilot-instructions.md	Introduces a “Disproved Claims” section and updates guidance so evidence is preserved beyond the PR thread lifecycle.