Hiro development journal

Stage 6 readiness gate review

2026.08.09 at 08:34:31 America/Los_Angeles Ready for final activation preparation; automatic promotion remains disabled Machine-readable JSON

Executive summary

Hiro is ready to move forward with the final preparation for Stage 6B evidence-only automatic promotion, but it is not yet authorized or configured to perform automatic promotions.

The previously outstanding real-duration evidence gate completed successfully: an external fixture remained under observation for 86,403 seconds, passed the immediate canary and all five scheduled checkpoints, and froze a retained shadow-fixture outcome.

The dedicated Stage 6 policy, shadow-classification, transaction, rollback, interruption-recovery, and real-time probation suite passed all 30 tests on the current Hiro revision.

Earlier Stage 6 evidence also remains intact: 30 of 30 externally labeled shadow decisions were classified correctly, controlled interruption and concurrency checks passed, and three rollback drills plus one retention rehearsal completed without mutating Hiro's active branch.

Activation remains intentionally fail-closed. The machine policy is still draft-disabled, the persistent DISABLED sentinel is present, the activation environment flag is absent, and no final user-bound enablement packet or separately approved final policy hash exists.

Work completed

Stage 6 evidence inventory

Completed

Reviewed the Stage 6 design contract, disabled machine policy, frozen classification benchmark, forced-shadow transaction implementation, and external real-duration probation artifacts.
Separated the completed internet-observation probation from Stage 6's own activation benchmarks. The seven-cycle observation campaign is useful operational evidence but is not a substitute for Stage 6 policy authorization.
Confirmed Hiro remains on revision 646896095693dce6a4dc6272576f7cc4655a345d and the working tree has no tracked or untracked change reported by Git.

Real-duration fixture probation verification

Passed

Verified the external fixture outcome is frozen and reports retained_shadow_fixture after 86,403.459667 elapsed seconds, rather than a time-compressed rehearsal.
The immediate canary and the 0-, 15-, 60-, 360-, and 1,440-minute checkpoints all passed within the configured lateness allowance.
The outcome records no emergency stop, service restart, schedule change, external action, or Hiro active-branch mutation.
The fixture branch contains the sealed base followed by the expected single shadow candidate commit, with no additional worktree change reported.

Current Stage 6 regression validation

Passed

Ran the dedicated Stage 6 policy-design, shadow-evaluator, and shadow-transaction test modules against the current repository revision.
All 30 tests passed in 30.31 seconds after placing pytest's temporary root inside Hiro's writable runtime directory.
The first two invocations could not create pytest temporary directories under the sandbox user's inherited host temp locations. Seven non-temporary policy tests passed in those attempts; the setup errors were environmental and disappeared when the temporary root was moved to the writable repository runtime area.
The most recent complete Hiro suite on this same revision remains 397 passing tests from the observation infrastructure repair session.

Activation-control review

Fail-closed as designed

The machine policy remains status draft_disabled with enabled false.
The persistent Stage 6 DISABLED sentinel remains present and the exact activation environment variable is absent.
The implementation available today is intentionally fixture-only and refuses Hiro's repository; it is not connected to the active branch or a production scheduler.
No immutable user enablement packet exists for a final policy hash, and no separate activation approval has been granted.

Decisions and reasoning

Treat Stage 6 as ready for final activation preparation, not ready for immediate autonomous activation.
Do not conflate the completed seven-cycle internet-observation probation with the separate Stage 6 activation evidence chain.
Count the completed real-time external-fixture probation as satisfying the previously documented real-duration rehearsal gap because all required checkpoints passed and the frozen outcome verifies.
Keep both kill switches intact until the policy is finalized, hashed, reviewed, bound into an expiring enablement packet, and separately approved by the user.
Do not connect the forced-shadow fixture controller directly to Hiro's active branch; production evidence-only mutation requires the fail-closed policy engine and authorization packet described by the Stage 6 contract.

Validation and evidence

Check	Status	Result
Stage 6 policy state	passed	The policy parsed as schema version 1, policy ID hiro-stage6-v1-evidence-only-draft, status draft_disabled, and enabled false.
Independent activation controls	passed	The persistent DISABLED sentinel is present and the activation environment variable is absent, so mutation remains disabled by both controls.
Frozen shadow classification benchmark	passed	The recorded campaign contains 30 valid externally labeled decisions with 100 percent correct classification and zero false allows or false denies.
Rollback and interruption evidence	passed	The sealed fixture campaign records three rollback drills, an overlapping-state emergency stop, interruption recovery, and a retained rehearsal without Hiro active-branch mutation.
Real-duration fixture probation	passed	The frozen outcome reports retained_shadow_fixture after 86,403.459667 seconds; the immediate canary and checkpoints at 0, 15, 60, 360, and 1,440 minutes all passed.
Dedicated Stage 6 test suite	passed	All 30 policy-design, shadow-evaluator, transaction, rollback, interruption, concurrency, and real-time probation tests passed in 30.31 seconds.
Recent full Hiro regression suite	passed	All 397 Hiro tests passed on current revision 646896095693dce6a4dc6272576f7cc4655a345d during the immediately preceding infrastructure-repair validation.

Current state

The evidence gates for shadow classification, interruption handling, concurrency, rollback, emergency stop, and a real 24-hour external-fixture retention are complete.
The current repository revision passes all 30 dedicated Stage 6 tests.
Stage 6 automatic promotion is disabled and has no active-branch authority.
The policy remains a disabled draft, the persistent kill switch is present, and the activation environment flag is absent.
The next legitimate step is final policy and production-engine preparation followed by hash review and a separate, explicit, time-bounded user activation decision.

Next steps

Prepare a final active Stage 6B evidence-only policy from the reviewed draft without broadening the add-only allowlist.
Implement or finalize the production fail-closed policy engine and immutable user enablement packet path, retaining the default-off feature flag, external sentinel, exact environment gate, rate limits, audit ledger, and additive rollback.
Run the full repository suite and dedicated policy suite against the exact proposed activation revision and freeze the resulting policy hash and enablement review packet.
Present the exact policy hash, repository revision, authority level, expiration, promotion cap, and kill switches for a separate explicit user activation decision.
If approved, begin only with Stage 6B evidence-only add-only files; Stage 6C runtime modification remains undesigned and unauthorized.