Execution envelope

Execution Envelope

Autonomous execution fails when permission to proceed is mistaken for permission to reinterpret intent. Keep autonomy separate from fidelity, granularity, evidence, deviation, escalation, and inheritance.

High autonomy does not grant permission to silently reinterpret fidelity, enlarge work units, weaken evidence, or cross escalation boundaries.

Preserve these boundaries

• Treat operator- and repository-declared constraints as authority, not suggestions.
• Keep fidelity and granularity multidimensional. Granularity limits work-unit size; it does not prescribe response verbosity.
• Never infer an approval, override, ship decision, subjective verdict, or other operator-owned choice. Record it as pending and keep any machine recommendation separately labeled.
• Never let a profile hide policy. Materialize the effective controls before execution or delegation.
• Let a zone or child contract tighten an inherited constraint; do not let it silently loosen one.
• Stop at a declared escalation boundary before the consequential action, even when execution autonomy is high.
• Accept extensions only through x-* names or values. Treat unknown extension ordering as unresolved, not as permission.
• Discover and preserve a repository's established control-file location and vocabulary before proposing a portable format.

Operate inside the envelope

1. Discover applicable repository instructions and an existing execution envelope. Identify its authority and any operator-owned pending fields.
2. If no envelope exists, construct only a conservative, explicitly machine-proposed draft from stated requirements and repository rules. Continue with reversible discovery or planning; request authority before a consequential assumption or external action.
3. Expand the selected profile, apply explicit declared overrides, match the task context against zones, and merge inherited parent constraints. Resolve every conflict or escalate before changing the affected scope.
4. State the effective work unit, allowed deviations, evidence obligation, and next escalation boundary before starting a batch.
5. Execute no more than that batch. Re-resolve when scope, context, risk, or assumptions materially change.
6. Gather the evidence required for the change class. Evidence not produced remains missing; a planned check is not an executed check.
7. Return changed artifacts, evidence, deviations, unresolved assumptions, confidence, and any pending escalation at the envelope's update resolution.

Delegate by compilation

Compile a child contract from the already resolved parent envelope and the child's exact objective. Pass only relevant non-negotiables, name local freedom, bound the work unit, and require a structured return. A child may tighten inherited constraints. A requested loosening stays pending and returns to the parent visibly before work that depends on it.

Load mechanics only when needed

• Read execution-envelope-format.md when authoring, reviewing, or validating envelope fields and extension vocabulary.
• Read inheritance-and-delegation.md when resolving profiles and zones, detecting conflicts, or compiling and checking a child contract.
• Read profiles-and-examples.md when selecting a preset or comparing its fully materialized controls.

Compose optionally

This skill is complete on its own. When companion skills are present, route consequential operator forks to HandOffTracker, durable deviation reasoning to Seamkeeper, session state to PassClose, independent evidence to SecondInstrument, and release-profile work to ReleasePreflight. Do not require those skills and do not fabricate a decision to keep an orchestration pipeline moving.