[PROPOSAL] PENDING-91 — Vignette Phase 1a: jurist design gate (the dwell-test)

The dwell-test is assigned to the jurist by spec, and the jurist cannot see the
render. Third instance of the gap docketed at PENDING-86 and PENDING-82, now in
visual form. Q5 puts three options rather than papering over it.

Package at ARC 7b8f64d; 33/33 quotations contained, 9/9 controls absent.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01WuMjg3ipEVa3n8CoSzoyvc

PENDING.md

@@ -710,3 +710,17 @@ Measured against the register itself before acting. Four corrections; the item's
 **Open question the reviewer should press first:** who declares the position? If the calibrating party declares its own, that declaration is itself a self-report. The honest answer may be that position is derivable from `initiator` and the facet ID rather than declared — which would make it mechanical. Not settled in the draft.
 **Files affected:** one new candidate file in `thinking/`; on authorization, `adaptation-chain-spec.md` §4.11/§4.12 and `risk-manager-spec.md` §6/§6.1/§9.
 **Awaiting:** Steward authorization, and direction on (a)/(b)/(c)/(d).
+
+## PENDING-91 — Vignette Phase 1a: jurist design gate (the dwell-test)
+**Date:** 2026-08-02
+**Tag:** [PROPOSAL]
+**Summary:** The vignette renderer prototype is built and verified; its Phase-1 exit gate is a jurist dwell-test the spec makes mandatory, and the jurist structurally cannot perform it.
+**Rationale:** A1 (the vignette) was ARC's largest open build — in spec since 2026-04-13, revised twice under jurist pass, and never built: 0 `.vignette` rules in the compiled CSS as of 2026-08-02, while `content/pages/vignette.md` is live and tells readers the vignette "is a generated object that opens each essay and meditation on this site." Phase 1a closes that gap far enough to be judged. It deliberately touches no protected surface — no `site.hs`, no SCSS partial, no template — so Phase 3 integration remains gated behind `operations.yaml` §1.
+**Escalation grounds (both limbs, independently):** the spec's Appendix sends the *first* Phase-1 prototype to the jurist regardless of steward confidence; and its steady-state rule escalates whenever the steward's first-pass is "unsure or affirmative-with-reservation," which the 2026-08-02 first-pass was ("subtle, but good" / "could perhaps be a hair less subtle… but it is a slippery-slope").
+**The structural problem the package leads with:** the dwell-test is assigned to the jurist, and the jurist has no repository access and cannot see the render. Whatever is ruled from the document alone is a ruling about the *described* vignette, not the *rendered* one. Third instance of a docketed gap — PENDING-86 (the jurist cannot read the constitution it design-gates) and PENDING-82 (read-only MCP server) are the first two, now recurring in visual form.
+**Gate questions:** Q1 the contract is not implementable as written — `instances` is prose, and schema v1 is immutable/additive-only, so the shape ruled on is the shape ARC keeps (highest stakes; executor's lean held at low confidence). Q2 the field's mode mapping — the temperature/contrast split, the only construction found that satisfies both Layer 3 clauses, untested for correctness. Q3 what an interval renders as — executor's lean is weakest here and the opposite reading may be stronger. Q4 the two-cap reading of Layer 4, and whether an amplitude perceptible only after instruction satisfies the must-not clause (no lean on the second half; the executor distrusts the one it is disposed toward). Q5 how the dwell-test is to be performed at all.
+**Options for Q5:** (a) steward carries rendered pages in as images — restores sight, at the cost of an unauditable frame selection; (b) jurist rules everything except the dwell-test, which is recorded as steward-performed with the mandatory clause noted unmet and why; (c) defer, blocking Phase 2.
+**Recommendation:** (a), fallback (b), limitation recorded either way. What must not happen is a ruling that reads as though the dwell-test was performed when it was not — that is precisely the *unfelt error* the clause exists to catch, relocated from the steward to the gate.
+**Verification:** 33/33 quotations in the package mechanically contained against source, 9/9 positive controls absent, instrument verified. Prototype checks: zero-JS gate 0, cycle-end clamp holds at three horizons and floors on a negative trajectory, monotonic over 800 sampled points, validator rejects 6/6 malformed genomes by name.
+**Files affected:** `docs/AldineXXI-Codex/drafts/vignette-phase-1a-JURIST-PACKAGE-2026-08-02.md` (new); `tools/vignette-proto/` (built, committed `946b88b`/`1d40d4d`/`095be00`). No spec text changed, nothing integrated.
+**Awaiting:** Steward relay to the jurist, and a decision on Q5 before the ruling is sought.