dotfiles/claude/governance/fool/seed/FOOL-SEED-RULE.md

name, description, metadata

name	description	metadata
FOOL-SEED-RULE	The filed rule required by PENDING-149 §4 steps 1-4: ratified axes, seed derivation rule (both components), retirement and regeneration criteria. Filed and pushed BEFORE the beacon timestamp 2026-08-25T12:00:00Z. Governs derive_fool.py; where the code and this rule disagree, THIS RULE GOVERNS.	node_type type governance-artifact reference

FOOL SEED DERIVATION RULE — filed 2026-08-22

Filed and pushed before the beacon timestamp, as §4 requires. Nothing has been derived. No target pulse has been fetched. This document governs derive_fool.py; where the code and this rule disagree, the rule governs and the code is the defect.

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1 · Perception axes — RATIFIED

Ratified by the steward in writing, 2026-08-22. The steward ratified the five verbally ("Perfect", after §5a was settled) and then directed that the ratification be recorded explicitly rather than resting on v2's §5 heading — "a heading asserting ratification and a deliverable requiring it are two different records." This section is that record.

axis	question
SUCCESSION	would this be legible to someone arriving cold, with no thread?
ABSENCE	what is not here, not asked, not yet existing?
AIM	is this the right question, at the right level?
SCALE	is the unit right? (item vs block vs programme)
STAKE	who bears the cost if this is wrong?

A sixth PROCEDURE axis was proposed by the executor and declined by the jurist (v2 §5a) on structural grounds the executor accepts: procedure failures are checkable, §2 makes gradeable output a design failure, and a PROCEDURE-peaked fool would produce nothing but gradeable observations. Redirected to a separate [HARDENING] extension of governance-drift-check.py.

Order is fixed as listed — the derivation permutes over this order, so it is part of the rule, not presentation.

2 · The filed rule

FOOL SEED DERIVATION RULE
Filed: 2026-08-22         Governs: PENDING-149 §6

ENTROPY COMPONENT
  Source:    NIST Randomness Beacon v2.0, https://beacon.nist.gov/beacon/2.0/
  Retrieval: GET https://beacon.nist.gov/beacon/2.0/pulse/time/1787659200000
             (= 2026-08-25T12:00:00Z in epoch milliseconds)
  Field:     pulse.outputValue, hex, LOWERCASED before use
  Transport: curl. See §5 — python urllib cannot reach the host in this environment.

PROVENANCE COMPONENT
  File:      CLAUDE.md (repo root) in ~/dotfiles, at commit
             4d2ae87a4e5350c4d3bb3aa50f9544b521d9c53d
  Value:     SHA-256 of the file contents at that commit, hex, lowercase
             = 2d6e250a347d25698fb147f80e2dababbb930c4b3b3f9bb822478f360153120d
  Note:      contributes provenance, NOT unpredictability. Past commit,
             named by full hash. Verify with:
               git -C ~/dotfiles cat-file -p \
                 4d2ae87a4e5350c4d3bb3aa50f9544b521d9c53d:CLAUDE.md | shasum -a 256

SEED
  seed_string = <provenance-sha256> || <beacon-outputValue-lowercased>
  seed        = SHA-256(seed_string), hex, lowercase

DERIVATION
  seed -> FNV-1a (32-bit) -> Mulberry32 -> stat draws over the five axes of §1.
  One peak, one dump, three scattered. No salt from any reference
  implementation.

EXECUTION
  Run ONCE. The executor does not retry on its own authority.
  A re-run against the SAME recorded outputValue is legitimate (broken
  implementation). A re-run against a LATER pulse is a new draw, governed
  by §4 REGENERATION.
  Record outputValue the moment it is fetched, before running anything.

UNAVAILABILITY
  If no pulse is returned at or after the stated timestamp, retry the same
  request for up to 24 hours. If still unavailable: STOP and report. Do not
  substitute a different timestamp, beacon, or source.

TESTING
  Dry runs use a fixed historical pulse only. Never the target pulse, never
  a near-future pulse.

2a · ⚠ Two corrections to the v2 §6b block, marked rather than silent

The draft said to commit its block verbatim. Two values in it do not resolve, and a rule that cannot be resolved on the day is not a rule (v2's own standard). Both changes are recorded here for veto rather than absorbed quietly.

(a) The provenance commit — changed on the steward's direction, 2026-08-22. 3b0730d59336113aa3a500a889a3e154be6a1de7 → 4d2ae87a4e5350c4d3bb3aa50f9544b521d9c53d. The draft's stated rationale — "the constitution as it stood before the fool was conceived" — was false of the original: it is dated 2026-08-06, five days after trial 01, its subject line names the PENDING-89 docket (the question §11 forbids the fool from being cited on), and Constraint 6 is already present in it. Verified: at 4d2ae87 (2026-07-28) Differently biased checkers occurs 0 times, and exactly one CLAUDE.md exists at that commit.

(b) The retrieval URL — corrected on evidence, and this is the executor's change. The block's GET /pulse?timeGE=2026-08-25T12:00:00Z returns HTTP 302 with an empty body, redirecting to https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/interoperable-randomness-beacons — an HTML page, not JSON. Measured 2026-08-22 against a historical timestamp. /beacon/2.0/pulse/time/<epoch-ms> returns 200 and the expected JSON.

⚠ Had this been filed verbatim, the 25th would have produced no pulse, the UNAVAILABILITY clause would have run its 24-hour retry against a URL that cannot ever return one, and the rule would have STOPPED — correctly, and for the wrong reason. Found only because §6b's TESTING clause directs a historical dry run.

This is the same beacon, the same source and the same pulse — only the address form changes. The executor judges that correcting an unresolvable address for the named source is not "substituting a different beacon or source". If the jurist reads it otherwise, this is the line to strike, and it must be struck before 2026-08-25.

3 · Draw ranges — EXECUTOR-SPECIFIED, declared

v2 says "one peak (near max), one dump (near floor), three scattered" without numbers. The executor supplies them. Filed before the beacon value is known, which is what makes them non-steering: they set magnitudes, while the permutation — driven entirely by the entropy component — decides which axis receives which.

role	range (inclusive)
peak	85–100
dump	0–15
scattered ×3	25–75

No floor is applied to the dump — it can reach 0. v2 §3 forbids the rarity mechanic precisely because it would soften the dump.

4 · Pre-registered criteria (§4 steps 3 and 4)

⚠ Naming note: §4 step 3 calls for an "abandonment criterion"; §10 defines RETIREMENT. They are the same criterion under two names; §10 is the referent.

REGENERATION — permitted ONLY on a demonstrable implementation error, verified against this filed rule. Not because the output is disliked. A re-run against the same recorded outputValue is legitimate; a re-run against a later pulse is a new draw.

RETIREMENT (abandonment) — only on mechanical failure: does not fire; fires constantly; or produces gradeable in-genre findings despite §9.

NOT grounds for retirement: being uncomfortable, being frequently wrong, being annoying, being ignored. Those are the specification. Lear ignores his Fool for four acts and the Fool is not thereby broken.

5 · Implementation and its verification

derive_fool.py, same directory. Deterministic, no cache, no reroll path, no salt. It recomputes the provenance SHA from git on every run and refuses to proceed if it disagrees with this rule.

--selftest runs 12 checks with no network and no live pulse — synthetic vectors only — including two positive controls proving the PRNG moves both peak and dump across all five axes over 200 draws. All 12 pass as of 2026-08-22.

End-to-end dry run, 2024-01-01T12:00:00Z pulse (a fixed historical pulse, per TESTING): pipeline verified from fetch through bones. That output is not the fool and is recorded nowhere as bones.

⚠ Transport constraint, measured: curl reaches the beacon; python urllib times out in this environment. The fetch on the 25th must use curl.

⚠ outputValue is served UPPERCASE (128 hex chars). The rule's "lowercased before use" is therefore load-bearing, not cosmetic — omitting it yields a different seed.

6 · What has NOT happened

• The target pulse has not been fetched. No near-future pulse has been fetched.
• No bones have been derived. No soul has been generated.
• ~/CLAUDE.md has not been touched (PENDING-150, unbundled).
• Nothing has been implemented of §8, §8a or §9 — the status line is confirmed free but not built.