docs(openspec): retire the FCM rule, land the verification gate (verbara-meta/ADR-0023)

[Harol-Reina]

Rolls verbara-meta ADR-0023 — The process lives in openspec/config.yaml; no third-party
process plugin — into this repo. Same-shaped PR across the five code repos (verbara-meta/ADR-0006).

The measurement that justifies it

rules.tasks ordered:

Use Subagent-Driven Development with FCM batching where the change is non-trivial.

That line reached the agent verbatim — it is emitted inside <rules> by openspec instructions tasks — and it names a skill of a third-party plugin that is not installed in the active Claude
config. Every session was being handed an instruction it could not carry out; an agent that cannot
comply either improvises or silently skips, and both look identical in a green PR. "FCM" made it
worse: the ecosystem never defined the acronym anywhere an agent reads (it is defined twice,
incompatibly, in tracked plans of two other repos, and zero times in the plugin the rule named).

Separately, the ecosystem's § Verification gate — run this repo's own ci.yml fast steps on the
integrated branch before committing — reached agents only through operations.apply.guidance,
which /opsx:apply itself labels "optional additive advice… do not follow it". The strongest rule
in the ecosystem was travelling on the weakest wire. context: is the one channel the pinned 1.13.1
CLI delivers verbatim to propose and apply and archive.

Before / after

rules.tasks — one entry out, two in (4 → 5 entries):

-    - "Use Subagent-Driven Development with FCM batching where the change is non-trivial."
+    - "Order execution in three phases — A foundation (batched), B critical components (one focused subagent each), C integration (batched) — with a fresh subagent per task, where the change is non-trivial."
+    - "For a bug fix, write the failing regression test first, against the unfixed code, and paste its failure verbatim into `tasks.md`. For new capability, tests may batch into Phase C."

The second rule is not imported discipline — it settles an inconsistency that is ours: across the
ecosystem's open changes, four are tests-first and three are tests-last, with no rule saying which is
right.

context: — the gate appended as a third bullet under the existing Constraints: list:

   - Keep it lightweight and static-first; Worker routes/D1 only where dynamic behavior is required.
+  - Before any commit or push, run the fast, deterministic, non-service steps of this repo's own
+    .github/workflows/ci.yml on the integrated branch — build plus the touched tests plus
+    `openspec validate` is a strict subset, because a tree-scanning guard is tripped by a change
+    anywhere.

Repo-specific shaping, deliberate: unlike the other four repos this context: has no
Hard constraints (non-negotiable): heading — it is a plain Constraints: bullet list. The gate
joins that list in its own style rather than importing a heading that would read as noise here. The
rules.tasks replacement keeps this repo's "where the change is non-trivial" flavour instead of
the other repos' "never inline in the main session".

Ratchet conditions satisfied

/xr:doctor check 21 (no-process-plugin) WARNs unless both hold. Measured on this branch:

Condition	Result
rules.tasks contains no FCM	0 occurrences
rules.tasks contains no Subagent-Driven Development	0 occurrences
context: contains ci.yml	yes
context: contains integrated branch	yes

grep -n 'FCM\|Subagent-Driven Development' openspec/config.yaml → rc=1 (no match). "A fresh
subagent per task" carries the meaning without the banned phrase.

Verification

YAML parse — openspec validate does not read config.yaml, so a broken YAML would merge
green. Parsed explicitly:

$ python3 -c "import yaml;d=yaml.safe_load(open('openspec/config.yaml'));print(list(d.keys()))"
['schema', 'context', 'rules', 'operations']

The rules actually reach the agent — this repo has no open change, so a throwaway
(openspec new change zz-verify-rules --json) was used and then removed (git status clean):

$ openspec instructions tasks --change zz-verify-rules
<project_context>
...
25:  .github/workflows/ci.yml on the integrated branch — build plus the touched tests plus
<rules>
37:- Order execution in three phases — A foundation (batched), B critical components (one focused subagent each), C integration (batched) — with a fresh subagent per task, where the change is non-trivial.
38:- For a bug fix, write the failing regression test first, against the unfixed code, and paste its failure verbatim into `tasks.md`. For new capability, tests may batch into Phase C.

Zero hits for FCM / Subagent-Driven Development in that output. instructions apply carries the
gate too (line 25) — which is the whole point of moving it from guidance to context.

This repo's own ci.yml fast steps, on the integrated branch, all green:

Step	Result
npm run check	85 files — 0 errors, 0 warnings, 0 hints
npm run lint	rc=0
npm run test:i18n	i18n parity OK across 3 locales (476 keys each)
npm run validate:digests	OK — 2 current, 54 deprecated, 56 unique refs (file untouched)
npm test	6 files, 92 passed
npm run build	36 pages in 1.26s
npm run validate:html	0 errors (8 pre-existing long-title warnings)
bash scripts/tests/test_classify_docs_only.sh	passed=37 failed=0
python3 -m unittest discover scripts/tests	Ran 32 tests — OK
openspec validate --all --strict --no-interactive	rc=0 — "No items found to validate" (no specs yet here; normal)
scripts/ci/classify-docs-only.sh on this commit	docs_only=true — coverage/e2e/lighthouse skip as designed

Not touched, on purpose

• data/authorized-digests.json — security-critical and release-owned by /xr:release.
• Historical prose: docs/plans/, docs/specs/, docs/decisions/, CHANGELOG.md. The six
  docs/plans/completed/ files that cite superpowers:subagent-driven-development are
  period-correct records — evidence, not instructions. No live tracked file cites the
  superpowers: namespace, so check 21 already passes on that clause here.
• .gitignore — docs/superpowers/, .superpowers/ and .worktrees/ are all already covered;
  this repo had no gap to close.
• CHANGELOG.md [Unreleased] — n/a, this PR is typed docs.

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