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Kernel: a Pause stops every act, not only Runs #30
Description
Part of the epic "Epic: nine gaps in the Kernel, found in review".
Why. With the Factory paused, or the Pause unreadable, a converged pull request is still approved and an approved one is still enqueued. The check for a Pause sits after the branch for converged in kernel/decide.py.
Done when
-
test_a_pause_stops_approvals_and_merges_toopasses with@pendingremoved: under a Pause the Decision isdefer, reasonpaused. - An unreadable Pause defers in the same way.
- Each place the rule acts has its own mutant, and both are killed.
- No document says
not held yetbeside this test.
Needs. The pull request that carries the pinned tests has merged.
Design. §4.7, Pause; I-7.
Activity
don-petry commentedon Oct 14, 2026
Advice from the Solution Architect persona, not a ruling. Asked while revising the pull request "Context for the Factory's authors: lessons, standards, decisions and the checks that hold them".
What a Pause stops. Settled by ADR-0013 decision 3 for the three acts that move work forward: admitting a Run, issuing an approval, enqueuing. The design's I-7 and its §4.7 row now say so in that pull request. Two acts are not settled by anything decided: the status FR-24 says a paused item shows, and the dequeue decision 7 requires when an approval is lost (see "Kernel: what takes a pull request out of the merge queue").
When an item is both paused and held because its approver is its author or last pusher: open, and both orders are safe, since neither approves.
approver_is_author_or_last_pusher. State stays a function of the facts alone, as §4.1 and record 0002 ask, and the Maintainer learns at once what only they can fix.paused. One reason across the scope, but the item's State then moves with the variable, and the Hold appears only after the Pause is released.Recommended: (a). Holds the facts establish, then the Pause, then the act. The same order should apply to
attempts_exhausted,max_roundsandrun_ceiling, whichkernel/decide.pyreads after the Pause today. What would change this: a ruling that FR-24's "paused items show that they are paused" means the item's own reason.A fresh agent built this rule once in a throwaway copy, keeping the approver Hold first; nothing pinned the order.