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Verbatim Fidelity Admits No Per-Carrier Variance, in Either Direction #1141

Description

@ptr727

Grouping issue, filed as part of a catalog pass over the 2026-08-28 to 2026-08-31 resync and MTP conversion campaign. This issue records the shared cause and adopts the affected issues as sub-issues. It proposes no fix.

The shared cause

verbatim fidelity means a downstream copy is byte-identical to the hub canonical, and spec/audit.py reports any difference as drift. The tier has exactly one setting, so it assumes that every byte of a carried file or section is equally correct in every carrier. Two different findings show that assumption failing, in opposite directions.

A carrier needs its own value, and the tier has no way to give it one. #1118 finds .markdownlint-cli2.jsonc declared verbatim while being the single source of truth for what markdownlint lints in that repository. A repository whose tree holds committed data rather than authored prose needs its own globs and ignores. There is no per-repo mechanism, so it either fails the verbatim check permanently or loses real lint scoping on the next re-vendor.

The hub's own value is wrong in every carrier, and no carrier may fix it. #1129 finds verbatim text carrying hub-local references. A bare #1073 in GOVERNANCE.md renders relative to whichever repository displays it, so it is a dead link in ptr727/PhotoCleaner today and becomes an actively wrong link to an unrelated issue once that repository reaches 1073. A host-setup/ path in repo-worktree/SKILL.md has no hub qualifier. The section byte-matches the canonical, so the audit is satisfied while every carrier is wrong.

The two together bound the problem: the tier cannot express a value that legitimately varies, and it cannot detect a value that is uniformly wrong.

Children

Issue Direction
#1118 A carrier legitimately needs to differ, and verbatim forbids it
#1129 The hub value is wrong everywhere, and verbatim forbids fixing it locally

What a fix at this level would have to address

Whether the model needs a third position between verbatim and intent, something like a carried file with declared per-repo fields, and separately whether verbatim content should be linted for references that only resolve in the hub.

Related but separately caused: #1075 and #1120 are about the declaration drifting from the document, not about what the tiers can express. #1110 is the same question at the intent end and is grouped with the audit's own accuracy.

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    bugSomething isn't workingdocumentationImprovements or additions to documentationgateA rule with no mechanical check, or a check that misses a shape

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