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The AGENTS.md Preamble Is Not a Canonical Review Unit, So Its Edits Reach No Gate #1193

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@ptr727

scripts/canonical_review.py derives units from spec/files.json. For AGENTS.md that is exactly its three declared sections:

AGENTS.md > Fleet Bootstrap
AGENTS.md > Context and Delegation Discipline
AGENTS.md > Where the Rules Live

It derives a > (preamble) unit for CODESTYLE.md, WORKFLOW.md, AUDIT.md and .github/copilot-instructions.md, but not for AGENTS.md.

The consequence surfaced on #1186. That change rewrote the AGENTS.md preamble paragraph routing a project's project-specific conventions and public-API contracts, which every fleet repo carries. canonical_review.py check reported the other changed units and never named it, so the pre-push gate and the pull request check both passed over the most widely carried edit in the change. It was reviewed only because it was sent to a reviewer by hand.

The preamble is not incidental text. It carries the routing rule the promotion settled, and spec/files.json puts AGENTS.md at fidelity: intent with appliesTo: "*", so a downstream copy is judged by meaning and never content-compared either. Between the two, a preamble edit has no automated reader at all.

Worth deciding whether the omission is deliberate, since AGENTS.md's preamble is more repo-adapted than the other four files' preambles, or an oversight in the unit model.

Surfaced by the diff review on #1186.

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