KFD-13

KFD-13: Project settlement must bind authorities without absorbing them

Status: draft
Number: 13
Kind: procedure
Applies to: any adopting software-development Domain Profile that publishes a project-level settlement or release boundary across independently authoritative systems

One sentence

Project settlement must publish a verifiable binding without absorbing the authorities it binds.

Scope

KFD-13 defines a software-project settlement application above KFD-12. It does not define a universal object for every domain. Other domains may publish different macro commitments, use different authority systems, or have no Project Cut at all. Adoption of KFD-7 through KFD-11 does not require adoption of KFD-12 or KFD-13.

Project Cut

A Project Cut states what a software project officially becomes after a bounded set of accepted actions. It binds, without replacing:

one or more predecessor Project Cuts;
an accepted source projection;
the Atlas used to interpret the project state;
the admitted Episode increment and its declared boundary;
policies, protocols, and qualification rules used for interpretation;
known omissions, conflicts, unknowns, and residual risk;
a verifiable root and a non-self-certifying receipt.

The source repository, Atlas authority, and Episode authority remain independent. A Project Cut is not another fact engine, a large merged state object, or proof that every Pursuit is complete.

Procedure

select declared predecessor and authority roots
  -> verify each root under its own authority
  -> declare included projections, policies, omissions, and unknowns
  -> compute a deterministic Project Cut root
  -> publish the cut at an outer project coordinate
  -> issue an independently checkable receipt
  -> permit later cuts to cite, supersede, or reject it without rewriting it

The binding must avoid self-reference. For example, a Project Cut intended for publication inside a Git commit cannot require that same containing commit ID as an input to its own root. The commit may serve as the outer publication coordinate after the cut is computed.

Gate

A conforming procedure:

names every bound authority and exact root or cut;
verifies those inputs without reinterpreting their semantics;
preserves source, Atlas, Episode, policy, omission, and risk boundaries;
distinguishes structural validity from work completion and release fitness;
computes the same root for the same canonical input under the declared protocol;
rejects missing, conflicting, stale, unverifiable, or circular bindings visibly;
supports independent export, verification, and successor lineage;
declares that Project Cut is software-domain vocabulary, not a mandatory cross-domain primitive.

Adopter witness and activation boundary

A conforming adopter publishes a versioned witness that names and verifies source, Atlas, Episode, policy, and protocol bindings under their own authorities; commits omissions, conflicts, unknowns, and residual risk; and supports deterministic export, independent verification, and successor lineage. Every bound authority retains its own semantics and must explicitly report that it was not absorbed by Project Cut.

The machine interface is schemas/kfd-13/adopter-witness.schema.json. Qualification and activation use the shared interfaces discovered through activation-contracts.json. A valid binding does not prove work completion, release fitness, or activation.

Founding implementation boundary

The founding Kungfu implementation binds Git source, Xinfa Atlas, and Kungfu Episode coordinates. Those products are evidence for the procedure, not normative dependencies. Another software Domain Profile may bind different source, perspective, and causal-record authorities if it preserves the same settlement responsibility.

Relationship

KFD-11 defines Claim, Assessment, Decision, and Admission separation. KFD-12 organizes software work through Initiative, Assignment, and continuation. KFD-13 publishes a project-level commitment after those decisions. It preserves the Fact-Episode Ontology and the Atlas, Pursuit, and Warrant responsibilities rather than flattening them into one state authority.

The founding discovery changed perspective again: from the coordinator who maintains Initiative and Assignment state to the successor Agent that must continue from one exact project boundary. From that acting view, the work model was informative but not a single answer to what the project had officially become. KFD-4 exposed Project Cut; KFD-5 then qualified the settlement responsibility independently of its founding implementation. The live qualification case preserves both the maintainer-reported Agent-origin genesis and the separately verifiable public implementation evidence. Project Cut is accepted at this software-settlement layer, not as a fourth fact engine or a peer action coordinate, and that acceptance does not activate this draft KFD.

This decision previously occupied the pre-stable KFD-12 coordinate. The Foundation Revision maps that immutable prerelease lineage to KFD-13.

Non-claims

KFD-13 does not require Git, Xinfa, Kungfu, one JSON shape, one release process, or one user interface. A valid Project Cut does not by itself prove that work is complete, correct, safe, valuable, or ready for release.

Decision metadata