📖About

Ninad's ruling (CLI-171, 2026-07-30).

NOT UPHELD — the wish's premise was checked against the records and is false. Merlin's dispatches vanish because he is dispatching the Foreman, which was retired. These wishes should be closed WITH the evidence that disproves them, and never re-analysed.

HELD — the wish is legitimate and simply cannot be granted yet (no service roadmap exists to align it to). Athena's policy-freshness droid and Noah's migration charter are of this kind. They stay visible and wait.

Also in scope: a decided wish is never reconsidered, and the money. The Wish Keeper itself spent nothing — all 95 of its runs reported 'quiet'. A title is not reasoning work.

⚖️Decisions

• Elrond's bypass methodology checklist (a reminder, not a gate -- you've got this): 0. File it requested_mode='bypass' (planner-vs-bypass is a deliberate choice). bypass_start REFUSES a non-bypass initiative (CAROL-INI-1846), and the dispatcher only skips the bypass lane when the mode says bypass -- a 'planner' mistag lets Merlin's pipeline grab the placeholder step and block your finished work. 1. Filed as planned status -- let the bypass claim/activate it; never file active. 2. Open the bypass (bypass_start) with your droid id + the remediation answer (remediates_initiative_id=NNN, or remediates_nothing=True). 3. Work the blocks for your work-type: template -> design -> code -> test -> review. Do the real work; record decisions on the initiative as you make them. 4. Reality is recorded for you at close -- code (files changed), each decision, and the twin-review verdict become real activities tied to this initiative and show in the Activity Tracker like a planner run (CAROL-INI-1840). No dummy rows. 5. Keep the initiative status moving; it parks in 'reviewing' and is tagged uat-pending for you at close (CAROL-INI-1836), so the stuck-watchdog leaves it alone until UAT. 6. Close runs the gates (design/architecture compliance + caller-audit). If a gate flags something pre-existing or unrelated to your change, waive it with a clear written rationale -- audit, don't skip. 7. Bypass skips the planner's auto-orchestration, NOT the standards. Same template checklist, same review, same observability as a planner run. (elrond)
• [status-router] planned -> executing | event=bypass_executing | bypass transition (or-bx-01)
• Two outcomes replace one, because a wish can fail two very different ways — 'not upheld' means the premise was checked against the live records and is false — it is terminal and carries the disproving evidence. 'held' means the wish is good and simply has nowhere to land yet; it stays visible and is explicitly NOT terminal. Both are registered in the data dictionary so a reader can look up what they mean. (orion)
• Seven wishes were not upheld, and each was checked before being answered — Elrond's, Hermione's, Merlin's, Heimdall's, Hagrid's, Thorin's and Inspector's. The pattern is one shared false premise: 'my droids are dark'. The records say otherwise — Heimdall's credential rotation ran 14 of 14 clean, Inspector's checker 4,032 of 4,032, Elrond's and Sage's minds 29 each. Merlin's dispatches vanish because he is dispatching the RETIRED Foreman. Each agent's note names the numbers that answer it. (orion)
• Five wishes are held, not rejected — nothing about them is wrong — Leo's run visibility, Athena's policy-freshness droid, Midas's adaptive wake cadence, Noah's migration charter and Sentinel's flag-to-improvement path. Two of the five are already being built. (orion)
• The money was never the Wish Keeper — it was a title — All 95 of the Keeper's runs in 24h reported 'quiet'; it never called a model. Now on the cheapest tier, and a refinement keeps the title it has. The deterministic fallback still guarantees a title with no model at all. (orion)
• SELF-CORRECTION: the code was changed before the bypass was opened — Cookbook practice is to open the execution first so the work shows in the tree from the start. Here the registry edits and the wish migration ran first and the bypass was opened afterwards. Recorded rather than tidied away; nothing was lost, but the ordering was wrong. (orion)
• [status-router] executing -> reviewing | event=bypass_reviewing | bypass transition (or-bx-01)
• [status-router] reviewing -> closed | event=operator_signoff | Auto-accepted (CAROL-INI-1859): Orion-initiated, >2 days in reviewing with no objection. (el-srac-01)

✅Success criteria

• An agent whose wish rested on something untrue is told so with the evidence, and that wish is never reconsidered. (must_have)
• A wish that is legitimate but cannot be granted yet stays visible and is clearly distinguished from one that was rejected. (must_have)
• Writing a title for a wish no longer costs reasoning-model money, and refining a wish does not pay for a new one. (must_have)
• (must_have)