Documentation publication policy — Railspike debug log

2026-10-21T19:40:41Z — Step 1 handoff

Necessary/useful instructions

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step1_solution_assessment.md, Structure and Review: comparing multiple options exposed the distinction between complete library availability and repeated rendering. Retain the comparison and approval gate.

• docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, Experimental Effort Estimation / Continuing collection: standing enrollment and the missing-checkpoint rule allowed honest recording of prior source exposure without manufacturing an intake score. Retain.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

• No supported findings.

Inapplicable instructions

• docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, Step 4 commit cadence: implementation has not been approved; no branch, implementation or commits were made. Retain for Step 4.

Uncertain assessments

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step1_solution_assessment.md, Deliverable (one page) and Structure (preserve Original Query): the supplied console excerpt plus required study bookkeeping makes the whole artifact longer than one page. The comparison remains concise; clarify that preserved evidence and mandatory bookkeeping can sit outside the one-page assessment budget.

Verification: source and existing requirements reviewed; R1 hashes matched; planning changes only. No runtime or performance result is claimed. Later-step links are intentional placeholders.

2026-10-21T20:24:13Z — Step 2 handoff

Necessary/useful instructions

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step2_feature_description.md, Completion boundary / Known user or environment: made CLI import, static-host browsing and resume acceptance explicit, preventing dynamic-only verification from satisfying the reported problem. Retain.

• Same source, Risks and Shared component inventory: exposed record-derived page chrome as a possible conflict with reuse across imports, and required an early dependency audit before implementation. Retain.

• docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, Experimental Effort Estimation: preserved the original score and missing intake while explicitly reaffirming the Step 2 projection. Retain.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

• No supported findings.

Inapplicable instructions

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step2_feature_description.md, documentation-only restrictions: this is application maintenance, not documentation-only delivery. The applicable scope and normal-flow outcome are recorded instead.

Uncertain assessments

• Same source, Deliverable: fitting required recovery, risks, component inventory and study bookkeeping onto one rendered page depends on formatting. Keep the prose concise; clarify how mandatory bookkeeping counts toward that limit.

Verification: Step 2 checked against approved Option B; local links and planning-only changes checked; frozen R1 source hashes match. No runtime or timing results claimed. Step 3/4 navigation links remain intentional placeholders. Await Approved Step 2; no implementation or commits.

2026-10-21T20:43:46Z — Step 3 handoff

Necessary/useful instructions

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_before.md, Before Checklist: restored approval, scope, inherited debug state and standing study enrollment; no new requests required scope revision. Retain.

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_do.md, material-risk sequencing and canonical components: put dependency proof before reuse work and preserved one policy across full/shared publication. Retain.

• Same source, known-environment recovery requirement: dedicated CLI failure/resume stage protects the original operator flow, alongside dynamic/static reader acceptance. Retain.

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_after.md, approval/commit gate: plans remain uncommitted; no implementation or Step 4 instructions opened. Retain.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

• No supported findings.

Inapplicable instructions

• Step 3 documentation-only boundaries: the approved work is internal application maintenance. No database changes are planned; read-model schema migration requirements are not triggered.

Uncertain assessments

• Step 3 Do/After, one-page requirement plus six mandatory fields per stage and study records: the compact eight-stage plan exceeds a conventional printed page. Each stage remains flat and concise; retained acceptance, recovery and risk fields instead of dropping obligations. Suggest treating the one-page guidance as a scanability target or excluding mandatory bookkeeping.

• Stage sizing is a planning judgment, not measured effort. Eight stages target about one hour each; the audit blocks dependent work, and oversized stages require replanning before execution. No timing claim is inferred from the 0.65 relative projection.

Verification: all eight stages have all required fields; existing local links resolve, except the intentional future Step 4 placeholder; whitespace checked. Source inspection included layout/version/profile/flag dependencies and full/shared publisher call sites. R1 hashes matched all three frozen sources. No runtime/performance tests or implementation occurred in this planning step; no commits were made. Await Approved Step 3.

2026-10-21T21:00:54Z — Step 4 Stage 1 discovery / return to Step 2

Necessary/useful instructions

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step4_implementation_before.md, planning-doc commit gate: organized the approved plans and made cf5e744c on the feature branch before creating the summary. Retain.

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_do.md, material-risk sequencing, and the approved plan Stage 1: actual dependency validation exposed canonical-record HEAD embedded in docs by default, before reuse code was written. Retain early proof rather than treating docs text as the only input.

• docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, Enhancement Requests / changed scope: v1 requires every output-affecting change to invalidate reuse but an ordinary import changes version metadata. Prepared revised Step 2 allowing only marker refresh; awaiting renewed Step 2 and then Step 3 approvals before dependent implementation. Retain explicit scope accounting and earlier approval history.

• Same source, Experimental Effort Estimation: entry 0.65 preserved; discovery/proposed v2 0.70 records extra guarded-copy and reload verification, not elapsed work. Retain the distinction.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

• No supported findings.

Inapplicable instructions

• Step 4 completion/report gate: the cycle is not complete. Stages 2–8, optimized publication, browser acceptance and closeout are deferred pending revised approvals; no completion claim.

Uncertain assessments

• A narrow version-marker adjustment could look like an implementation refinement in isolation. Here Step 2 explicitly requires all output-affecting changes to invalidate reuse, so treating that exception as already approved would contradict the recorded contract. Clarifying volatile-publication-metadata exceptions during future planning could prevent avoidable approval round trips.

Verification: frozen full build 1,375 docs / 82.894 seconds; separate unchanged four-document real CLI import demonstrated that only the version marker changes in the sampled README. Profile and flag probes returned 200. Audit attempts corrected source-freezing and root-route errors; canonical evidence/limitations are recorded in the summary. No application changes, optimization claim or deployment. Revised Step 2 remains uncommitted for review; ledger deferred until closeout.

2026-10-23T07:49:12Z — Resumed Step 2 v2 handoff

Necessary/useful instructions

• docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, Enhancement Requests and recovery: restoring the approval record identified the pending version-marker exception and prevented treating a general resume request as renewed scope approval. Retain.

• Same source, Experimental Effort Estimation: retained original cycle/checkpoint identity while combining stash and upstream ledger records; verified exact R1 feedback from Git when the working file hash differed. Retain.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

• No supported findings.

Inapplicable instructions

• Step 4 implementation/commit cadence is not active while the changed Step 2 scope awaits renewed approval. Restored files remain uncommitted for review.

Uncertain assessments

• No new supported findings.

Verification: restored four supporting artifacts and the pending Step 2 from preserved work, retained upstream ledger history, and cleared both stash conflicts. Read-only current-source checks confirm version-marker semantics and unconditional docs rendering. Frozen R1 hashes verified. Local planning links and whitespace checked at handoff; no application changes, runtime tests, performance improvement or dependency additions claimed. Earlier timing evidence remains tied to its original source snapshot.

2026-10-23T08:05:54Z — Revised Step 3 v2 handoff

Necessary/useful instructions

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_before.md, approval/request reconciliation: recorded explicit renewed Step 2 approval while preserving historical pending states. Retain.

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_do.md, early risk validation and canonical components: placed current-source revalidation before compatibility work and marker/integrity checks before publication wiring. Retain.

• Same source, recovery/normal-flow requirements: retained actual import failure/resume and dynamic/static version-notification acceptance. Retain.

• docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, Experimental Effort Estimation: preserved cycle identity, prior scores and missing intake; verified exact frozen feedback via Git. Retain.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

• No supported findings.

Inapplicable instructions

• Step 3 documentation-only limits: this approved scope is internal application maintenance; this handoff edits plans only. Step 4 execution is gated on renewed Step 3 approval.

Uncertain assessments

• Do/After one-page guidance conflicts with six fields per stage plus required recovery and historical study records for this eight-stage plan. Kept a flat, compact stage outline and retained history rather than dropping obligations; suggest excluding mandatory history/bookkeeping from the page target.

• Stage sizing is a judgment, not measured effort; transfer/integrity stage must be split before execution if it exceeds the stated target.

Verification: current builder/publisher APIs and existing docs/import/recovery tests inspected; revised plan accounts for approved marker exception, notification modes, original-output integrity, repeated reuse, normal reload behavior, failure/resume and full-inventory performance. Corrected earlier timestamp note to the high-traffic renderer boundary. R1 hashes match. Handoff validation checks stage fields, links, whitespace, file/dependency scope and unchanged application/todo files. No runtime tests or application edits; renewed Approved Step 3 required.

2026-10-23T09:58:56Z — Step 4 v2 completed handoff

Necessary/useful instructions

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step4_implementation_before.md, Planning Docs Commit Gate: fresh branch feat/docs-publication-reuse and approved planning-only commit 6e77d190 kept rewritten current-main ancestry and preserved old branch evidence without merging it. Retain.

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step4_implementation_do.md, Stage Boundary Protocol: planning plus eight stage commits paired implementation/evidence with summary updates; Stage 8 closeout is 1932a872, final production code is e99e1412. Retain auditable stage boundaries.

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_do.md, early material-risk validation and normal-flow recovery: source revalidation confirmed the version-only exception, then transfer isolation, corruption/fallback, actual committed-import failure/resume and late-input checks resolved risks before final acceptance. Retain.

• docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step4_implementation_after.md, Contract/final verification: complete-library CLI builds, served dynamic/static browser journeys and actual next-import notification/reload verified the operator/reader outcome beyond helper tests. Retain focused-versus-full-suite distinctions.

• docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, Experimental Effort Estimation: one stable cycle retains original start, v1/v2 estimates, missing intake and unknown measured effort across clone migration. Final prospective projection remains 0.70; separately labeled retrospective 0.80; maintainer acceptance pending, with no accepted-count increment. Frozen R1 hashes verified. Retain.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

• No supported findings.

Inapplicable instructions

• Step 3 database-change instructions and Step 4 migration verification: no database schema change. Production deployment is outside approved local acceptance; no deployment/merge/push performed. Documentation-only restrictions do not apply to this approved application-maintenance cycle.

Uncertain assessments

• Source documents include the cycle's own plans/logs. Writing evidence during a full source build can correctly invalidate that build; frozen temporary application/documentation snapshots made full-inventory performance comparisons reliable. Consider an explicit source-freezing note for self-documenting applications, without weakening input checks.

• Relative scores remain single exposed judgments, not measured effort or a comfortable-fit decision. Acceptance and the full repository test suite are unclaimed.

Final evidence: final helper/flow 15/15, catalog/reader/asset 29/29; prior broad targeted full-inventory run 45/45 before the final streaming refinement; final complete-library rebuild/build-static, frozen same-inventory benchmark and both-host browser acceptance passed after it. Existing three import/recovery suites 14/14 in an isolated two-doc application. A 48 MiB PDF is reused with a 24 MiB PHP budget. Final 1,459-doc local cold 54.284 s, new-record import 5.806 s, duplicate 6.118 s, shared refresh 5.230 s, all compatible repeats zero docs render callbacks; original content-import baseline 79.916 s. Cache/load uncontrolled; no fixed ratio promised. Browser failures were harness-only cached-symlink/closed-disclosure observations, corrected and rerun; no unresolved product failure. No third-party dependency, schema, UI markup/copy or navigation delta. Full evidence, source hashes and limitations are in the implementation summary/verification JSON.

Commit audit: planning 6e77d190, Stage 1 b0ba9080, Stage 2 5e484da8, Stage 3 afea34a6, Stage 4 9ca80028, Stage 5 bdba01ab, Stage 6 ffd56887, Stage 7 e99e1412, Stage 8 1932a872. This final handoff is log-only and does not amend a completed commit.