Meta-Apply: the privileged landing gate for self-modification patches

Codex assurance: a base landing review records review_independence: same-family and acceptance_status: provisional via stamp-provisional; the artifact is not auto-curatable. Only an overlay or deterministic verifier may produce accepted authorization.

This skill exists to enforce a privilege boundary. Producers like /meta-optimize (and, later, corpus-audit) are read-only — no Write/Edit, no apply step; they can only stage candidate patches under .aris/meta/pending/. This skill is the only place a staged patch becomes a real change to the corpus. Splitting "propose" from "land" across two skills with different tool grants is what makes "a loop cannot apply its own patch" structural rather than a sentence the producer is asked to obey.

It is human-invoked only. It runs when the user explicitly types /meta-apply after reading the producer's REPORT. That invocation IS the landing authorization (the locked 2026-05-30 decision: the human stays at the landing gate).

The acquittal is generated HERE, not relayed

The earlier design trusted a jury_verdict: pass field in the producer's manifest. That is forgeable — the producer writes that field, so a buggy/misaligned producer could stage a killed patch labelled "pass." So this skill does not trust any producer-written verdict. It runs the fresh landing reviewer itself, at landing time, on the actual staged diff (fresh reviewer, paths-only). The verdict is produced where it is consumed, by the privileged human-invoked skill — nothing to forge.

The non-negotiable rules (jury-at-landing, reject-default)

For each staged patch the user asks to land, in order — any failure ⇒ skip & report, never silently apply:

1. The human named THIS patch. Apply only patches the user listed (/meta-apply 1,3 or all); default to applying nothing.
2. Fresh landing review PASS, obtained now. Spawn a fresh gpt-5.6-sol reviewer via spawn_agent (reasoning_effort: ultra, read-only, paths-only per reviewer-independence.md) on the staged .diff + its target. Ask: does this change improve the harness without regressions; PASS or KILL + one-line reason. KILL ⇒ refuse. The human cannot override a KILL — they may only pick among reviewer-PASSED survivors.
3. Record the review class honestly. Base Codex review is same-family and lands only with stamp-provisional; it can complete this explicit human-invoked operation but does not authorize future auto-curation. A Claude/Gemini overlay or deterministic verifier uses strict stamp and may record accepted. See skill-governance.md.

Workflow

Step 0: Load staging + resolve the helper

PENDING=".aris/meta/pending"
[ -d "$PENDING" ] || { echo "Nothing staged. Run /meta-optimize first."; exit 0; }
echo "Staged:"; cat "$PENDING/manifest.jsonl"

Resolve provenance.py through the Codex manifest:

if [ -z "${ARIS_REPO:-}" ] && [ -f .aris/installed-skills-codex.txt ]; then
  ARIS_REPO=$(awk -F'\t' '$1=="repo_root"{print $2; exit}' .aris/installed-skills-codex.txt 2>/dev/null) || true
fi
PROVENANCE=""
[ -n "${ARIS_REPO:-}" ] && [ -f "$ARIS_REPO/tools/provenance.py" ] && PROVENANCE="$ARIS_REPO/tools/provenance.py"
[ -z "$PROVENANCE" ] && [ -f tools/provenance.py ] && PROVENANCE="tools/provenance.py"
[ -n "$PROVENANCE" ] || { echo "ERROR: provenance.py unresolved" >&2; exit 1; }

Step 1: Jury-at-landing for each requested patch

For every patch the user asked to land, read its staged .diff and target, then spawn the fresh reviewer jury (Rule 2) — paths-only, no producer reasoning, no prior-round context. Record {patch, jury_verdict, jury_review_id, one_line_reason}. Print a one-line result per patch (PASS → eligible / KILL → refused: <reason>).

The producer may have written an advisory pre-screen into the manifest to help the human read the REPORT — ignore it for the landing decision. Only this fresh verdict counts.

Step 2: Land the survivors (Write/Edit only — never Bash)

For each patch that PASSED Step 1 and was named by the user:

1. Back up the target to .aris/meta/backups/<date>/<target> (use the Write tool to copy contents; corpus paths are not Bash-writable when corpus_write_guard is active — and the applier should use Write/Edit for corpus mutation anyway).
2. Apply the diff by Edit/Write on the target corpus file.
3. Stamp provenance on the changed file. Base Codex uses:

   python3 "$PROVENANCE" stamp-provisional "$TARGET" --author "$AUTHOR" \
     --reviewer "$JURY_MODEL" --verdict-id "$JURY_REVIEW_ID"
   

   This records review_independence: same-family and acceptance_status: provisional; is_auto_curatable remains false. If the active overlay produced a cross-family result, use strict stamp instead.
4. Log to .aris/meta/optimizations.jsonl: {ts, patch, target, author_model, reviewer_model, jury_review_id, applied: true}.

Step 3: Report

Per patch: LANDED <target> (+ backup path + provenance sidecar) or REFUSED <patch>: <reason>. Remove landed patches from .aris/meta/pending/. Remind the user a landed patch is revertable from its backup, and to test the changed skill next run.

Provenance is a receipt, not an acquittal of correctness

A stamp records that a change passed a process (fresh landing review + human landing), not that it is correct. To prevent "approved-but-wrong with a stamp that vouches for it" (false-authority laundering — worse than no stamp, because a later auto-curator reads it as evidence):

• The stamp carries verdict_id (auditable review) + content_hash (a later hand-edit invalidates it).
• Recommended (not yet built): a TTL forcing re-review of long-lived auto-authored artifacts, and a behavioral auditor that REVOKES a stamp when a landed skill misbehaves. Track as follow-up; never treat a stamp as permanent truth.

Key Rules

• Human-invoked only. Never run as a side-effect of another skill or a hook.
• Jury-at-landing, reject-default, no override. The binding verdict is produced HERE on the staged diff; never trust a producer-written verdict; the human picks among survivors, never resurrects a KILL.
• Never promote provisional to accepted. Base Codex always uses stamp-provisional; only an overlay or deterministic verifier may use strict stamp.
• Corpus mutation goes through Write/Edit (reviewable, attributable), not Bash. The corpus_write_guard hook (if installed) additionally denies Bash corpus writes — it does NOT gate Write/Edit, so it does not by itself stop this skill from editing the corpus; the jury-at-landing + stamp discipline above is what governs Write/Edit mutations (that discipline is procedure, not a hook-enforced mechanism).
• Back up before every mutation. Reversible by construction.
• Only land staged patches. Applies what producers staged in .aris/meta/pending/; invents nothing of its own.

Review Tracing

Save each landing-jury reviewer call's trace per review-tracing.md to .aris/traces/meta-apply/<date>_run<NN>/ — the acquittal that landed a corpus change must be forensically recoverable.