The pstack Collection

Classifying both sides by regulatory function dissolves them. Ours state rules and standards, which is citation and declaration. The upstream ones run checks, which is execution. compass-code-review-comments states where a comment belongs; no-comments spawns a reviewer that finds violations of exactly that. A rule and the instrument that enforces it are not competitors, and holding both is the normal case rather than duplication.

The same reading resolves deslop, create-verification-skill and maintain-verification-skill. Our verification ladder states what must be verified at each rung; theirs builds and maintains the driver that does the verifying.

encode-lessons-in-structure is a third case. It does not duplicate the memory contract, it constrains it: when the same correction is written twice, prefer a lint or a check to more prose. Our memories are prose, so the principle supplies a test our contract lacked, and a memory earns its place only where no structure can carry the rule.

Two conflicts were real.

The principle directs an agent to proceed on reversible work rather than ask. The grounding obligation directs it to stop when a concept resolves to no document. The two look opposed and are not. The principle's condition is reversibility, and the obligation's subject is one of the things that decides whether a choice is reversible.

Both are adopted, and the recording function reconciles them. An agent that proceeds on an unresolved concept states the assumption it proceeded on, and that record is what makes the choice reversible rather than merely undeclared. show-me-your-work supplies the mechanism, which is why it and the principle are adopted together.

Blocking is then reserved for what a record cannot repair. That is the irreversible: a destructive command, a message sent outside the project, a decision whose cost is paid before anyone reads the trail.

technical-writing carries Diataxis structure, Google style, STE instruction rules and Global English. That subsumes compass-doc-review-ste100, whose content is one of those four layers.

Ours is retired as a standard and kept as a binding. What survives is the part upstream cannot know: which of the three writing standards this project applies where. STE governs an agent's replies to a person, thesis prose governs the org-roam documentation, and writing for agents governs skills, memories and specifications (Skills in the Compass Skill Framework). The binding names the standard and cites technical-writing and unslop for how to meet it.

Both amplify variety, and they do not amplify the same amount.

interrogate runs a claim past several models. council runs it past several personas within one model. Personas share the base model's priors, so the variety a council adds is bounded by what one model already commands, while independent models are not so bounded.

Under the convening function that is a difference in kind, and interrogate is the stronger instrument wherever model diversity is available. Council is retained for deliberation that wants a reasoned verdict rather than a defect list, which is the use it has served in this project. The weaker amplification is recorded here so the choice is made knowingly.