AGENTS.md § Skills carries the same pre-approve-path wording as PD #14: "never queued, armed or flipped out of draft" is unconditional, and "Prime Directive #14 is the whole barrier" is stale since the queue guard #12896

Found while working the PD #14 approve-path card (AGENTS.md lines 296-326). This is a different section of the same file, so it is out of that card's scope and is filed separately.

The prose

AGENTS.md lines 835-836, the closing rule of ## Skills (skills/):

⛔ Both roots are governed surfaces — human-merge only, never queued, armed or flipped
out of draft, and no per-PR check holds it: Prime Directive #14 is the whole barrier.

Two things are now wrong with it

1. "never queued, armed or flipped out of draft" is unconditional. This is the same defect the PD feat: Comprehensive CRM example demonstrating all ObjectStack protocol features #14 card fixes one section up: the 2026-08-27 ruling makes the queue path legal once an APPROVED review by an authorized account is pinned to the PR's exact current head. This sentence still reads as an absolute prohibition, so a seat reading only the Skills section gets the pre-ruling rule.

2. "Prime Directive feat: Comprehensive CRM example demonstrating all ObjectStack protocol features #14 is the whole barrier" is stale. The Governed Surface Queue Guard's merge_group leg mechanically REFUSES a governed diff without a pinned authorized approval, so the directive is no longer the only thing standing between a seat and a governed merge. Note the first half of that clause is still accurate and should survive: "no per-PR check holds it" is true by design — the guard's pull_request leg is a non-blocking early warning that exits 0, deliberately, so the check is never red on the healthy drafted-and-waiting case.

Predicate and authorized set live in one place only: GOVERNED_APPROVERS in scripts/pm/check-governed-queue-guard.mjs. Protocol prose should reference the constant, never copy the account names.

Why this is not a trivial follow-up

AGENTS.md is ratcheted at 1158/1158 lines with zero headroom (scripts/pm/check-skill-line-ratchet.mjs), and all three PD #14 paragraphs measure 0 lossless-rewrap headroom under the gate's own wrapLine. Correcting this passage costs lines the file does not have, exactly as the PD #14 card does. The gate's own red message states the remedy: "Raising a ceiling requires a maintainer ruling quoted in the PR."

Recommendation: fold this into whichever PR lands the PD #14 approve-path correction, so one maintainer ceiling decision covers both passages instead of two PRs queuing for the same ruling. Filed separately so the finding is not lost if that card is dispositioned differently.

AGENTS.md is a governed surface — any fix is draft-only, human-merged or approve-gated.

Generated by Claude Code