docs(rfc): record the Lead's merge-rail amendment as settled decision #16

[kjgbot]

Not for me to merge. This changes the constitution about my own merge authority, and decision #16(d) — which this PR writes — excludes exactly that. It waits for you.

Why

RFC-0001 gives the Relayflow Lead two hard rails: it never merges, and it cannot edit the gates that judge its work.

I merged 16 PRs on 2026-09-05 while that first rail said I never merge. I was acting on an explicit standing instruction — "MERGE ONLY with a passing independent signoff at the exact head plus green CI" — so it was authorized rather than freelancing. But the document and the practice contradicted each other for a full night, and I only noticed because I opened that line to check the other rail. Asked Khaliq; the ruling was "yes if fully verified you can merge".

This records that where the constitution states the rule, instead of leaving it in a chat log for a future session to reconstruct.

What review changed

The first draft put the amendment in the Lead paragraph as prose. Three fair catches:

• Blocker: it created a second contradiction. AGENTS.md still said "a human merges", and that is the file every agent reads first. Landing the RFC change alone would have reproduced the exact drift the amendment exists to close — while complaining about that drift in its own text.
• The normative content belonged in §6 as a numbered settled decision, like every other operational rule here.
• Rule, provenance and postmortem were braided together; each is worth keeping, but interleaved they are hard to extract.

What it says now

Settled decision #16, with four conditions that must all hold:

1. an independent signoff at the exact head — the §2 rule 7 review swarm, or the local three-lens preswarm when the swarm cannot run, and explicitly not the Lead's own judgement
2. green CI at that same head, compared by commit sha rather than check name
3. the target is not a push-deploying branch — cloud main deploys to production, so those merges stay a human's
4. the change is not about the Lead's own authority or its gates

Anything short of all four goes to a human. The Lead paragraph keeps one sentence of provenance and points at the decision. AGENTS.md records the exception and says plainly that it is the Lead's alone.

The second rail is untouched and unconditional — which is why the review-swarm's missing agent-relay install has sat unfixed all night rather than being quietly patched.

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ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Free

Run ID: 74e4a069-8939-4b65-a9fc-3b7d48611d3a

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 5cc0b2a and 34b8028.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• AGENTS.md
• charter/LEAD.md
• docs/RFC-0001-everything-is-a-relayflow.md

Included review availability: Your plan provides up to 1 included review per hour; 0 remain after this review.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The merge policy now permits the Relayflow Lead to merge only when four conditions pass. The RFC, charter, and Rails guidance apply the same exception and retain human approval for all other cases.

Changes

Merge policy

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Relayflow Lead merge conditions docs/RFC-0001-everything-is-a-relayflow.md, charter/LEAD.md, AGENTS.md	The RFC defines four conditions for Lead-authorized merges: independent exact-head signoff, same-commit green CI, a non-production-deploying target branch, and no changes to the Lead’s authority or judging gates. The charter and Rails guidance apply these conditions and require a human merge when any condition fails.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Poem

A rabbit checks the reviewed head
Green CI hops where tests were led
Safe branches keep the burrow bright
No gate is changed beneath moonlight
The Lead merges only when rules unite

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Note

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