meta-apply

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

This skill exists to enforce a privilege boundary. Producers like

[/meta-optimize](../meta-optimize/SKILL.md) (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 cross-model jury itself, at landing time, on the actual staged

diff** (fresh thread, 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.

1. Fresh cross-model jury PASS, obtained now. Run mcp__codex__codex (fresh thread,

NOT codex-reply; model: gpt-6-astra, config: {"model_reasoning_effort": "ultra"}, sandbox: read-only,

paths-only per [reviewer-independence.md](../shared-references/reviewer-independence.md))

on the staged .diff + its target. Ask: *does this change improve the harness without

regressions; PASS or KILL + one-line reason.* Include the scope-limits block from

[review-scope-limits.md](../shared-references/review-scope-limits.md) in that prompt:

this jury judges ARIS's own mechanism, so an over-defensive KILL permanently blocks a

good patch. Note the block bans proposing new hash binding — it is not a reason to

KILL a patch that touches the existing provenance stamp. KILL ⇒ refuse. The human

cannot override a KILL — they may only pick among jury-PASSED survivors. (A loop can

DRIVE; only the cross-model jury can ACQUIT.)

1. Author ≠ reviewer family. The author is the producer's executor model; the reviewer

is the codex model that just judged it. Run provenance.py assert_cross_family — if it

raises (same family / unknown), refuse. (Here it always holds: producer=Claude,

jury=codex. The check is the structural backstop.)

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 via the 4-layer chain in

[integration-contract.md](../shared-references/integration-contract.md) §2

(.aris/tools/ → tools/ → $ARIS_REPO/tools/ → $ARIS_REPO/tools/ via

~/.aris/repo).

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

For every patch the user asked to land, read its staged .diff and target, then run the

fresh codex jury (Rule 2) — paths-only, no producer reasoning, no prior-round context.

Record {patch, jury_verdict, jury_thread_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).

1. Apply the diff by Edit/Write on the target corpus file.
2. Stamp provenance on the changed file:

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

stamp() re-asserts cross-family and refuses on same-family — the structural backstop

at the moment the authorization record is written. The stamp is a process receipt

(who authored, who acquitted-at-landing, content hash) — NOT a claim the change is

correct.

1. Log to .aris/meta/optimizations.jsonl:

{ts, patch, target, author_model, reviewer_model, jury_thread_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 (cross-model jury at landing + 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.

• Cross-family or refuse. assert_cross_family must not raise. A

deterministic:<verifier> reviewer is valid per skill-governance.md.

• 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 codex call's trace per

[review-tracing.md](../shared-references/review-tracing.md) to

.aris/traces/meta-apply/<date>_run<NN>/ — the acquittal that landed a corpus change must

be forensically recoverable.