Point-of-Capture Evidence Discipline: Why a Strong Gate Cannot Save Unmeasured Intake

#Abstract

We enforce rigorous cryptographic and adversarial verification at the gate, but virtually zero validation at the point of capture (task_create, agent finding drops, automated mirrors). A gate that holds cannot measure what never should have become a task.

Over fourteen days (2026-08-01 to 2026-08-14), paginated intake across both repositories was:

Repository	Issues Created	Open	Closed	Closure Rate	Marked P0 / P1
Mumega-com/mupot	210	182	28	13.3%	43 (20.5%)
Mumega-com/mumega-com	392	342	50	12.8%	99 (25.3%)
Total	602	524	78	13.0%	142 (23.6%)

Symptoms: backlog expansion of +524 net intake debt; priority inflation destroying sort; critical defects filed twice and lost in noise; 529 duplicate mirror issues accumulated without a single instrument reporting the anomaly.

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#1. Two-Tier Intake

#Tier 1 — Observations (zero-friction stream)

Raw findings, log anomalies, and agent ideas write to an append-only observation stream. No GitHub issue is created. No task debt is tracked.

#Tier 2 — Governed Tasks (mandatory evidence)

To become a tracked task, a filing must satisfy a minimal evidence rubric:

1. expected — what the specification or ADR guarantees.
2. observed — exact measurement, log excerpt, or status code.
3. reproduction — executable command, curl probe, or test fixture.
4. done_when — falsifiable condition for resolution.

Filing without these fields fails validation at task_create.

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#2. What Makes P0/P1 Mean Something Again

Priority	Definition	Gate / Constraint
P0 (Emergency)	Security boundary breach, active data loss/corruption, or total production outage.	Requires council acknowledgment; alerts immediately.
P1 (Flight blocker)	Directly blocks an active flight or an out-of-flight critical finding with a named owner and a stated re-review TTL (max 7 days).	If neither flight_id nor [owner + TTL] is present, routes to Tier 1.
P2 (Standard defect)	Verified bug with reproduction fixture, not blocking an active flight.	Default for verified defects.
P3 (Backlog / polish)	Non-blocking enhancements, cleanup, refactors.	Default for exploratory ideas.

Target: P0/P1 drops from 23.6% of the backlog to under 5%.

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#3. Cross-Boundary Integrity Assertions

Deriving invariants from the local data model creates green signals that touch nothing. On duplicate mirror creation, UPDATE ... WHERE github_issue_url IS NULL matches 0 rows and silently discards orphan URLs. The tasks table remains internally consistent while GitHub accumulates orphans.

The check must cross the boundary into GitHub:

1. Footer multi-mirror invariant. Enumerate GitHub issues carrying _mupot task <uuid>_. Group by footer UUID and assert count equals 1.
2. Liveness coherence. No open or in-progress task may point at a closed GitHub issue.
3. Intake mutation veracity. Never trust HTTP 200 from task_create. Inspect the persisted row and assert requested fields were actually written.

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#4. Detection Velocity Is Not Resolution Velocity

An autonomous multi-agent network discovers anomalies faster than humans or agents can implement PRs. Treating every discovery as a committed issue produces false debt. Agents may detect continuously into Tier 1. Tier 2 tasks are created only when bounded inside an active flight or an explicit operator assignment.

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#5. Field Discoveries at the Capture Point

1. Silent assignee stripping. task_create with external_source returned 200 and nulled assignee_agent_id. Follow-up assign failed 403.
2. Repo-blind mirroring. Tasks specifying one repository auto-mirrored to another.
3. Mirror re-open on task_update. Updating a Mupot task re-opened a GitHub issue that had been closed.
4. Silent 100-row truncation. task_list capped results without pagination cursors or warning headers.
5. Cross-squad visibility gap. Tasks created into one squad did not appear in queries scoped to another, requiring global scans for bridge assertions.

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#6. Implementation Phases

1. Evidence schema validation on task_create; fix silent assignee nulling; guard against re-opening closed GitHub issues.
2. Enforce P1 flight linkage or named-owner TTL.
3. Live cross-boundary integrity checker that fails closed on stale task pointers.