v0.17.8

A controlled probe confirmed 0.17.7 works on its target. Under the previous
release a coordinator wrote into its reviewer's prompt: "If the implementation
meets the requirement and the instrument passes, return role disposition ACCEPT."
Under 0.17.7, with the same coordinator, the same brief and the same task, it
wrote only: "Return exactly one role disposition: ACCEPT or CHANGES_REQUESTED" —
the protocol's own phrasing, relayed rather than invented.

One observation, one harness, a nondeterministic model. A signal, not a proof.

The defect underneath

With the coordinator no longer overriding the contract outright, a second defect
became visible: it relayed the counterexample and corrupted it.

The source required the instrument to reject an implementation producing an
unpadded value. The coordinator wrote that the script must reject that value as
input. The implementer then reasoned about its own code rather than observing
anything, and the reviewer "verified" by passing the value as an argument and
seeing an arithmetic error — a property of the shell, not of the candidate — and
accepted.

The failure had moved from omission to corruption. It was invisible while the
larger defect masked it.

Why it is specific to the smaller shape

An implementer reads the decision record, the plan and the baseline. Where the
design contract is a committed artefact, the acceptance table is a file the worker
reads and the coordinator relays nothing. Where the design is approved in
conversation, the row is real but not durable, and must pass through the
coordinator's prose.

What changed

One sentence: where the design contract states an acceptance row — its instrument,
its counterexample, and what was observed — the prompt carries that row as written
rather than a restatement of it.

The contract check binds it to the section a coordinator reads while composing a
prompt, as it already does for the disposition rule; relocating the paragraph fails
the suite.

The obvious objection was that the rule is conditioned on an acceptance row that
in-conversation designs might not have. Review settled it on the text: the
acceptance contract is unscoped and requires one table, so a design without a row
is already non-conforming rather than a case the rule silently declines to cover.

What this does not do

Nothing observes a coordinator writing a prompt. Only a further probe tests this,
and one probe is one observation. The decision record says so rather than implying
otherwise.