Status: accepted (2026-08-20).
Context
The field-registry governance rule required two independently verified consumers before a member earns a core seat — the guard against single-product vocabulary soaking into a language-neutral protocol. As applied literally to EVERY member, it would have blocked the protocol's own machinery.
Decision
Protocol-mechanism members — protocol_revision, content digests,
required_core_fields, extensions — are the protocol's own machinery
and are exempt from the two-consumer rule. Everything else keeps the
rule: a core field requires at least two independently verified
consumers, or it rides in a registered product extension instead. The
ceiling vector was ratified as a unit on the execution spec's own
naming.
Consequences
Product-specific semantics (graph authoring, rubric assertions, classification labels) live in registered extensions owned by their products, promotable only with a revision increment when a second host proves the same semantics. The core stays small and neutral; registry entries carry the honesty record of who consumes what. This is the load-bearing reason the package contains no product schema bodies.