Scroll and Pattern lifecycle

The ink has dried. Write the next score on fresh parchment.

Within Spellweaver, a Scroll—one immutable Pattern revision—is never silently rewritten. Spellweaver selects one revision from an admitted Intent; the Invocation names that casting, and the canonical Run carries its identity. If the registered executable no longer matches, execution fails instead of substituting another workflow. Pattern identity owns the complete law.

Identity before motion

PatternManifest records a renderer-neutral snapshot: schema version; URL-safe key and revision; opaque reviewed implementation revision; checkpoint-schema identifier; declared entry station; semantic stations with key, label, and kind; permitted edges with declared endpoints; and a deterministic SHA-256 digest. The workflow lookup name is persisted separately, although the current Workflow binding requires it to equal the manifest key.

Retained v2 snapshots must pass the shared declarative checks as well as their checksum: typed station and edge fields, known kinds and permission relations, unique keys and semantic edges, one executable entry, and declared endpoints. A recomputed digest cannot make malformed score data valid. Blockworld admission refuses it before freezing, and Orb withholds Pattern exactness. Those checks do not resolve executable implementations; execution still requires exact registry equality. Additional top-level metadata remains outside the v2 checksum and prevents that equality.

Executable stations bind one-to-one to Python Graph node types, and the declared entry must bind the actual Graph start node. The manifest is authored beside that Python and fingerprints the declared score; it is not a canonical intermediate representation from which all behavior is compiled. The implementation revision (py.1 for the original built-ins, py.2 for configured Bridge) records a reviewed compatibility closure: change it or the public Pattern revision when new behavior cannot safely resume old state. It does not automatically detect source edits. Edge parity and return semantics must still be established by source review and tests.

The private v2 adapter derives a Scroll-private legacy_inline identity for each executable station and fingerprints its Python node binding in a boot-local internal-v0 lock. Exact lookup refuses a binding that differs from that assembly. The terminal remains Graph End, and the frozen v2 manifest snapshot and digest stay unchanged. This lock is neither persisted on Run nor exposed by Loom/Orb. It does not establish source equivalence or compatibility across boots; the portable Spell catalogue remains a separate contract.

The catalogue is immutable after construction. It rejects duplicate (key, revision) pairs, requires an explicit active revision when one name has alternatives, requires explicit non-default route precedence, and names its default. Construction performs no package scan. The current source-defined manifests retain these routes:

The owning registry source defines the retained revisions and their activation policy.

Admission happens once

Admission and ownership orders four operations:

1. Validate and select the Pattern.
2. Atomically create the canonical Run and initial durable delivery with the exact manifest snapshot.
3. Retain the caller-owned initiating record while that delivery is held, then release it.
4. Publish one queue job keyed by Run and enqueue sequence; relay the same key when unavailable.

Retention failure settles only an exact unreleased held generation. A release call that commits and then raises is resolved from the delivery row and remains admitted; compensation cannot overwrite PENDING. Broker failure leaves the admitted Run queued with its exact pending delivery. PostgreSQL and SAQ are not one distributed transaction; startup reconciliation and the process-owned relay probe and republish the idempotent delivery key without fabricating a new Pattern hop.

Execution and resume look up the exact persisted Pattern key and revision rather than routing the Intent again; a retained revision need not remain active for new admission. Before running, the worker validates checksum, workflow-name binding, implementation revision, and equality with that exact registered manifest. A corrupt checksum, changed declaration or implementation closure, missing workflow, or unavailable revision fails as pinned Pattern unavailable. No default or newer Pattern replaces it.

Checkpoint and suspension mechanics belong to Stasis and return. AgentJob and provider boundaries belong to Delegated agents.

Portable contracts and configuration

Each semantic station currently behaves like a legacy inline Spell placement: key, label, kind, implementation closure, and edges are bound only inside its Scroll. There is no independent Spell identity or portable catalogue. A future portable Scroll pins exact authority-qualified Spell contract revisions and digests; a receiver-owned Resolution Lock separately binds each placement to an exact local implementation. Admission reports every unknown, unavailable, incompatible, revoked, or unauthorized placement instead of substituting a similar name or newer revision. A future Loom may show the absence only in an inert resolution report; an unresolved placement never enters an executable Graph.

Configuration follows the closed spine in ADR 28: TOML selects exact registered identities and bounded policy only. Never place import paths, node classes, graph edges, prompts, source bytes, credentials, or live handles in a Scroll selector. Unknown ids and missing exact revisions are refusal, not cues for package scanning or nearest-name fallback.

Human-attested material stops at a Gate

Spellweaver does not infer human authorship from a commit name, account, writing style, or a human approval. A future trusted authoring surface records an Authorship Attestation and Protected Region against the exact artifact revision, stable region id, and content digest. Existing material remains unknown until a human attests its current form.

base artifact + protected-region manifest + candidate
                         |
                  target-owner diff
                    /          \
             no overlap       overlap
                 |               |
          ordinary gates    exact live HitL
                                 |
                         target-owner promotion

An Agent may prepare a replacement in its candidate workspace. It cannot change the active region, remove protection by deleting a source marker, or reuse a verdict from another base or patch. The live review names every touched region, old and replacement digests, and an authorized exact-diff artifact. A changed base or candidate, a newly touched region, or a changed target effect invalidates the call and requires another verdict.

Approval and authorship remain separate after promotion. A wholly Agent-written replacement stays agent_generated; retained human text interleaved with Agent work becomes mixed. Unchanged human-attested content may keep its origin through an approved move. Only a fresh human authorship attestation can mark a rewritten exact digest human_attested.

Visible comments, front matter, and Loom decoration are projections of the target-owner manifest, not enforcement. A compliant effectful Agent therefore works through Creation's candidate surface; a direct writer with authority over the active checkout bypasses Spellweaver and cannot claim this protection. No attestation store, protected-region resolver, authoring UI, or exact diff review card is delivered. State of Work owns that boundary.

A new score is a new revision

Keep Invocation choice separate from score change. A new prompt, source ArtifactRef, requested language, target profile, or declared finish boundary is another Invocation of the same Scroll only when its typed schema already admits that value. Adding a station, edge, Spell contract, authority ceiling, or required model changes the score and therefore creates a new immutable revision. Finishing one Invocation at an accepted intermediate boundary and later continuing from its artifact is a new forward Invocation, never resurrection of the terminal Run.

The current catalogue can preserve multiple executable revisions per workflow name. Active routing is explicit; a saved Run continues through its exact registered revision even after activation moves forward. The catalogue is still source-built and preserves no historical Python by itself. Removing old code makes that revision unavailable: affected Runs fail as pinned Pattern unavailable. Automatic compatibility proof, durable publication, drain, and migration remain future work.

Topology-A local runs are Available and pin manifests. Extension activation is Partial, but no Pattern store or public contribution API is delivered.

Future publication follows the Pattern contribution law: inert Scroll and Spell-contract candidates declare identity, continuity, and evidence; executable Spell implementations register through a separate owner. Validation and review may publish an immutable revision, bind an implementation, and activate a new process generation only as distinct effects. An A2A teaching bundle reaches this path only through Assimilation. The current Workflow type remains internal and pre-v1, not a third-party ABI.

Current code or contribution changes require controlled Evolution and Vessel/catalogue replacement; this is not Reanimation. A future declarative-only Scroll may activate without a restart only after all required implementations already exist and an atomic durable catalogue generation mechanism is proved.

A future scheduler would create an Occurrence and submit it through ordinary revision-pinned admission. Its timer never calls a Graph node, model, or container directly. Scheduling and service classes owns that temporal contract and routes its implementation evidence.