Remove confirmed requirement and test accretion from Fable audit

[ncrmro]

Context

This is a focused execution follow-up to #7. A read-only Fable audit of f643f0c72ce500c6719e52ed8bea8d5456deb150 applied the anti-accretion rubric from Unsupervisedcom/2119#39 to Panopticon itself.

This is a ranked removal map, not a deletion quota. Every change must preserve the canonical behavior, security boundary, public interface, compatibility promise, or historical regression evidence that remains valuable.

Confirmed P1 candidates

1. Retire the file-scoped adoption spec and test layer

• Current accretion: specs/file-scoped-requirement-ids.md makes CI commands, migration bookkeeping, and guidance prose normative. Sections 1, 2, 5, and 6 plus requirements 3.5, 3.6, 4.5, and 4.6 are the main candidates.
• Evidence: tests/test_2119_file_scoped_ids.py is excluded from normal CI, the 2119 workflow is manually dispatched, and some tests self-skip after adoption.
• Retain: the exact pinned rfc2119 gate and both supported requirement-ID grammars. The workflow and upstream rfc2119 suite should remain the canonical enforcement; grammar facts can remain as non-normative Overview notes.
• Proposed negative diff: delete or demote the normative migration sections, remove the dedicated test and its CI --ignore, remove obsolete verdict records, and trim corresponding AGENTS.md migration bookkeeping.

2. Collapse the alternate-credential-name matrix into the canonical auth boundary

• Current accretion: REQ-048.10.1 repeats REQ-035.9. tests/taskservice/test_credential_scoping_spec.py enumerates 38 channel/name pairs across two valid-header states, producing 76 executions of the same branch.
• Retain: the bearer-only authentication checks under REQ-035.9, REQ-048.10.2 and .3, and the distinct browser/CORS cases.
• Proposed negative diff: make REQ-048.10.1 cross-reference REQ-035.9, delete the redundant matrix, and annotate the existing query/cookie probes with the retained requirement.

3. Remove requirements that specify the absence of a retired permissive-auth mode

• Current accretion: REQ-035.13, .35, and .43 pin details of a mode that no longer exists, including absence of X-Panopticon-Permissive-Unauthenticated-Total, and duplicate failure/no-log behavior.
• Retain: only disabled and enforced are accepted; an unrecognized mode fails before serving. Keep one direct test, either under a reworded .13 or folded into .49.5.
• Proposed negative diff: delete .35 and .43, remove their redundant tests, and rewrite .13 around the positive invariant for invalid auth modes.

4. Consolidate attached-session-image-paste.1.2 early-return tests

• Current accretion: seven tests across five files exercise the same early-return branch:
  • tests/sessionservice/test_image_paste_spec.py
  • tests/sessionservice/test_image_paste_prefix_boundaries.py
  • tests/sessionservice/test_image_paste_scope_review.py
  • tests/sessionservice/test_image_paste_nonmatching_review.py
  • tests/sessionservice/test_image_paste_review_gaps.py
• Retain: three distinct input shapes: no prefix, prefix with an empty probe, and prefix with a superset/other-name exact-match case. In each case, prove capture is never called. Keep the real tmux proof for requirement 1.1.
• Proposed negative diff: replace the seven tests with one parametrized test, delete the three review-named files, and remove the duplicate 1.2 annotation from test_image_paste_review_gaps.py.

Confirmed P2 candidates

5. Remove test-of-test requirements from REQ-044

• Current accretion: REQ-044.7 repeats floors already specified in .1 through .3; .8 pins an exact spec sentence. Their tests validate test helpers rather than product behavior.
• Retain: discovery-derived boundary sweeps and meaningful minimum floors.
• Proposed negative diff: delete .7 and .8, their helper-only tests, and duplicate annotations. Consider re-homing .1 through .6 as verification notes under the owning authentication requirements.

6. Consolidate stop-hook turn and timeout requirements

• Current accretion: turn semantics and the three-second timeout are duplicated across REQ-010, REQ-016, and specs/stop-hook-turn-before-telemetry.md; tests also pin the same configuration dictionary repeatedly.
• Retain: REQ-016.1.1 for bounded input and REQ-010.1.2 for the turn outcome.
• Proposed negative diff: consolidate or remove stop-hook requirements 3.1 and 3.2 and delete duplicate tests/config snapshots.

7. Replace per-harness Panopticon norms with one registry-wide requirement

• Current accretion: REQ-041.6 through .9 duplicate Overview delivery once per harness, while existing harness tests already pin the shared Overview verbatim.
• Retain: one registry-wide delivery invariant, covered by the existing per-harness integration points.
• Proposed negative diff: replace .6 through .9 with one requirement, annotate the existing harness tests, and delete tests/harnesses/test_panopticon_overview_delivery.py. Optionally merge .1 through .5 into two content requirements.

8. Reduce adversarial-review mutation prose snapshots

• Current accretion: specs/adversarial-review-mutations.md expands one delivered instruction block into nine proof obligations. tests/workflows/test_spec_2119_mutations.py checks whole-block equality against copied TARGETED_MUTATION_INSTRUCTIONS, including a change-freeze requirement.
• Retain: the instruction-bearing directives and the dispatch/gate behavior.
• Proposed negative diff: consolidate requirements 1.3 through 1.9 and 1.11; replace the full snapshot with bounded directive checks or semantic review; delete 1.10; retag documentation requirements 2.1 and 2.2 as [review].

9. Remove whole-document prose equality tests

• Current accretion: tests/test_layered_settings_convention.py pins the whole docs/layered-settings.md document, while tests/test_agents_md.py pins glossary paragraphs and sentences. Product behavior is already specified in layered-settings sections 1 through 6 and REQ-008.1 through .6.
• Retain: the executable settings behavior and a semantic review obligation for documentation accuracy.
• Proposed negative diff: retag documentation requirements as [review], delete prose-equality tests, and collapse or delete redundant documentation requirements.

10. Let the registry-derived standing-credential sweep own xtrace coverage

• Current accretion: REQ-035.41 and its tests manually enumerate Pi/artifact cases already subsumed by the registry-derived REQ-044.3 sweep.
• Retain: the derived standing-credential sweep and the positive Pi-delivery behavior under REQ-035.21.
• Proposed negative diff: delete REQ-035.41 and the hand-picked duplicate tests, then attach the relevant annotations to the sweep.

Follow-up investigations

• Merge REQ-035.36, .45, and .48 into one liveness-holder 401/403 termination requirement and cross-annotate the three existing behavioral tests.
• Remove or rewrite REQ-035.49.1, which is a meta-requirement about other requirements rather than product behavior.
• Review REQUIREMENT REMOVED placeholders in REQ-010 and REQ-012 as tooling-required tombstones. Do not delete them blindly; preserve 2119 ID stability.
• Retire the filename-keyed compatibility shim in tests/conftest.py if no supported caller still needs it.
• Review YAML substring pins in tests/test_release_automation.py for replacement with behavioral assertions.
• Delete the related AGENTS.md migration bookkeeping when candidate 1 lands.
• Re-home REQ-044.1 through .6 as verification notes if their security invariants remain canonical elsewhere.

Delivery constraints

• Land small, comprehensible PRs; do not combine all candidates into one rewrite.
• Consolidate requirements before deleting the tests and helpers that cite them.
• Map every removed obligation to a retained canonical invariant and its evidence.
• Preserve security/authentication boundaries, public interfaces, stored-data compatibility, and meaningful historical regression coverage.
• Collapse equivalent matrices only after targeted mutation or equivalent branch evidence demonstrates that the smaller suite detects the behavior.
• Report before/after collected-test count, unique test-body count, skip count, and runtime for each PR where applicable.
• Remove obsolete helpers, fixtures, annotations, and verdict records with their owning requirement.
• Keep repository checks and the pinned RFC 2119 gate green.

Acceptance criteria

• Each confirmed candidate lands in a small reviewed PR or receives an evidence-backed rejection recorded here.
• Every deleted requirement/test maps to a retained canonical invariant.
• No security, public-interface, compatibility, or historical-regression coverage is weakened.
• Equivalent test matrices have targeted mutation or branch-equivalence evidence before consolidation.
• Each implementation PR reports its before/after test and runtime measurements.
• Obsolete support artifacts are removed alongside the requirement or test they served.
• All repository and RFC 2119 gates pass after each change.

References

• Parent cleanup issue: Consolidate RFC 2119 requirements and low-value tests without weakening coverage #7
• Anti-accretion review rubric: Refactor specification workflow to prevent requirement and test accretion 2119#39
• Audited commit: f643f0c72ce500c6719e52ed8bea8d5456deb150