Meta-Apply: the privileged landing gate for self-modification patches

Before each reviewer slot, follow Selectable Reviewers: resolve invocation → .aris/reviewer.json → Codex default (fresh native reviewer) with reviewer_route.py through the canonical helper resolver, preserving this slot's tier, fresh contexts, source/image inputs and deterministic gates. Codex examples/pins below apply only to backend=codex; other routes use their own first-call/reply contract. Save the route and actual returned identity; unavailable selections are REVIEW_UNAVAILABLE. Classify acceptance from actual families/completion/scope. Forward invocation reviewer/model/effort overrides to reviewer-bearing children. Generation workers are unchanged.

Review assurance: a same-family landing review uses stamp-provisional and is not auto-curatable. A completed positive review with known different model families, or an applicable deterministic verifier, may use strict stamp. The fresh landing review and explicit human authorization still apply.

This skill exists to enforce a privilege boundary. Producers like /meta-optimize (and, later, corpus-audit) are read-only — no Write/Edit, no apply step; they can only stage candidate patches under .aris/meta/pending/. This skill is the only place a staged patch becomes a real change to the corpus. Splitting "propose" from "land" across two skills with different tool grants is what makes "a loop cannot apply its own patch" structural rather than a sentence the producer is asked to obey.

It is human-invoked only. It runs when the user explicitly types /meta-apply after reading the producer's REPORT. That invocation IS the landing authorization (the locked 2026-05-30 decision: the human stays at the landing gate).

The acquittal is generated HERE, not relayed

The earlier design trusted a jury_verdict: pass field in the producer's manifest. That is forgeable — the producer writes that field, so a buggy/misaligned producer could stage a killed patch labelled "pass." So this skill does not trust any producer-written verdict. It runs the fresh landing reviewer itself, at landing time, on the actual staged diff (fresh reviewer, paths-only). The verdict is produced where it is consumed, by the privileged human-invoked skill — nothing to forge.

The non-negotiable rules (jury-at-landing, reject-default)

For each staged patch the user asks to land, in order — any failure ⇒ skip & report, never silently apply:

1. The human named THIS patch. Apply only patches the user listed (/meta-apply 1,3 or all); default to applying nothing.
2. Fresh landing review PASS, obtained now. Spawn a fresh gpt-6-astra reviewer via spawn_agent (reasoning_effort: ultra, read-only, paths-only per reviewer-independence.md) on the staged .diff + its target. Ask: does this change improve the harness without regressions; PASS or KILL + one-line reason. Include the scope-limits block from review-scope-limits.md: this jury judges ARIS's own mechanism, so an over-defensive KILL permanently blocks a good patch. The block bans proposing new hash binding — it is not a reason to KILL a patch that touches the existing provenance stamp. KILL ⇒ refuse. The human cannot override a KILL — they may only pick among reviewer-PASSED survivors.
3. Record the review class honestly. A same-family review lands only with stamp-provisional; it can complete this explicit human-invoked operation but does not authorize future auto-curation. A completed positive review with known different model families or an applicable deterministic verifier uses strict stamp and may record accepted. See skill-governance.md.

Workflow

Step 0: Load staging + resolve the helper

PENDING=".aris/meta/pending"
[ -d "$PENDING" ] || { echo "Nothing staged. Run /meta-optimize first."; exit 0; }
echo "Staged:"; cat "$PENDING/manifest.jsonl"

Resolve provenance.py through the Codex manifest:

if [ -z "${ARIS_REPO:-}" ] && [ -f .aris/installed-skills-codex.txt ]; then
  ARIS_REPO=$(awk -F'\t' '$1=="repo_root"{print $2; exit}' .aris/installed-skills-codex.txt 2>/dev/null) || true
fi
PROVENANCE=""
[ -n "${ARIS_REPO:-}" ] && [ -f "$ARIS_REPO/tools/provenance.py" ] && PROVENANCE="$ARIS_REPO/tools/provenance.py"
[ -z "$PROVENANCE" ] && [ -f tools/provenance.py ] && PROVENANCE="tools/provenance.py"
[ -n "$PROVENANCE" ] || { echo "ERROR: provenance.py unresolved" >&2; exit 1; }

Step 1: Jury-at-landing for each requested patch

For every patch the user asked to land, read its staged .diff and target, then spawn the fresh reviewer jury (Rule 2) — paths-only, no producer reasoning, no prior-round context. Record {patch, jury_verdict, jury_review_id, one_line_reason}. Print a one-line result per patch (PASS → eligible / KILL → refused: <reason>).

The producer may have written an advisory pre-screen into the manifest to help the human read the REPORT — ignore it for the landing decision. Only this fresh verdict counts.

Step 2: Land the survivors (Write/Edit only — never Bash)

For each patch that PASSED Step 1 and was named by the user:

1. Back up the target to .aris/meta/backups/<date>/<target> (use the Write tool to copy contents; corpus paths are not Bash-writable when corpus_write_guard is active — and the applier should use Write/Edit for corpus mutation anyway).
2. Apply the diff by Edit/Write on the target corpus file.
3. Stamp provenance on the changed file. For a same-family review use:

   python3 "$PROVENANCE" stamp-provisional "$TARGET" --author "$AUTHOR" \
     --reviewer "$JURY_MODEL" --verdict-id "$JURY_REVIEW_ID"
   

   This records review_independence: same-family and acceptance_status: provisional; is_auto_curatable remains false. If the selected review completed positively with known different model families, use strict stamp instead.
4. Log to .aris/meta/optimizations.jsonl: {ts, patch, target, author_model, reviewer_model, jury_review_id, applied: true}.

Step 3: Report

Per patch: LANDED <target> (+ backup path + provenance sidecar) or REFUSED <patch>: <reason>. Remove landed patches from .aris/meta/pending/. Remind the user a landed patch is revertable from its backup, and to test the changed skill next run.

Provenance is a receipt, not an acquittal of correctness

A stamp records that a change passed a process (fresh landing review + human landing), not that it is correct. To prevent "approved-but-wrong with a stamp that vouches for it" (false-authority laundering — worse than no stamp, because a later auto-curator reads it as evidence):

• The stamp carries verdict_id (auditable review) + content_hash (a later hand-edit invalidates it).
• Recommended (not yet built): a TTL forcing re-review of long-lived auto-authored artifacts, and a behavioral auditor that REVOKES a stamp when a landed skill misbehaves. Track as follow-up; never treat a stamp as permanent truth.

Key Rules

• Human-invoked only. Never run as a side-effect of another skill or a hook.
• Jury-at-landing, reject-default, no override. The binding verdict is produced HERE on the staged diff; never trust a producer-written verdict; the human picks among survivors, never resurrects a KILL.
• Never promote provisional to accepted. Same-family review always uses stamp-provisional; strict stamp requires a completed positive review with known different model families or an applicable deterministic verifier.
• Corpus mutation goes through Write/Edit (reviewable, attributable), not Bash. The corpus_write_guard hook (if installed) additionally denies Bash corpus writes — it does NOT gate Write/Edit, so it does not by itself stop this skill from editing the corpus; the jury-at-landing + stamp discipline above is what governs Write/Edit mutations (that discipline is procedure, not a hook-enforced mechanism).
• Back up before every mutation. Reversible by construction.
• Only land staged patches. Applies what producers staged in .aris/meta/pending/; invents nothing of its own.

Review Tracing

Save each landing-jury reviewer call's trace per review-tracing.md to .aris/traces/meta-apply/<date>_run<NN>/ — the acquittal that landed a corpus change must be forensically recoverable.