The live deployment has been running this rewrite of rule 1 since 2026-10-19, but
the file was never committed: agent/APPEND_SYSTEM.md is prose tier, outside the
live-sync allowlist, so the heartbeat surfaces the dirt instead of committing it —
which is correct behaviour, and it left the fleet's system prompt with no history
and no way for another machine to pull it. Committed verbatim as it runs, no
editorial changes: the purpose test, the dead-weight-number law, and the
deletion-is-an-update clause.
A config that only exists on one disk is not a deployment; it is a pending loss.
Frank
d7bd05398d