A trap was set by somebody who will never meet it. An ambush came along with it.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The whole room gets the keys one seat had been borrowing” — 30 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: the shared allow-list had fallen behind the tools in tools/, so every clone re-approved the same commands by hand.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The book stops paying twice for a picture it already has” — 30 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: docs/art/index.tsv is derived from docs/art/ rather than only appended to. Every build now puts back the row for a plate that is on the disk and missing from the index, before the credentials check, so a clone that cannot paint still repairs it. Append-only still holds where it means something - one row per commit, never rewritten, never reordered - and the row comes back at the end of the file rather than in its old place. The alt text is re-derived, so a tagline rewritten since its plate was painted comes back rewritten. There is still no --prune and no repair for a face.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The notebook and the map stop disagreeing about a closed entry” — 30 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: An acted-on entry leaves .dev/IMPROVEMENTS.md rather than being kept with a note about what came of it, which is what the notebook itself has always said. CLAUDE.md was the half that disagreed.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The notes pages stop earning a mark nobody wrote by hand” — 30 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: What the book calls its own pages now includes the notes pages tools/docs.sh renders, asked of that tool rather than listed here, so a rule change stops wearing a notes mark for generated output. The nine marks do not move and no hand-written path changes mark.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The manifest line stops shouting game over everything else” — 30 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: src/features.js inherits its mark from the change it is part of rather than asserting game over it, so a branch directory says which part of the cabinet somebody was standing in. The nine marks and their order do not move, and the manifest alone still reads as game.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The book stops writing meanwhile about its own paperwork” — 30 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: What the book counts as its own paperwork is the pages plus the badge strip that is repainted with them, and the generated ledger counts as neither paperwork nor work. No rule text moves; the silence CLAUDE.md already promised now covers a filing whoever pressed the button.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “A merge is nobody's work, and the referee finally agrees” — 29 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: The pre-commit reading of a merge is the resolution rather than the whole of what came across, and GR12 does not ask the tally about a history that is one parent short. No rule text moves; GR10 and GR13 stop firing at people for the shape of a branch point, which is what they always said they were not about.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The tower says the name of whoever it is talking to” — 29 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: A waveoff addresses the author of the pull request by name, and only the author.

While v39 was on the cabinet, David Friedrich changed the rules.

landed as “The tower learns to wave a landing off” — 29 August 2026

The rules themselves were altered: A skill and its tool for a pull request that cannot land. It comments and never clears: pushing a fix to somebody's branch, merging round it, or opening a competing pull request are all refused in the skill, and the merge button stays where GR7 put it.