AILang/docs/journals/2026-05-13-audit-form-a.md

audit-form-a — Milestone close (Form-A as the default authoring surface)

Date: 2026-05-13 Audited range: aabcadc (iter form-a.0) .. 9fdc4ca (iter form-a.1 T6-12) HEAD Spec: docs/specs/2026-05-13-form-a-default-authoring.md (amended at 9fcda8b) Status: drift_found (4 items, all documentary-only); bench clean (exit 0 across all three scripts) Recommendation: carry-on — no form-a.tidy queued at architect's explicit recommendation; drift items deferred to documentary cleanup at next opportunity.

What holds (architect-verified)

• DESIGN.md §"Roundtrip Invariant" restated correctly: four numbered properties (parse-determinism + idempotency-under-print + CLI- pipeline-idempotency + carve-out-anchor) replace the prior Direction-1/Direction-2 framing; five surviving enforcement tests named verbatim (parse_is_deterministic_over_every_ail_fixture, parse_then_print_then_parse_is_idempotent_on_every_ail_fixture, cli_parse_then_render_then_parse_is_idempotent, every_ast_variant_is_observed_in_the_fixture_corpus, examples_ail_json_inventory_matches_carve_outs). §"Float literals"
  • §"Why anchored at top level" preserved.
• §A4 doctrine rewording landed verbatim per spec at CLAUDE.md:5-6
  • DESIGN.md:465-466 (canonical form = JSON-AST; authoring projection = .ail; "Form (A) is one projection; the JSON-AST stays canonical" preserved as the second sentence).
• Carve-out inventory matches the eight-file spec post-amendment: ls examples/*.ail.json | wc -l returns 8, alphabetical order broken_unbound + prelude + 3× test_22b2_* + 3× test_ct1_*. crates/ailang-core/tests/carve_out_inventory.rs::EXPECTED hardcodes the same eight entries.
• 156 non-carve-out .ail.json deleted; 157 .ail files present (98 fresh-rendered in iter form-a.1 T2 + 58 pre-iter + the prelude pilot from form-a.0). No regressions in cargo test --workspace (557 green + 3 ignored).
• WhatsNew milestone-close entry editorial-clean per /boss convention: English, no crates / iter-codes / agent names, leads with the change, factual tone, telegram-pragmatic length.
• Roadmap milestone struck [x] with closing attribution (Closed 2026-05-13 by iter form-a.1.); follow-up milestone [Prelude embed: Form-A as compile-time source] present with motivation + problem + three resolution options.
• Per-iter journals (2026-05-13-iter-form-a.0.md, 2026-05-13-iter-form-a.1.md) both present; INDEX.md carries both lines in chronological order.

Drift items (deferred per architect recommendation)

Severity	Path	Issue
medium	docs/specs/2026-05-13-form-a-default-authoring.md (§C1, §C2, §"Data flow")	Three sites still say "seven carve-outs" post-amendment; acceptance #1/#2 correctly say eight. Spec self-inconsistent against its own amendment commit 9fcda8b.
medium	docs/plans/2026-05-13-iter-form-a.1.md (two sites)	Same "seven carve-outs" wording surviving the amendment; harmless now but contradicts the eight-file reality the plan executed.
low	crates/ailang-core/src/hash.rs:57	Empty mod tests {} placeholder left after iter form-a.1 T5 relocation. Documentary-only today; drift if it stays past one further milestone.
low	crates/ailang-surface/tests/round_trip.rs:16	Module docstring still says "Direction 2 of the Roundtrip Invariant", but DESIGN.md T10 retired the Direction-1/Direction-2 framing. Stale cross-reference to a renamed concept.

All four items are documentary-only: the spec / plan orphans contradict their own post-amendment sections but do not affect the shipped implementation (which is eight-carve-out-correct); the hash.rs placeholder and the round_trip.rs docstring are cleanup hygiene that does not change behaviour or invariants.

Architect's explicit recommendation: "carry on as planned. Queue a documentary form-a.tidy only if a subsequent reader hits the seven-vs-eight orphans; the implementation is correct and the spec orphans are post-hoc retro-clean-up, not active drift." The audit follows this recommendation.

Bench-regression report

All three bench scripts exit 0; baseline left pristine.

bench/check.py (exit 0)

63 metrics; 2 regressed-by-magnitude, 2 improved-by-magnitude, 59 stable. Regressions both on max_us tail-latency metrics:

• latency.explicit_at_rc.max_us +124.99% (tol 25%) — paired with latency.explicit_at_rc.p99_us improvement −27.02%.
• latency.implicit_at_rc.max_us +126.13% (tol 30%).

This is the 12th consecutive audit observation of the metric- identity-migrating noise envelope on tail-latency metrics, dating back to audit-cma (2026-05-12). The pattern across the lineage: different metric identifiers fire each run, magnitudes oscillate, median + p99 stay stable; the firing-metric set has migrated through approximately a dozen distinct identifiers across the twelve audits. The convention since the audit-cma originating observation is to hold the baseline pristine — the metric-migration- between-runs is itself attribution evidence that the cluster is noise-class, not signal-class. The queued P3 latency-methodology- histogram rework is the right ratification path; --update-baseline is not.

The form-a milestone is intentionally test-infra + corpus migration, not language semantics. Zero language-semantic surface was touched. The tail-latency regressions are not caused by the migration; they are the noise envelope continuing.

bench/compile_check.py (exit 0)

24 metrics; 2 regressed-by-magnitude, 0 improved, 22 stable.

• check_ms.hello +32.44% (tol 25%) — 1.2ms → 1.5ms.
• check_ms.borrow_own_demo +26.18% (tol 25%) — 1.3ms → 1.7ms.

Both on the smallest fixtures in the corpus where check_ms is sub-2-millisecond. iter form-a.1 T6 journal already flagged this: "First compile_check run reported exit-1 due to sub-millisecond check_ms noise on hello and borrow_own_demo; second run clean." Now both still fire at the current audit re-run. This is sub-millisecond timing-jitter, not a migration-induced regression. The migration touched only fixture file extensions and test-loader call sites; the ail check binary path was not modified.

bench/cross_lang.py (exit 0)

25 metrics; 0 regressed, 0 improved-beyond-tolerance, 25 stable. Cross-language ratios (AILang RC / AILang bump / C reference) all hold within tolerance. The most interesting movement is bench_tree_walk.rc_over_c from 2.7394 to 2.5871 (−5.56%) — a modest improvement still inside the noise envelope.

Recommendation summary

Item	Recommendation
4 architect drift items	carry-on (per architect's explicit recommendation; documentary-only)
bench/check.py 2 regressions	noise-envelope continuation (12th audit); baseline pristine
bench/compile_check.py 2 regressions	sub-millisecond timing-jitter; baseline pristine
bench/cross_lang.py clean	no action

No form-a.tidy iter is queued. The four documentary drift items are recorded here for future-reader visibility; they will be addressed inline at the next iter that touches the affected files, or in a dedicated cleanup pass if a subsequent reader hits them.

The form-a-default-authoring milestone is fully closed.

Next-step pointer

Per /boss and the milestone-close pipeline: the next milestone candidate at the top of the roadmap is [Retire io/print_int/_bool/_float] (P2, post-milestone-24 mechanical follow-up). The [Prelude embed: Form-A as compile-time source] milestone is the second P2 entry, queued behind the io/print retire. Starting either is a /boss bounce-back per the new-milestone rule — the Boss surfaces the candidate and the user picks the session shape.