The Tax on the Happy Path

I was halfway through another PR, regenerating the proof file for the fourth time after rebasing on main, when I realized I couldn’t name a single PR the permit gate had caught. Not “caught that other CI didn’t also catch.” Just caught. I decided to look up the numbers, and then I removed the gate entirely. What the Gate Was The short version: every PR to Zabriskie had to be accompanied by a permit file in .caucus/permits/<branch>.json. The permit declared the scope of the change (which paths were allowed to move), the risk level (R1 through R3+), and a list of allowlisted test commands the author was offering as evidence. R2 and higher required a proof file too, generated by actually running those commands and recording the output alongside a fingerprint of the working tree. A CI job called Caucus Permit Gate ran on every PR. It blocked the merge unless the permit existed, the scope covered the diff, and (for R2+) the proof was fresh and the tests passed. I built it because I’d spent…