Protected-Zone Regression Discipline

Status: active release-hardening policy

Purpose

This page records the minimum regression discipline required whenever a change touches a protected zone on the production path.

Protected zones

For release discipline, the following remain protected:

• astronomical core computation
• time systems and delta_t semantics
• precession, nutation, aberration, refraction, and coordinate transforms
• ephemeris or kernel binding logic
• house-policy propagation and fallback truth
• validation baselines, accuracy thresholds, and oracle comparison logic
• canonical public result vessels and root exports

Required practice

When a change touches a protected zone:

1. Name the protected zone in the change summary before editing.
2. Run at least one targeted suite that directly exercises the touched zone.
3. Run any public-surface guard needed to prove that the change did not drift exported semantics.
4. If the change affects release-facing docs, run the doc-consistency checker.
5. Do not claim parity, precision retention, or unchanged semantics unless the relevant targeted checks actually ran.

Minimum targeted suites

Use the smallest relevant suite first.

Protected concern	Minimum targeted proof
Root public exports and layered surfaces	tests/unit/test_public_api_drift.py
Public doctrine and policy vessels	tests/unit/test_public_doctrine_surfaces.py
Vimshottari structural and invariant truth	tests/unit/test_dasha.py
Firdaria and Zodiacal Releasing structural truth	tests/unit/test_timelords.py
Planetary cycles and return-series semantics	tests/unit/test_cycles.py
Adversarial astronomical routing and polar doctrine	wiki/03_validation/KILLER_VALIDATION_INDEX.md run list

Operational gate

The repository CI release-hardening lane enforces the following floor on every push to main and every pull request:

• release-facing doc consistency
• public API drift guard
• public doctrine surface audit
• dasha.py hardening suite
• timelords.py hardening suite
• cycles.py hardening suite

Anything broader remains a release-manager decision, not an excuse to skip the minimum targeted proof above.