wellmanifest/priority

wellmanifest.priority/v1 — standing priorities, the signals that reweight them, and the amendments by which the intent itself is revised.

Abstract and project-agnostic: this pack names no organization, product, or repository. Concrete adopters belong in examples/.

The problem

A ranked list of priorities is a photograph. It is correct when written and wrong shortly after, because the state that justified the ranking keeps moving. Agents then re-derive priorities from prose — each one differently — and the ranking quietly becomes whatever the last model guessed.

Three specific failures follow, and the design targets each:

1. Everything is negotiable. With a single numeric score, enough accumulated small work outranks a correctness invariant. Fixed by lexicographic tiers: a floor item cannot be outranked by any amount of lower-tier weight.
2. Priorities never die. Without a completion test an item stays on the list forever, consuming attention that belongs to work that can finish. Fixed by making SATISFIED_WHEN required.
3. The intent silently becomes a different intent. Fixed by separating ON (changes the weight) from AMEND (changes the intent), and requiring an amendment to justify itself.

Effect model

propose-only. The document ranks work and explains the ranking. It never authorizes an edit.

Usage

python3 -m pip install -e .
priority validate examples/standardization.priority.dsl
priority rank    examples/standardization.priority.dsl --readings examples/readings.demo.json
priority receipt examples/standardization.priority.dsl \
  --readings examples/readings.demo.json \
  --context examples/evaluation-context.demo.json
priority matrix  examples/standardization.priority.dsl
priority select  examples/standardization.priority.dsl --capacity 3
priority project examples/standardization.priority.dsl   # proposed bytes only
priority check   examples/standardization.priority.dsl   # drift gate

The evaluator accepts only a versioned wellmanifest.priority/readings/v1 envelope bound to the exact document digest and producer references. It never executes those producers. A runtime integration may run an explicit allowlist, then pass its observations to the pure evaluator. observedAt controls reading freshness; optional activeSince records how long a condition has held.

Independent producers may emit partial readings envelopes. compose_readings combines disjoint, validated envelopes and emits a wellmanifest.priority/readings-composition/v1 receipt binding every source digest and revision to the final readings digest. Duplicate signals and source observations newer than the composition time fail closed.

priority receipt emits a deterministic wellmanifest.priority/ranking/v1 receipt. It is digest-bound and always carries executionAuthorized: false.

Escalation, decay and starvation additionally depend on elapsed durations. A runtime that supplies them uses a wellmanifest.priority/evaluation-context/v1 envelope bound to the exact document and readings revision. Passing --context emits wellmanifest.priority/ranking/v2, whose receipt binds every input that can change the rank. V1 remains available for evaluations that do not supply this time context.

An external runtime may sign an wellmanifest.priority/evaluation-attestation/v1 over the exact document, readings, context and ranking v2 digest. The reference verifier requires an allowlisted issuer implementation digest, audience, current 15-minute validity window, unused nonce and a caller-provided protected signature verifier. The attestation remains executionAuthorized: false; it proves provenance and reproducibility, not permission to execute work.

Reaching heterogeneous agents

Claude, ChatGPT/Codex, Gemini and IDE assistants read different files, and no standard will change that. So the document is the authority and every agent-facing file is a generated projection of it. priority project only proposes the exact output bytes. An adopter-owned workflow may review and splice the marked block so hand-written instructions around it survive:

priority check fails when a projection drifts, which is what stops the files from becoming three different rankings.

Documents

• docs/STANDARD.md — normative model: tiers, weight, signals, complementarity, conformance levels.
• docs/GRAMMAR.md — the DOCUMENT PRIORITY text form.
• docs/TRIGGERS.md — commit / interval / watch cadences.
• docs/COMPLEMENTARITY.md — how pairings are measured.

Conformance