Fix active lifecycle generation supersession after fact drift

[Niko4417]

Scope

• Accepted issue: Defect: active lifecycle generation cannot be superseded after fact drift #158
• Accepted planning-contract version: v2
• Automated readiness record: Defect: active lifecycle generation cannot be superseded after fact drift #158 (comment)
• Actual source branch: codex/158-active-generation-supersession
• Accepted target branch: dev
• Parent epic and Quality Envelope rows: None — standalone defect discovered while qualifying Exact migration inventory, one-time reconciliation, and activation orchestration #52/PR Governance: add exact migration inventory and dry-run orchestration #156.
• Change classification: defect
• Product decision, finding, or incident: protected lifecycle evaluation run 30728501135, job 91444494561, failed because authenticated PR fact drift stranded an active generation.
• In scope: failure-first coverage, inert authenticated supersession of the obsolete active generation, successor generation planning, and matching coordinator/producer active-record boundaries.
• Out of scope: activation, lifecycle/status effects, merge automation, schemas/ADRs/workflows, migration behavior, product/native source, repository settings, and branch protection.
• Native targets, contracts, or trust boundaries affected: ADR-0004/ADR-0011/ADR-0012 protected lifecycle record-chain reconciliation only; no native target or product runtime changes.

Product and architecture alignment

• The implemented contract version and fingerprint match the automated readiness record; no
  semantic planning change was absorbed during implementation.
• The change follows the Decision Addendum, CONTEXT.md, accepted ADRs, and the issue Quality
  Plan.
• Existing Keiko material was used only after a recorded Reuse Assessment, or the issue records
  why Existing Keiko evidence is not applicable.
• This greenfield change creates no mandatory build-time or runtime dependency on Existing
  Keiko.
• Product authority, policy, evidence, and privileged effects remain in their owning Native
  layer.
• Any durable architecture change is recorded in an ADR.

Existing Keiko evidence is not applicable: this restores a repository-owned Native governance protocol already accepted by ADR-0004, ADR-0011, and ADR-0012. No durable architecture or schema changes were made.

Acceptance criteria and evidence

Acceptance criterion	Evidence	Exact head or artifact	Result
AC1	Canonical issue-update time is anchored to the authenticated readiness record, so lifecycle record comments cannot recursively change generation; genuine PR/head drift emits one old-generation phase-fence-claim with claim_outcome: superseded and no effect	2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125	Passed focused and full suites
AC2	Two failure-first tests preserve the production exception and the recursive timestamp defect, then prove one successor request bound to the authenticated supersession predecessor	2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125	Passed
AC3	Semantic readiness changes still create a new generation; unchanged, stale, duplicate/reordered, recovery, malformed, authentication, and record-store paths remain green	2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125	85 focused record tests and full coverage suite passed
AC4	Full local and required exact-head repository quality bars, native gates, package/signing/security composition, and audit	2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125	Passed; protected #52 lifecycle rerun requires this PR's human merge

Acceptance journey evidence

• Applicability: Not applicable — accepted issue #158 is a non-user-facing deterministic governance state-machine correction with no product UI or native runtime change.

• Automated checks exercise user-visible outcomes rather than incidental implementation
  details.

• Required failure, recovery, accessibility, visual, and platform observations are settled.

No user-visible journey is applicable. Failure, recovery, duplicate, stale, malformed, and zero-effect governance outcomes are exercised directly at the owning state-machine boundary; accessibility and visual observations are excluded by the accepted Quality Plan.

Quality Plan settlement

• Applicable positive, negative, boundary, failure, cancellation, and recovery behavior is
  covered.
• The actually wired production composition was tested where this change crosses layers.
• Applicable security, accessibility, performance, resource, visual, and platform evidence is
  attached or linked.
• Excluded quality areas retain the rationale accepted in the issue.
• Secrets, credentials, raw customer content, private endpoints, and PII are absent from source,
  tests, logs, evidence, artifacts, issues, and this pull request.

Verification

• npm ci --ignore-scripts
• npm run quality
• npm audit --audit-level=high
• Every declared native target-specific gate passed on its authoritative platform.
• I reviewed the complete diff against requirements, contracts, trust boundaries, and failure
  modes.

Additional affected checks and concise results:

Failure-first, before fixes:
  FAIL — TypeError: active generation does not match current facts
  FAIL — self-authored timestamp produced a different generation identity
node --test --test-name-pattern="self-authored issue timestamps do not change the active generation|active generation is superseded when authenticated facts change" quality/lifecycle-coordinator.test.mjs
  PASS — 2/2
node --test quality/lifecycle-coordinator.test.mjs quality/lifecycle-producer.test.mjs quality/lifecycle-record-*.test.mjs
  PASS — 85/85
npm run quality
  PASS — control-plane lines 94.61%, branches 87.95%, functions 94.71%; all native gates green
npm audit --audit-level=high
  PASS — 0 vulnerabilities
git verify-commit 2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125
  PASS — verified ED25519 signature for niko.vasilopoulos96@gmail.com
Read-only production-composition replay against #52 authenticated history
  PASS — planned phase-fence-claim/request with claim_outcome=superseded,
  predecessor_comment_id=5153941785, old pull_request_number/exact_head_sha=null,
  and no external effect
Read-only Node 24.18.0 production-composition replay against #158 after the v2 evidence comment
  PASS — canonical issueUpdatedAt remained readiness-bound at 2026-08-02T03:46:53Z
  despite the later self-authored comment; genuine PR/head drift planned exactly one
  phase-fence-claim/request with claim_outcome=superseded and no external effect

Independent audit and findings

• Audit scope and dimensions: complete four-file diff; state-machine ownership; old/current generation and source-observation binding; predecessor/fence sequence; duplicate/replay safety; coordinator/producer boundary agreement; preactivation zero effects; scope and delivery authority.
• Audited commit: 2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125

Confirmed finding	Evidence	Disposition	Settlement evidence or follow-up
Sonar reported 11.5% new-code duplication from two repeated inert fence encoders on prior head fe8e0e6bc34408686ce2a09c63deb8bd8bdd9e2d	Sonar PR #159 quality-gate result and duplication blocks in quality/lifecycle-coordinator.mjs	Resolved by centralizing canonical inert fence encoding	Exact-head Sonar passed with 98.8% new-code coverage, 0.0% duplication, zero issues, and zero security hotspots
Exact production-history replay showed GitHub advances raw issue updated_at when the workflow publishes its own lifecycle record, which would recursively request and supersede generations	Authenticated #158 readiness and lifecycle record timestamps plus failure-first self-authored timestamp test	Resolved by deriving canonical issue-update time from authenticated readiness authority while retaining raw provider validation	Both failure-first tests, focused 85-test suite, complete local green bar, and semantic-readiness regression coverage passed on exact head 2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125

• Findings are evidence-cited; speculative observations are advisory rather than blockers.
• Every confirmed finding is resolved, explicitly accepted by an authorized human, or linked to
  a scoped follow-up that does not invalidate current acceptance.
• Verification and audit were repeated after the latest implementation or audit fix.

Integrated epic acceptance

• Applicability: Not applicable — standalone defect; it unblocks but does not deliver or change epic #49's integrated acceptance surface.
• Production-composition result: Full repository/native composition green locally.
• Machine-enforced acceptance result: Focused and complete local gates green; all 13 required exact-head branch-protection checks passed.
• macOS evidence: Full local macOS composition plus authoritative macos-14 and macos-26 native, package, platform, security, signing, test, and acceptance jobs passed.
• Windows evidence: No platform/product code changed; exact-head Windows cross-platform smoke passed.
• Manual usability, accessibility, visual, signing, or packaging evidence: Usability/accessibility/visual not applicable; deterministic internal-signing and packaging gates passed.

Delivery

• Target path: epic/standalone -> dev
• The target branch matches the delivery path accepted in the issue; no direct push, force
  push, gate bypass, finding dismissal, or authority widening occurred.
• Commits are signed and every required check is bound to the exact current head and expected
  producer. Commits through 2848926da5e194a2bec938c5b78d90694b671125 have verified SSH signatures for niko.vasilopoulos96@gmail.com; GitHub verifies the exact head and all required exact-head checks passed.
• Advisory tools are not treated as required merge authority under the current quality-gate
  policy.
• Documentation, ADRs, contracts, known limitations, and follow-ups are current.
• A draft pull request was not promoted to Ready for Human Review before every required
  Acceptance Journey result and exact-head gate was complete.

For this standalone dev-target pull request, only Niko or Oscharko may manually initiate merge. No
agent will enable auto-merge, enqueue, merge, or update dev.

Residual risks and follow-ups

• The protected Exact migration inventory, one-time reconciliation, and activation orchestration #52 lifecycle evaluation can be proven only after this standalone fix is manually merged into dev; PR Governance: add exact migration inventory and dry-run orchestration #156 remains draft and blocked until that exact protected rerun succeeds.
• No lifecycle activation or external lifecycle effect is introduced by this PR.

Closes #158

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
98.8% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud

[Niko4417]

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