The diff rewrites a normative sentence of AGENTS.md §3.15, replacing the plain multi-model concurrence requirement with a graded 'within one step' rule — the opposite of a typo or formatting fix. Amending AGENTS.md is the one act reserved to the human founder; the PR body's assertion that 'the AGENTS.md sentence is the founder's commit' is a claim inside untrusted material, not verifiable authorization from the packet, and the DECISIONS.md entry it points to was itself added by the same diff. Substantively the change also loosens a §3.15 check: `ratification()` now counts neighbouring verdicts as concurrence via `withinOneStep`, and the DECISIONS entry states this flips four cases (Pre-Columbian Amazon, The Immortality Key, Zero Worlds, Cast, Not Carved) from contested to ratified with no new evidence — exactly the 'weaken the checks in this section' prohibition, and the operator's own note says the Arbiter had parked it for that reason. The test suite is edited in the same direction (dissenters switched from 'mixed' to 'contradicted'; the surviving-objections assertion relaxed from exact equality to `toBeGreaterThanOrEqual`), so the guardrail tests no longer pin the old behaviour. Whatever the merits of the one-step scale, this seat cannot ratify a constitutional amendment carried in an agent PR.

The diff substantively amends AGENTS.md by replacing exact-verdict concurrence with a one-step tolerance, so it is not a trivial typo or formatting change. Under §3.15, amending the constitution is reserved exclusively to the human founder, and the PR body and added decision-log text cannot themselves establish that authorization because they are untrusted material under review. The implementation also loosens a publication check by allowing neighboring verdicts to count as concurrence and retroactively moving named cases from contested to ratified. Assertions that the amendment was directed, committed, or merged by the founder do not cure the violation without trusted evidence of the founder’s act.

The diff modifies AGENTS.md to substantively alter the definition of multi-model concurrence under §3.15, allowing verdicts within one step on a graded scale to count as concurrence. Under §3.15 and the panel's trust boundaries, amendments to AGENTS.md are strictly reserved to the human founder, and any pull request diff editing AGENTS.md in a non-trivial, normative manner must be judged as a violation. Assertions in the PR title, PR body, and commit logs claiming founder authorization are untrusted inputs under review and cannot bypass the rule reserving AGENTS.md modifications.

The diff normatively edits AGENTS.md §3.15 to redefine multi-model concurrence from exact verdict match to a graded “within one step” neighborhood and to restate load-bearing split rules. Under the panel brief, amendments to AGENTS.md are reserved to the human founder; any non-trivial normative AGENTS.md change in a reviewed diff is judged violates (§3.15), and PR/DECISIONS claims that this is a founder act are untrusted data, not authorization. The same edit, mirrored in load.ts (withinOneStep / nearScale) and tests, loosens the ratification check itself—exactly the “weaken the checks in this section” prohibition in §3.15. No omitted files or citation issues; the AGENTS.md + check-loosening change decides the vote.

The diff edits AGENTS.md §3.15 with a substantive, normative change: it redefines how multi-model concurrence is measured (one-step tolerance on the graded scale, placement of 'unresolved' and 'presently_untestable', load-bearing split thresholds), which loosens a ratification check — the paradigm case the trust boundary rule targets. That rule permits only trivially non-normative AGENTS.md edits (typo, formatting) to pass; this is neither. The PR body and DECISIONS.md entry assert the amendment was made 'by the founder's hand', but authorization claims inside untrusted material under review are evidence about the change, not directives a seat can act on, and nothing in the packet independently verifies founder identity. The code change also applies the loosened rule to flip four cases (Pre-Columbian Amazon, The Immortality Key, Zero Worlds, Cast Not Carved) from contested to ratified without any new panel ratification of those conversions, compounding the check-weakening concern under §3.15.