The diff touches only docs/AUTOMATION.md, docs/DECISIONS.md, and scripts/arbiter.mjs; AGENTS.md is untouched — the proposed §1 sentence is explicitly offered to the founder in the PR body rather than applied, which is the correct handling under §3.15. No content/ records, citations, locators, or assessments are added, so §3.7/§3.8 and the verification-label rules are not engaged (the tooling found no identifiers). The AUTOMATION.md 'goal' section is aspirational operating guidance that explicitly reaffirms the two human levers and does not loosen any §3.15 check. The two commit hashes added to SUPERVISED_DECLARED use the pre-existing per-merge remedy for landings whose messages could not carry the trailer, and each is stamped with who, what channel, and date, with the same direction recorded verbatim in DECISIONS.md — that is provenance recorded, not a check dodged, since the budget window governs the autonomous lane, not panel ratification. I cannot independently confirm the founder actually said the quoted words or that d914626/8fc3e2e are the founder's hand merges, but nothing in the material is internally inconsistent, and unfamiliarity is not evidence of fabrication. If anything needed tightening it would be a note in the arbiter list of where the session correspondence is held, but the decisions-log entry already discharges the operating-record rule.

The change does not edit AGENTS.md or alter the constitutional ratification rules. The decisions entry gives the founder direction a date and channel, quotes it directly, and identifies the two affected merges by PR number and full commit hash. The arbiter change does not waive panel review: it records that both changes had already passed the panel and adjusts only their classification in the autonomous merge window because the founder performed the merges manually. Nothing shown fabricates a citation, publishes confidential material, hides disagreement, or weakens a fail-closed epistemic check.

The PR records founder session directions from 2026-09-16 in `docs/DECISIONS.md`, updates `docs/AUTOMATION.md` to reflect the clarified operational goal, and adds two squash commit hashes to `SUPERVISED_DECLARED` in `scripts/arbiter.mjs`. It does not modify `AGENTS.md`, properly leaving constitutional amendments to the founder as noted in the PR body. Provenance of the founder directions is clearly stamped with date and channel in accordance with §3.15.

The diff only extends docs/AUTOMATION.md with a goal section drawn from a founder session direction, appends that direction (and the hand-merge direction) to docs/DECISIONS.md, and adds two squash-commit hashes to the existing SUPERVISED_DECLARED set in scripts/arbiter.mjs. AGENTS.md is untouched; the PR body correctly leaves any §1 sentence to the founder. Recording founder directions in the decisions log and configuration is expressly allowed by §3.15, and the supervised-hash remedy is the gate’s established path for trailer-less hand merges rather than a dodge of the checks. No citations, content records, confidence material, or run ledgers are introduced.

The diff does not touch AGENTS.md — the proposed §1 sentence appears only in the PR body as an offer to the founder, and amending the constitution is reserved to the founder, so no §3.15 constitution violation occurs. The arbiter change uses the existing SUPERVISED_DECLARED per-merge remedy to attribute two specific hash-pinned commits as founder hand-merges, backed by a founder direction recorded verbatim in docs/DECISIONS.md with date and channel, exactly as §3.15 prescribes for founder operating-record directions; it does not loosen the trailer requirement generally, and both merges had already passed the panel, so no ratification check was dodged. The new AUTOMATION.md section affirms rather than weakens the checks ('the human levers stay exactly two', review notes become gates), and recording the goal and the merge attributions in the decisions log with stamps honors §3.14's versioning and provenance rules. I cannot independently verify the session quotes or that commits d914626/8fc3e2e were founder-made, but under temporal humility that unfamiliarity is not positive evidence of fabrication, and the recording follows the constitution's own channel-and-date rigor; if the hashes or quotes were shown to be misattributed, that would be a provenance violation, but nothing in the packet shows it.