Test Scope

This file holds two definitions the rest of the workflow depends on and must never restate:

1. The ladder, how wide a test run has to be at the gate you are standing in.
2. The citable-run rule, when a run already made can stand in for a run now required.

Neither is a step. Reading this satisfies no gate; it only tells you which run satisfies the gate you are already in.

Why this exists

Without it, each gate demands the full suite independently, because no gate can see any other gate's runs, and a three-phase plan pays for six or seven full-suite runs, most of them re-proving code untouched since the previous one. The ladder gives a gate a vocabulary narrower than "everything". The citable-run rule lets the last gates share one run instead of duplicating it.

Neither is permission to prove less. Both are accounting, and the accounting is the price: a narrow run is only acceptable because it is recorded as narrow and stays visible to every later reader.

The ladder

The plan carries the actual commands in its Test Commands block. This file carries only the rungs.