refactor(governance): replace goalposts with version milestones

[flyingrobots]

Decision

Use plain GitHub milestones named vX.Y.Z as the sole scheduling authority for Wesley work.

Retire slogan milestones named Goalpost: ... from active planning and retire vX.Y.Z labels as a parallel scheduling axis. Themes may remain in project views or descriptive labels, but they must not be required metadata or merge gates.

Trigger

PR #741 and issue #740 exposed the failure mode: the implementation slice is concrete and release-relevant, but several slogan goalposts are rhetorically plausible and none is objectively correct. Mandatory subjective classification blocked an otherwise green PR without adding scheduling information.

Refs #740
Refs #741

Canonical model

• Unscheduled open issue: exactly one triage:* label and no milestone.
• Scheduled open issue: exactly one plain version milestone named vX.Y.Z and no triage:* or vX.Y.Z scheduling label.
• Release-gate issue: lives in the same vX.Y.Z milestone as implementation work and closes before the immutable release tag is created.
• Priority and workflow status: GitHub Project fields.
• Work classification: legend:*, pkg:*, work:*, and ordinary type labels.
• Dependencies: GitHub issue relationships and explicit references.
• Historical closed goalpost milestones and version labels remain evidence until a separately verified archival cleanup can preserve their information.

Deterministic live migration

1. Rename open milestones Release: v0.3.0, Release: v0.4.0, and Release: v0.5.0 to plain version names.
2. For every scheduled open issue, use its unique existing vX.Y.Z label to select the matching version milestone.
3. Remove the redundant version label after the milestone assignment is verified.
4. Leave triage:* issues without milestones.
5. Assign feat(examples): add IR-to-Brainfuck extension generator #740 and this transition issue to v0.3.0.
6. Close the five remaining open Goalpost: ... milestones after their open issue count reaches zero.
7. Update release-gate bodies to describe milestone membership rather than version-label queries.

Repository work

• Rewrite the authoritative hierarchy in AGENTS.md, docs/BEARING.md, and docs/METHOD.md.
• Update triage, labels, documentation-standard, release, roadmap, contributor, and process guidance.
• Update .continuum/release.yml to declare one version-milestone scheduling axis.
• Update release guards to query the plain version milestone instead of version labels.
• Update templates and deterministic governance tests.
• Preserve historical release packets and SHA-anchored audit reports as historical evidence.

Acceptance

• A focused regression fails under the current split goalpost/label model.
• Scheduled work is defined by exactly one plain semantic-version milestone.
• Unscheduled work is defined by exactly one triage:* label and no milestone.
• Release guards find open scheduled work through the version milestone.
• Release-gate handling cannot deadlock the release that it governs.
• Current doctrine, templates, profile, and operator docs agree.
• A read-only migration dry run accounts for every open issue before live mutation.
• pnpm run preflight and focused governance suites pass.
• Live GitHub migration occurs only after the versioned repository change is approved.

Transition exception

This issue intentionally has no slogan goalpost milestone. It exists to remove that axis. The temporary v0.3.0 label records scheduling under the currently published model and will be replaced by the plain v0.3.0 milestone during migration.

[coderabbitai]

🔗 Related PRs

#640 - chore(release): prepare v0.1.1 [merged]
#657 - docs(release): adapt lifecycle runbook [merged]
#687 - docs: publish assurance capability matrix [merged]
#734 - chore(release): prepare v0.3.0-alpha.1 (first 0.3.0-line pre-release) [merged]
#741 - Add IR-to-Brainfuck extension generator example [open]

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[flyingrobots]

Read-only migration dry run — 2026-07-19

No live labels, milestone assignments, milestone states, or gate bodies were changed. The paginated snapshot accounts for all 23 open issues and all 34 GitHub milestones.

Target state	Open issues	Planned action
v0.3.0	#448, #542, #543, #587, #634, #740, #742	Rename milestone #32 from Release: v0.3.0; move the listed open issues; remove active version labels
v0.4.0	#174, #175, #229, #447, #546, #572, #579, #601, #635	Rename milestone #33 from Release: v0.4.0; move the listed open issues; remove active version labels
v0.5.0	#452, #453, #636	Rename milestone #34 from Release: v0.5.0; move the listed open issues; remove active version labels
Unscheduled	#651, #673, #676, #719	Preserve exactly one triage:* label and no milestone

Collision and history audit

• Milestones chore(tests): standardize test layout + generated artifacts location #32, chore(docs): add CLI reference (docs/reference/cli.md) and move directives spec under reference #33, and chore(docs): tighten README (summary + quick start) and move deep content into docs #34 each have zero closed associations and no exact-title collision, so they are safe rename targets.
• Active legacy milestones RFC: Compile GraphQL operations to SQL via a Query IR (QIR) #19, docs(rfc): QIR ops→SQL — incorporate maintainer feedback #20, chore(ci): standardize CLI invocations to 'pnpm exec wesley' #23, chore(docs): fix broken links and add guides/quick-start (migrate QUICK_START.md) #25, and chore(docs): consolidate agent guidance; link AGENTS.md from CONTRIBUTING and dedupe CLAUDE.md/CODEX.md #26 become empty after the open-issue moves. They may then be closed.
• Closed associations remain attached to their historical milestones: docs(rfc): QIR ops→SQL — incorporate maintainer feedback #20 has 35, chore(ci): standardize CLI invocations to 'pnpm exec wesley' #23 has 18, chore(docs): fix broken links and add guides/quick-start (migrate QUICK_START.md) #25 has 4, and chore(docs): consolidate agent guidance; link AGENTS.md from CONTRIBUTING and dedupe CLAUDE.md/CODEX.md #26 has 15. None will be moved or rewritten.
• feat(examples): add IR-to-Brainfuck extension generator #740 is the one open issue with neither a triage label nor release scheduling metadata; the accepted transition decision assigns it to v0.3.0.
• refactor(governance): replace goalposts with version milestones #742 retains its temporary v0.3.0 label until cutover and then moves to the v0.3.0 milestone.
• Release gates Release gate: v0.3.0 #634, Release gate: v0.4.0 #635, and Release gate: v0.5.0 #636 move with their versions; their bodies will be updated to describe milestone membership.

Cutover gate

The live operation remains frozen until the governance PR is approved. Immediately before merge: freeze scheduling changes, take fresh paginated snapshots, revalidate this mapping, apply the issue and milestone changes atomically, verify all 23 open issues satisfy exactly one canonical state, and merge only if verification is clean.

Repository evidence

• Local commit: db87ccff (refactor(governance): schedule work with version milestones)
• cargo test --locked -p xtask: 67 passed
• Full repository Bats suite: 99 passed
• pnpm run preflight: passed
• Rust formatting, Prettier, shell parsing, and git diff --check: passed
• Independent architecture, runtime, and test/CI audits: no actionable findings