`decoder-loop.md` has had `## Each iteration` since 2026-09-04, ending in
7. Commit, `push-work`, open the PR, label the issue `state/needs-human`,
and stop.
`port-loop.md` has never had that section at all. It states the rules -- "you
cannot close your own work", "you move an item to state/needs-human", work
reaches main "through pull requests" -- but nowhere gives the STEPS that carry
them out. The Port agent was told the rule and never the procedure.
Two steps were missing entirely, and both are Phase 7 check items:
* READ YOUR NOTIFICATIONS first. They are polled and nothing pushes them, so
an agent that skips this never receives anything addressed to it -- and the
symptom is silence, not an error. That is GITEA-SETUP.md Phase 7 check 1.
* OPEN THE PR AND SET THE LABEL. That is Phase 7 check 2.
The second carries a trap worth naming in the brief rather than in a runbook:
`docker/port/bin/push-work` ONLY PUSHES. Verified by reading it -- no /pulls
call, no `Closes #`, no label; its refusals (no main, no force-push) are
intact. `propose-work`, which would do all three, is still unbuilt --
GITEA-SETUP.md's own words are "the other two thirds being manual is how they
get skipped". The capability is there (`pull_request_write` and `issue_write`
are both in the pinned MCP tool set), so this is an instruction gap, not a
permissions one.
Written to mirror the Decoder's shape while using the Port's own vocabulary --
a gate is an artifact, verify against captures rather than our renderer, state
the expected number first, `authored/` entries carry a `why`, never an invented
number where a measured one is pending.
Found by the Pi agent while answering a Phase 7 readiness question. My own
check had been decoder-only, which is why the asymmetry survived it.
Refs #11
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fabian Hamm
65004ffe2c