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PHOENIX Open-Science Flow — Three-Track Walkthrough

PHOENIX is the most complex of the three authorities because it unifies three distinct coordination tracks under a single authority record. This walkthrough covers all three:

  1. Track 1 — Open-science validation (OSC-owned, continuous cadence)
  2. Track 2 — Patent / IP consolidation (IHL-owned, event-driven, counsel-gated)
  3. Track 3 — 58-gate quality registry (PCT-owned, per-release)

The tracks share operational plumbing (confidentiality-tiered PRs, drift CI, persona ownership) but address different lifecycles. The steward's job is to keep the record's three sub-sections accurate across all three cadences simultaneously.

Actors

  • OSC (Open-Science Coordinator) — Track 1 owner. Monitors docs/open-sci/ staging and proposes mirrors to PHOENIX.
  • IHL (Innovation Handoff Liaison) — Track 2 owner. Opens cross-repo patent PRs once preconditions are green.
  • PCT (Patent Coordination Trustee) — Track 2 custodian of the claim matrix; verifies mirror-status updates. Also coordinates on Track 3 quality-gate audits.
  • GCA (Governance Council Arbiter) — called in for confidentiality or governance questions on Track 2.
  • Coordination steward — you. You track all three tracks in the record and verify cross-track consistency.

Track 1 — Open-science validation (continuous)

Lifecycle

OSC monitors FCC artifact readiness continuously. Every artifact that clears the docs/open-sci/ staging checklist triggers a PHOENIX mirror proposal. The staging checklist exercises the 12 OPEN-SCI templates (shipped v1.3.8) covering reproducibility manifest, datasheet (Gebru et al.), model card (Mitchell et al.), evidence graph, and companion READMEs.

Typical artifact walkthrough

  1. FCC ships a new persona or plugin with accompanying open-science evidence.
  2. The author places the evidence under docs/open-sci/<codename>/ using the OPEN-SCI template pack.
  3. OSC runs the staging checklist — if green, opens a mirror proposal on the PHOENIX side.
  4. PHOENIX maintainers peer-review; acceptance, revisions requested, or community notes are handed back to FCC.
  5. On acceptance, the FCC-side artifact is marked public-ready and OSC updates the record's Open items if any related item was tracking this artifact.

Steward touchpoints (Track 1)

  • The record's Cross-repo contracts > Track 1 table cites docs/open-sci/ and docs/model-cards/. Verify paths exist.
  • The Handoff artifacts confidentiality note should read "public by default" for Track 1.
  • OPEN-SCI peer-review cadence is listed as an open item in v1.7.1 because it is not yet formalized. Steward tracks progress on formalization and removes the open item when it closes.

Track 2 — Patent / IP consolidation (event-driven, counsel-gated)

This is the track where stewards do the most careful work. Counsel-gating means every claim about Track 2 needs the two preconditions (owner-approval + counsel-ack) explicitly stated.

The ice_ext / POLARIS case study

ice_ext is a PRIVATE repository until patent counsel clears FTO on POLARIS-INV-001 (Model Management Service). The PHOENIX mirror inherits that confidentiality posture: ai-coe-docs/docs/patent/polaris/ is accessible only to counsel-cleared readers until clearance. No public-facing docs reference the POLARIS patent tree until then.

The six-step migration approach

Memorise this sequence; it is the canonical pattern for every ecosystem repo's patent tree that mirrors to PHOENIX.

  1. Precondition A — ice_ext owner approves migration in writing (Git commit or issue comment referenced by SHA).
  2. Precondition B — counsel acknowledges migration is within confidentiality scope (email or doc reference captured by URL or SHA).
  3. IHL opens cross-repo PR from FCC to ai-coe-docs (PHOENIX) containing: source files, README index with authorization-record backlinks, canonicalized drawings if required, and PR description stating confidentiality posture + owner approval SHA + counsel-ack reference.
  4. Review + merge by PHOENIX maintainers with confidentiality-tier review.
  5. Post-merge: IHL updates the coordination record with merge SHA; PCT updates Patent Claim Matrix row to PHOENIX Mirror Status: Mirrored.
  6. Drift CI activation: weekly patent-mirror-check.yml begins verifying SHA-256 parity.

IHL never writes to ai-coe-docs without BOTH preconditions green. This is load-bearing and the record states it explicitly.

Steward touchpoints (Track 2)

  • The record's Open items > Patent lane entry must name both preconditions and state drift-CI is inert until the mirror lands. Do not let this entry lose specificity.
  • The file-migration table (source path → target path) must match the current state of the private ice_ext repo's tree. If ice_ext reorganises its patent tree, the target structure in the record also changes.
  • The Patent Claim Matrix (docs/governance/patent-claim-matrix.md) is the authoritative cross-lane state. Always cross-check against the matrix when reading or editing Track 2.

Cross-track safety

Track 2 artifacts occasionally touch Track 1 (open-science validation on a post-FTO-clearance patent tree) or Track 3 (quality gates applied to patent documents). When they do, the record's Peer coordination with RHL paragraph should name the crossing explicitly. For FCC v1.4.3–v1.7.1 specifically, POLARIS-INV-001 has no adjacent research paper, so the cross-track text is stable.

Track 3 — 58-gate quality registry (per-release)

Lifecycle

At v1.3.8 FCC vendored the PHOENIX 58-gate registry + 12 OPEN-SCI templates + 3 Tier-1 gap closures. Every FCC patch release re-runs fcc audit personas --strict against the vendored registry. Drift fails CI.

The 58 gates are partitioned Tier-1 (hard-stop), Tier-2 (mandatory), Tier-3 (preferred). The vendored artifacts FCC maintains:

FCC path Purpose
docs/governance/phoenix_gates.yaml (or equivalent) Vendored registry
fcc audit personas --strict CLI Per-release re-audit (168 personas at v1.7.1)
docs/open-sci/templates/ 12 OPEN-SCI template files
Tier-1 gap closure PRs FCC-originated fixes feeding back upstream to PHOENIX

Steward touchpoints (Track 3)

  • Persona count in the CLI description changes every minor release. Verify the record cites the current count (168 at v1.7.1).
  • Tier-1 gap closure count is an explicit open item — v1.3.8 shipped the first 3 of the remaining gap closures; future releases close more. Track the count and update on every release.
  • The drift CI workflow patent-mirror-check.yml also covers Track 3 parity for the registry vendoring. A future open-sci-mirror-check.yml sibling may split this concern out.

Cross-track open items

Two items in the record's Open items are explicitly cross-track:

  • Single cross-repo PR template covering all three tracks — pending.
  • Counsel-ack caching — no durable store for counsel-ack references across multiple patent-lane operations; each PR must re-cite. This is a Track 2 item with spillover into Track 1 if a post-FTO-clearance artifact is mirrored.

Stewards should read these at every release and decide whether they can be promoted (closed) or sub-divided into more specific items.

Worked example — Tier-1 gap closure PR

Step-by-step for a v1.7.3 release closing Tier-1 gap G-14:

  1. Find — PCT runs fcc audit personas --strict; the output flags G-14 as the lowest-hanging closure.
  2. Create — A persona author updates the relevant YAML to satisfy G-14; fcc audit personas --strict goes green.
  3. Critique — A peer reviewer confirms the fix is in-scope and does not regress other gates.
  4. Mirror to PHOENIX — The closure PR opens upstream at ai-coe-docs; the registry update propagates back to FCC's vendored copy in a subsequent sync.
  5. Steward update — The record's Open items > Tier-1 gap closures line changes from "15+ remaining" to "14+ remaining", and the last_updated front-matter field bumps.

Common failure modes

  • Track 2 precondition claim without SHA. A record claim like "counsel approved" without a URL or SHA reference is inadmissible evidence. Steward flags.
  • Track 3 persona count stale. Release ships 172 personas but record still says 168. Mitigation: scripted count check on release.
  • Track 1 mirror proposal opened without OPEN-SCI template conformance. Open-science peer-review will reject; rework required. Mitigation: OSC enforces the staging checklist before proposing the mirror; steward watches for skipped steps.
  • Track 2 confidentiality breach. Any public-facing reference to the POLARIS patent tree before FTO clearance is a governance incident. Mitigation: steward searches the docs tree on every release for stray references.

Where next

Compare with the research lane in NEXUS Handoff Flow and the contract-test lane in ORCHESTRA Contract-Test Flow. If you need the section-by-section authoring rules for amending the PHOENIX record, see Writing New Coordination Records.