Political Economy Runtime Activation Implementation Plan

For agentic workers: REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Use superpowers:subagent-driven-development (recommended) or superpowers:executing-plans to implement this plan task-by-task. Steps use checkbox (- [ ]) syntax for tracking.

Goal: Promote political economy from eval_ready to runtime_enabled after the promotion-ready gate has proved its subject-owned fixture pack, resources, method-only borrowing, mixed-adjacent behavior, and near-miss guards.

Architecture: Treat activation as a narrow manifest-status change backed by fixture expectation migration. Political economy already passes promotion-ready; after activation, default and runtime-enabled evaluations should use the same positive expectations that were previously scoped to eval/promotion gates, while method-only and near-miss cases remain suppressed.

Tech Stack: Python 3, unittest, JSON router fixtures, YAML runtime subject manifests, Qiongli subject router evaluation tooling.

---

File Map

• Modify: tests/fixtures/subject_router_eval/political-economy/clear_actor_institution_outcome.json
  • Make the default expectation political-economy positive after runtime activation.
  • Add or keep runtime-enabled expectation matching the positive gate behavior.
• Modify: tests/fixtures/subject_router_eval/political-economy/mixed_capital_market_distributional_conflict.json
  • Make the default expectation political-economy positive after runtime activation.
  • Add or keep runtime-enabled expectation matching the positive gate behavior.
• Modify: tests/test_subject_router_eval.py
  • Replace the real-manifest eval-ready success test with a runtime-enabled success test.
  • Add real-manifest rejection tests for eval-ready and promotion-ready gates after activation.
• Modify: tests/test_subject_contracts.py
  • Expect political economy to be runtime_enabled while preserving resource, signal, lens, and gate metric checks.
• Modify: content/subjects/political-economy/runtime-subject.yaml
  • Change only activation_status: eval_ready to activation_status: runtime_enabled.
• Modify: docs/superpowers/roadmaps/2026-07-01-adaptive-subject-runtime-roadmap.md
  • Record political economy as runtime-enabled.
  • Leave geoeconomics and economics-accounting as deferred candidates.

Execution Notes

• Do not change political-economy signal weights, regexes, skill paths, method lenses, or thresholds unless a measured runtime-enabled gate failure requires it.
• Do not activate geoeconomics or economics-accounting.
• Do not change provider configuration, literature search, local-agent execution, packaging, or release automation.
• Keep commits grouped by behavior and docs:
  • feat(subjects): activate political economy runtime
  • docs(roadmap): record political economy runtime activation

Task 1: Update Runtime Activation Tests And Fixtures

Files:

• Modify: tests/fixtures/subject_router_eval/political-economy/clear_actor_institution_outcome.json

• Modify: tests/fixtures/subject_router_eval/political-economy/mixed_capital_market_distributional_conflict.json

• Modify: tests/test_subject_router_eval.py

• Modify: tests/test_subject_contracts.py

• [ ] Step 1: Update clear-positive default expectation

In clear_actor_institution_outcome.json, change expected to:

{
  "decision": "recommend",
  "primary_subject": "political-economy",
  "suggest_subjects": ["political-economy"],
  "forbidden_subjects": [],
  "method_lenses": [
    "political-mechanism-audit",
    "political-economy-positioning"
  ]
}

Add gate_expected["runtime-enabled"] with the same fields.

• [ ] Step 2: Update mixed-adjacent default expectation

In mixed_capital_market_distributional_conflict.json, change expected to:

{
  "decision": "recommend",
  "primary_subject": "political-economy",
  "suggest_subjects": ["political-economy"],
  "allowed_neighbor_subjects": ["finance"],
  "forbidden_subjects": [],
  "method_lenses": ["political-economy-positioning"]
}

Add gate_expected["runtime-enabled"] with the same fields.

• [ ] Step 3: Replace real eval-ready success with runtime-enabled success

In tests/test_subject_router_eval.py, replace test_political_economy_eval_ready_gate_passes_real_fixture_pack with:

    def test_political_economy_runtime_enabled_gate_passes_real_fixture_pack(
        self,
    ) -> None:
        cases = load_eval_cases(FIXTURE_DIR)

        report = subject_gate_report(
            "political-economy",
            cases,
            gate="runtime-enabled",
        )

        self.assertEqual(report["subject"], "political-economy")
        self.assertEqual(report["activation_status"], "runtime_enabled")
        self.assertFalse(report["eligible_for_eval_ready"])
        self.assertFalse(report["eligible_for_runtime_promotion"])
        self.assertTrue(report["eligible_for_runtime_enabled"])
        self.assertEqual(report["blocking_failures"], [])
        self.assertEqual(report["metrics"]["decision_accuracy"], 1.0)
        self.assertEqual(report["metrics"]["primary_subject_accuracy"], 1.0)
        self.assertEqual(report["metrics"]["suggest_subject_precision"], 1.0)
        self.assertEqual(report["metrics"]["forbidden_subject_accuracy"], 1.0)
        self.assertEqual(report["metrics"]["method_lens_accuracy"], 1.0)
        self.assertEqual(report["metrics"]["all_case_checks_passed"], 1.0)
        self.assertEqual(report["metrics"]["near_miss_false_positives"], 0)

• [ ] Step 4: Add real-manifest eval-ready and promotion-ready blockers

Replace test_political_economy_runtime_enabled_gate_blocks_eval_ready_manifest with:

    def test_political_economy_eval_ready_gate_blocks_runtime_enabled_manifest(
        self,
    ) -> None:
        cases = load_eval_cases(FIXTURE_DIR)

        report = subject_gate_report("political-economy", cases, gate="eval-ready")

        self.assertEqual(report["activation_status"], "runtime_enabled")
        self.assertFalse(report["eligible_for_eval_ready"])
        self.assertFalse(report["eligible_for_runtime_enabled"])
        self.assertIn("activation_status is runtime_enabled", report["blocking_failures"])

    def test_political_economy_promotion_ready_gate_blocks_runtime_enabled_manifest(
        self,
    ) -> None:
        cases = load_eval_cases(FIXTURE_DIR)

        report = subject_gate_report(
            "political-economy",
            cases,
            gate="promotion-ready",
        )

        self.assertEqual(report["activation_status"], "runtime_enabled")
        self.assertFalse(report["eligible_for_runtime_promotion"])
        self.assertFalse(report["eligible_for_runtime_enabled"])
        self.assertIn("activation_status is runtime_enabled", report["blocking_failures"])

• [ ] Step 5: Update contract expectations

In tests/test_subject_contracts.py, rename the political-economy manifest test to:

    def test_political_economy_runtime_enabled_manifest_declares_signals_and_lenses(
        self,
    ) -> None:

Change its status assertion to:

        self.assertEqual(contract.activation_status, "runtime_enabled")

In the default repository classification test, expect:

        self.assertEqual(
            subject_activation_status("political-economy", contracts),
            "runtime_enabled",
        )

• [ ] Step 6: Run RED

Run:

.venv/bin/python -m unittest tests.test_subject_router_eval.SubjectRouterEvalTests.test_political_economy_runtime_enabled_gate_passes_real_fixture_pack -q

Expected before manifest activation:

FAIL: activation_status is eval_ready

Task 2: Activate Manifest And Verify

Files:

• Modify: content/subjects/political-economy/runtime-subject.yaml

• [ ] Step 1: Change only activation status

Change:

activation_status: eval_ready

to:

activation_status: runtime_enabled

• [ ] Step 2: Run targeted GREEN

Run:

.venv/bin/python -m unittest tests.test_subject_router_eval.SubjectRouterEvalTests.test_political_economy_runtime_enabled_gate_passes_real_fixture_pack -q
.venv/bin/python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py --subject political-economy --gate runtime-enabled --json

Expected:

eligible_for_runtime_enabled: true
blocking_failures: []
near_miss_false_positives: 0

• [ ] Step 3: Run related regressions

Run:

.venv/bin/python -m unittest tests.test_subject_router_eval tests.test_subject_contracts -q
.venv/bin/python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py --subject political-economy --gate eval-ready --json
.venv/bin/python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py --subject political-economy --gate promotion-ready --json
git diff --check

Expected:

• router/contract tests exit 0,
• runtime-enabled gate exits 0,
• eval-ready and promotion-ready commands exit 1 because the checked-in manifest is already runtime_enabled,
• git diff --check exits 0.

Task 3: Update Roadmap And Commit

Files:

• Modify: docs/superpowers/roadmaps/2026-07-01-adaptive-subject-runtime-roadmap.md

• [ ] Step 1: Update Stage 4 status

Record that political economy is now runtime-enabled and remove it from the eval-ready list.

• [ ] Step 2: Update remaining gaps

Keep the remaining subject expansion gap focused on geoeconomics and economics-accounting.

• [ ] Step 3: Commit by content

Run:

git add content/subjects/political-economy/runtime-subject.yaml tests/test_subject_router_eval.py tests/test_subject_contracts.py tests/fixtures/subject_router_eval/political-economy
git commit -m "feat(subjects): activate political economy runtime"

git add docs/superpowers/plans/2026-07-06-political-economy-runtime-activation.md docs/superpowers/roadmaps/2026-07-01-adaptive-subject-runtime-roadmap.md
git commit -m "docs(roadmap): record political economy runtime activation"