Business Runtime Activation Design

Goal

Promote business from activation_status: eval_ready to activation_status: runtime_enabled after the merged promotion-ready gate has proved default routing precision under a harness-only runtime simulation.

This is a narrow activation slice. It should make business available to the adaptive runtime for clear scholarly business, management, strategy, organization, marketing, and operations research requests while preserving the rule that method-only or practitioner wording does not switch the primary subject.

Current Baseline

On dev as of July 5, 2026:

• Accounting, economics, and finance are runtime_enabled.
• Business is eval_ready.
• Business has a business-owned fixture pack, runtime resources, method lenses, near-miss guards, and promotion-ready gate coverage.
• Business eval-ready gate exits 0.
• Business promotion-ready gate exits 0 with eligible_for_runtime_promotion: true.
• Business runtime-enabled gate exits 1 only because the manifest is still activation_status: eval_ready.

Current gate evidence:

business --gate eval-ready:
  activation_status: eval_ready
  eligible_for_eval_ready: true
  eligible_for_runtime_promotion: false
  eligible_for_runtime_enabled: false
  blocking_failures: []
  metrics:
    decision_accuracy: 1.0
    primary_subject_accuracy: 1.0
    suggest_subject_precision: 1.0
    near_miss_false_positives: 0
    forbidden_subject_accuracy: 1.0
    method_lens_accuracy: 1.0
    all_case_checks_passed: 1.0

business --gate promotion-ready:
  activation_status: eval_ready
  eligible_for_eval_ready: false
  eligible_for_runtime_promotion: true
  eligible_for_runtime_enabled: false
  blocking_failures: []
  metrics:
    decision_accuracy: 1.0
    primary_subject_accuracy: 1.0
    suggest_subject_precision: 1.0
    near_miss_false_positives: 0
    forbidden_subject_accuracy: 1.0
    method_lens_accuracy: 1.0
    all_case_checks_passed: 1.0

business --gate runtime-enabled:
  activation_status: eval_ready
  eligible_for_eval_ready: false
  eligible_for_runtime_promotion: false
  eligible_for_runtime_enabled: false
  blocking_failures:
    - activation_status is eval_ready
  metrics:
    decision_accuracy: 1.0
    primary_subject_accuracy: 1.0
    suggest_subject_precision: 1.0
    near_miss_false_positives: 0
    forbidden_subject_accuracy: 1.0
    method_lens_accuracy: 1.0
    all_case_checks_passed: 1.0

Decision

Run the business activation slice now, before starting political economy, geoeconomics, or the economics-accounting bridge.

Why this order:

• The promotion-ready gate is green and was created specifically as the pre-activation review path.
• The activation diff can be small: manifest status, gate expectations, tests, and docs.
• Business has broader vocabulary than accounting, so activating it before the next subject expansion gives the harness a chance to catch runtime over-activation while the scope is still bounded.
• A separate activation PR preserves the review line between "ready to promote" and "actually runtime-enabled."

Scope

In scope:

• Promote content/subjects/business/runtime-subject.yaml to activation_status: runtime_enabled.
• Update business runtime-enabled fixture expectations where promotion-ready expectations now become normal runtime behavior.
• Update tests that still assert business is eval-ready.
• Preserve tests proving eval-ready and promotion-ready gates reject subjects whose checked-in status is already runtime-enabled.
• Update CLI, release, and roadmap docs so business is described as runtime-enabled after the activation PR.
• Re-run subject gates for business, accounting, finance, and economics.

Out of scope:

• Do not change business signal weights or regex patterns unless the activation gate exposes a measured failure.
• Do not add political economy, geoeconomics, or economics-accounting subject packs.
• Do not change provider configuration, literature retrieval, Zotero behavior, full-text search, local-agent execution, or release automation.
• Do not add network-dependent tests.
• Do not remove the promotion-ready gate; it remains useful for future eval-ready subjects.

Runtime Safety Rules

Business can become the primary subject only when evidence includes at least two independent scholarly business dimensions, such as:

• business method plus business data or outcome,
• business venue plus theory or construct contribution,
• organization, firm, team, or platform data plus management mechanism,
• strategy or marketing research framing plus journal positioning.

Business must not become the primary subject when evidence is limited to:

• practitioner product launch, sales enablement, customer journey, or channel execution work,
• consulting market analysis, competitor bullets, or client workshop requests,
• startup or small-business planning,
• teaching case assignments or case interview preparation,
• project management workflow requests,
• generic strategy, customer, market, firm, capability, or competitive advantage wording without scholarly research context,
• finance, economics, or accounting tasks where business language is secondary.

Method-only business evidence may still borrow business method lenses such as qualitative-transparency, business-positioning, or construct-level-fit without making business primary.

Fixture Strategy

After activation, runtime-enabled becomes the normal gate for business. The fixture expectations should reflect that:

• clear business positives use the same expected outcome under runtime-enabled as they currently use under promotion-ready,
• method-only business cases continue to borrow method lenses without suggesting business,
• finance-dominant mixed cases keep finance as the primary subject and may allow business only as a neighbor,
• locked economics cases keep the locked primary subject and may allow business only as a neighbor,
• confirmed business cases remain business without relying on eval-only subject measurement,
• practitioner near-misses continue to forbid business.

No new business fixtures are required for the activation PR unless the runtime-enabled gate exposes a false positive or false negative after the manifest status changes.

Expected Code Changes

Business manifest

Change:

activation_status: eval_ready

to:

activation_status: runtime_enabled

Do not change overlay, subject_skill, signal groups, method lenses, or activation gate thresholds in the activation commit unless a failing runtime-enabled gate proves a narrower fix is required.

Business fixtures

Update gate_expected["runtime-enabled"] for clear positive fixtures so business can be the primary subject after activation. Use the existing promotion-ready expected blocks as the source of truth.

Update locked and mixed cases only when the actual runtime-enabled output contains business as an adjacent suggestion. The primary subject must remain locked economics or finance respectively.

Subject contract tests

Update default repository contract expectations:

• subject_activation_status("business", contracts) becomes runtime_enabled.
• The business manifest test should be renamed from eval-ready wording to runtime-enabled wording.
• Business must still declare signal groups, method lenses, evaluation pack, subject skill, near-miss policy, and gate metrics.

Subject router gate tests

Update real business gate tests:

• business --gate runtime-enabled must pass.
• business --gate eval-ready should no longer be the real-fixture success gate after activation.
• business --gate promotion-ready should reject the real manifest because promotion-ready requires checked-in eval_ready.
• Patched tests should remain to prove eval-ready and promotion-ready semantics for future subject candidates.

Subject refinement tests

Update runtime behavior expectations:

• Clear business evidence in auto mode can suggest business.
• Method-only business evidence in auto mode borrows a business lens without suggesting business.
• Confirmed business projects can load business subject resources now that business is runtime-enabled.
• Locked finance/economics projects still keep the lock and may only borrow or neighbor business where fixtures explicitly allow it.

Verification

Required focused checks:

uv run python -m pytest \
  tests/test_subject_contracts.py \
  tests/test_subject_router_eval.py \
  tests/test_subject_refinement.py \
  -q

Required gate checks:

uv run python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py --json

uv run python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py \
  --subject business \
  --gate runtime-enabled \
  --json

uv run python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py \
  --subject accounting \
  --gate runtime-enabled \
  --json

uv run python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py \
  --subject finance \
  --gate runtime-enabled \
  --json

uv run python tooling/scripts/evaluate_subject_router.py \
  --subject economics \
  --gate runtime-enabled \
  --json

Required docs and hygiene checks:

rg -n "business|promotion-ready|runtime-enabled|eval-ready|eligible_for_runtime" \
  docs/superpowers/roadmaps/2026-07-01-adaptive-subject-runtime-roadmap.md \
  docs/reference/cli.md \
  docs/advanced/publish-pypi.md

git diff --check

Acceptance Criteria

• Business manifest has activation_status: runtime_enabled.
• Business runtime-enabled gate exits 0.
• Business fixture metrics meet all manifest thresholds.
• Business near-miss false positives remain 0.
• Business method-only cases do not suggest business as a primary subject.
• Accounting, finance, and economics runtime-enabled gates still exit 0.
• Default subject router evaluation exits 0.
• Docs no longer describe business as only eval-ready after the activation PR.

Rollback

If activation creates noisy business over-activation:

• revert business activation_status to eval_ready,
• keep the promotion-ready gate and business promotion-ready fixtures,
• keep additional near-miss fixtures if they improve coverage,
• open a follow-up hardening slice for Stage 5 explainability or narrower business signal boundaries.

No user project state migration is required for rollback because activation is controlled by the runtime subject manifest.