Context
The four required PR-body sections (Summary / Fix / Verification / Related) are declared in three places that drift independently:
.claude/source-control.md — pr_body_required_sections, which steers the source-control plugin's PR-body scaffold..github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md — the ## headings a human author sees.- The
pr-issue-linkage reusable in ci-workflows — the gate that actually fails the PR.
Only the third is authoritative, and it is not configurable: the four sections are hardcoded in the reusable's requiredSections array, and its only workflow_call inputs are runner, prerequisite-result, and exempt-authors. That is deliberate — melodic-software/ci-workflows#153 posed exactly this decision ("either extend pr-issue-linkage-style validation to all four contract headers, or slim the PR template to only what is enforced") and was closed completed by extending validation to all four. The fixed org-wide contract is the settled answer; this issue does not reopen it.
What follows from that: the two local declarations are mirrors of an upstream constant, and nothing checks that they still match it.
They have already drifted once. .claude/source-control.md declared Summary / Test plan / Related when it was added in #38 (bebe84d, 2026-07-26). It was corrected to the four-section contract only in #52 (3a306d7, 2026-08-19) — fourteen commits later, in a commit whose stated reason was that the shipped template failed the gate and passed ## Summary vacuously via a bare-dash placeholder. For that window, the repo's own scaffold produced PR bodies its own gate rejected.
Proposed work
Make the mirrors checkable rather than trusting them to stay aligned by hand. Options, to be settled in planning:
- A CI check asserting the template's
## headings and .claude/source-control.md's pr_body_required_sections both match the four-section contract.
- Or: drop the local declaration entirely if the source-control plugin can be pointed at the upstream contract, removing one mirror instead of checking it.
The first is cheap and self-contained. The second is better if the plugin supports it — one fewer copy beats a check on a copy.
Required stages before implementation
Explicitly not in scope: adding a required-sections input to the pr-issue-linkage reusable. That would re-litigate ci-workflows#153, which decided the four-header contract is fixed org-wide.
Acceptance criteria
References
Surfaced by an architecture deepening scan of this repo.
Context
The four required PR-body sections (
Summary/Fix/Verification/Related) are declared in three places that drift independently:.claude/source-control.md—pr_body_required_sections, which steers the source-control plugin's PR-body scaffold..github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md— the##headings a human author sees.pr-issue-linkagereusable inci-workflows— the gate that actually fails the PR.Only the third is authoritative, and it is not configurable: the four sections are hardcoded in the reusable's
requiredSectionsarray, and its onlyworkflow_callinputs arerunner,prerequisite-result, andexempt-authors. That is deliberate —melodic-software/ci-workflows#153posed exactly this decision ("either extend pr-issue-linkage-style validation to all four contract headers, or slim the PR template to only what is enforced") and was closed completed by extending validation to all four. The fixed org-wide contract is the settled answer; this issue does not reopen it.What follows from that: the two local declarations are mirrors of an upstream constant, and nothing checks that they still match it.
They have already drifted once.
.claude/source-control.mddeclaredSummary / Test plan / Relatedwhen it was added in #38 (bebe84d, 2026-07-26). It was corrected to the four-section contract only in #52 (3a306d7, 2026-08-19) — fourteen commits later, in a commit whose stated reason was that the shipped template failed the gate and passed## Summaryvacuously via a bare-dash placeholder. For that window, the repo's own scaffold produced PR bodies its own gate rejected.Proposed work
Make the mirrors checkable rather than trusting them to stay aligned by hand. Options, to be settled in planning:
##headings and.claude/source-control.md'spr_body_required_sectionsboth match the four-section contract.The first is cheap and self-contained. The second is better if the plugin supports it — one fewer copy beats a check on a copy.
Required stages before implementation
/planning:plan— decide between "check the mirrors" and "remove a mirror", and where the contract's canonical text lives for the check to compare against. No discovery stage: the three declarations, the upstreamrequiredSectionsarray, and the drift history are all identified above.Explicitly not in scope: adding a
required-sectionsinput to thepr-issue-linkagereusable. That would re-litigateci-workflows#153, which decided the four-header contract is fixed org-wide.Acceptance criteria
##headings and the four-section contract fails a check, or the template is no longer a second declaration..claude/source-control.md'spr_body_required_sections, or that declaration is removed.References
.claude/source-control.md— the agent-facing declaration..github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md— the author-facing declaration.melodic-software/ci-workflows.github/workflows/pr-issue-linkage.yml— the hardcodedrequiredSectionsarray and its three inputs.melodic-software/ci-workflows#153— the closed decision that fixed the four-header contract org-wide.bebe84d) and chore: align the PR template with the four-section linkage contract #52 (3a306d7) — the drift and its hand correction, fourteen commits apart.Surfaced by an architecture deepening scan of this repo.