D319 - A scoped gate scopes only the cargo steps

Status: decided Date: 2026-08-27

check --only "<crates>" narrows the cargo steps to those crates, with clippy run --no-deps; the repository checks - provenance, decision numbers, prose, generated numbers, the symbol audit and the tables - always run whole-tree. A scoped run never prints all checks passed and names what it did not compile, lint or test.

Why: several sessions share the tree, and one half-written crate otherwise blocks every verification. The repository checks are facts about the repository, not a crate. Clippy lints every workspace crate it builds from source, so without --no-deps another crate's finding is reported under the scope. Green is what a reader takes as permission, so a subset must not borrow it.

Rejected:

• Scoping the repository checks: the run would claim what it had not checked.
• Exempting formatting or docs from the scope: they read the whole tree and fail on others' files.