/negframe-score - lead with the affordance, not the prohibition

An instance of the generic scorecard doctrine. Read that for the five laws and the RSI loop; this file is the per-surface specialization.

Why this scorecard exists

Prose that steers an agent lands better when it leads with the ACTION to take instead of the thing to avoid. A reminder framed as an omission to fix ("remember: the commit stamp often gets skipped") makes the reader build a negative and invert it; "remember to stamp the commit" is the instruction already in the form the reader acts on. Across a whole steer-prose corpus - the guard runtime prose injected into every session, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, the skills, the refusal vocabulary - that inversion tax compounds. internal/negframe is a TEXT-READING card: the prose on disk IS the data, so a finding can only be retired by reframing the sentence, never by editing a JSON file.

The two tiers (read this before touching anything)

Every finding lands in exactly one tier - do not conflate them:

• MECHANICAL (HARD, gates negframe_debt) - the finding matches a fixed idiom with an unambiguous positive rewrite (a "forget-to-remember-to" idiom, or a double negative like "not un-" that collapses to the plain adjective). The card hands back the exact Suggest string; apply it verbatim or a close paraphrase that preserves the meaning. This is the only tier that counts as debt.
• JUDGEMENT (SOFT, advisory only) - negatively framed (a bare "never merge without review", "not allowed") but with no confident mechanical rewrite. The card names the Category (prohibition / absence / refusal / hedge) and a one-line Hint - the positive SHAPE to aim for - but never a literal reframe, and it never gates. Fix the cheap real ones by hand; do not chase this tier to zero, and never invent a mechanical rule just to move a soft count (see anti-gaming below).

The pass (the shared five-step loop)

1. Run it - from the repo root:

   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe                 # human scorecard: debt + per-KPI
   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe --json           # machine payload (Corpus.negframe_debt / grade)
   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe --per-doc         # per-document finding breakdown (mechanical + judgement)
   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe --suggest         # review-diff view: every mechanical finding with its reframe
   

   Default scope is the steer-prose corpus (negframe.ResolveTargets: AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, the skills); pass explicit paths as positional args to score anything else. --per-doc also takes --json for a machine-readable finding list; --suggest prints text only.

2. Retire negframe_debt worst-first - for every mechanical finding --suggest lists, apply the printed reframe to the source prose. This pass changes ONLY the flagged clause's wording - never the meaning, a claim, a number, or a link the sentence carries.

3. Weigh the judgement (SOFT) findings, then stop - --per-doc shows each judgement finding's Hint. Reframe the cheap, obviously-better ones by hand (state the permitted path before the boundary; assert a property directly instead of by double negative). Leave a genuinely load-bearing prohibition alone if reframing it would blur the boundary it exists to draw - this tier is a nudge, not a work-list to drain.

4. Check the diff-scoped ratchet before landing a steer-prose change:

   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe --since HEAD      # or the branch point / PR base ref
   

   This reports only negatives your CHANGE introduced (exit 1 if any new mechanical one appears) - a file absent at <ref> is treated as wholly new. This is the CI gate shape; run it locally before committing so you never introduce a new mechanical negative in the same diff that is supposed to be reducing them.

5. Re-measure + prove, then commit only the scorecard lane, by explicit path:

   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe --json > /tmp/after.json
   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe --compare /tmp/before.json     # prints the debt delta
   go run ./cmd/fak score negframe --markdown > docs/NEGFRAME-SCORECARD.md
   fak sync reconcile --apply
   fak commit --path <reframe-files> --path docs/NEGFRAME-SCORECARD.md -m "style(negframe): reframe prose (fak negframe)"
   fak sync push
   

   State the delta plainly: negframe_debt N -> N' (-k). Commit the prose files you reframed together with the regenerated snapshot (if any); never git add -A. Push via fak sync push. End the subject with a (fak negframe) (or the touched leaf's) trailer so dos commit-audit binds it.

Reading the payload

Corpus carries negframe_debt (the mechanical count - the debt), documents (how many files were scanned), mechanical_debt, and judgement_soft. Schema is fak-negframe-scorecard/1. DebtKey is "negframe_debt" - the same string internal/scorecardpane folds into the portfolio total under the negframe card.

The anti-gaming rule (specific to this surface)

Fix a negative by reframing the sentence to genuinely lead with the action, never by deleting the directive or muting the detector. A mechanical finding is retired by applying its Suggest (or an equivalent positive rewrite), not by rewording it into a shape the lexicon happens not to match. Never widen a mechanical reframeRule's pattern just to make a finding disappear - the existing rules are deliberately high-precision (see the not un- allowlist in internal/negframe/negframe.go) precisely so a mechanical rewrite can never be wrong; loosening one to chase debt risks emitting a garbled "reframe" on prose it should not have matched. If a genuinely equivalent phrasing is already positive but still flags, the fix is to teach the lexicon that shape - recognizing real positive framing the rules were blind to is not weakening the check; suppressing a real negative is.

When to use this

• After editing AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or a skill's SKILL.md - run --since before landing to make sure the change did not introduce a new mechanical negative.
• After adding a new skill or a new refusal/guard message - scope negframe at the new file directly (go run ./cmd/fak score negframe path/to/new/doc.md) before it joins the corpus.
• On a /loop cadence to keep negframe_debt at zero as the steer-prose corpus grows.

The scorecard is read-only; this skill's only writes are the reframed prose, the regenerated docs/NEGFRAME-SCORECARD.md snapshot, and internal/negframe itself when a real lexicon gap is found (never a loosened one).