Foundations · Lesson 01 of 04
What Ota governs
Ota governs declared repository execution: readiness, admission, selected work, and bounded evidence for humans, CI, and agents.
Learning objectives
- Explain the scope of Ota governance in one sentence
- Distinguish repo readiness from code correctness
- Identify what
ota doctorsurfaces that a passing build does not
Ota governs repository execution readiness. It gives a repository one reviewable contract for the requirements, setup, tasks, workflows, execution boundaries, and verification paths that operators intend to support.
That scope is deliberately narrower than application correctness. Ota can establish that a selected lane was admitted and executed as declared; it cannot infer that every product behavior, deployment, external system, or raw-shell path is correct.
The governed subject
The unit Ota governs is a repository-owned execution lane and its complete selected closure. The closure includes the task or workflow, dependencies, hooks, requirements, execution mode, and any modeled runtime boundary needed by that selection.
- Contract truth: what the repository declares in ota.yaml.
- Readiness truth: whether the selected requirements are currently satisfied.
- Execution truth: what Ota actually selected and ran.
- Evidence truth: what a receipt or proof artifact can substantiate.
ota doctor --jsonWhat remains outside the claim
A green Ota result is bounded to the selected lane and the evidence it carries. Raw shell outside Ota, undeclared workflows, external provider policy, GUI behavior, production traffic, and unexercised platform variants remain outside that claim unless a separate Ota surface models and proves them.
Classify one repository fact
A README says to run npm test, while CI runs npm run typecheck and npm test.
- Identify the repository-owned sources that declare the commands.
- Decide which commands belong in one verification workflow.
- List what a green run would still leave unproved.
Completion criteria
- You separate source evidence from canonical contract truth.
- You describe the proof boundary as selected-lane evidence, not repo-global correctness.
Exercise boundary: This exercise establishes the reasoning model only. It does not validate or execute a contract.
Canonical terminology
Commands and expected output
ota doctor --jsonEvidence boundary for this lesson
Establishes
- The worked examples establish the lesson's canonical Ota distinctions for its stated scope.
Does not establish
- Reading the lesson does not validate a repository, execute its tasks, or establish organizational acceptance.
Knowledge check
A selected Ota verification task passes. What is the largest honest claim?
The selected lane completed under its resolved contract and evidence boundary. Unselected workflows, platforms, external systems, and raw-shell paths remain outside that claim.