skills(platform): delete the placeholder eval README and drop its ceiling row (#14296 item 2)

[os-litant]

Fixes #14299

Ruling (not re-adjudicated here). Item 2 of the eval-stub decision card #14296 was ruled A: planned-eval stubs are deleted, their ceilings step down, real fixtures stay, and no new eval packages are written. This is round 2 of #14299 — finding PLAT-H-01, the item round 1 (PR #14351, landed as Part of #14299) deferred. It is this card's last in-scope item: the other deferred finding, PLAT-G-02 (the references/ placement question), is carried by the catalog-wide card #14655, which is why the first line here is a closing keyword and round 1's was not.

Same two-file shape as the merged precedents #14585 (query) and #14578 (automation), and as #14652 (ai).

Pre-deletion verification

The ruling keeps real fixtures, so the directory had to be proven fixture-free before anything was touched. Three readings, all on the branch base 20b88391:

1. find skills/objectstack-platform/evals returned the directory and README.md — nothing else, zero subdirectories.
2. The file is the placeholder, not a fixture. Its own words: :3 "This directory is reserved for future skill evaluation tests"; :11 "When implemented, evals will follow this structure"; :41 "⚠️ Not yet implemented — This is a placeholder for future development". The tree it prints at :13-29 names ten eval files; each was searched for by name across the whole tree and all ten return 0 matches — test-definestack-keys, test-manifest-required-fields, test-template-selection, test-driver-selection, test-hono-integration, test-lifecycle-phases, test-service-registry, test-kernel-events, test-cli-commands, test-litekernel-testing.
3. Nothing reads the path. git grep -n "objectstack-platform/evals" returns exactly one hit repo-wide — scripts/check-skills-token-ratchet.mjs:420, the ceiling row itself. The package links evals from nowhere: git grep -n evals -- skills/objectstack-platform/ returns only lines inside the deleted file.

No real fixture was found, so the ruling's precondition holds and the stub is deletable.

The diff — two files, 50 deletions, nothing else

File	Change	Lines	Tokens
skills/objectstack-platform/evals/README.md	deleted (the whole placeholder)	−49	514 → 0
scripts/check-skills-token-ratchet.mjs	its one ceiling row dropped (line 420: ['skills/objectstack-platform/evals/README.md', 514],)	−1	ceiling 514 removed

Proved mechanically rather than asserted: the CEILINGS map parsed out of the base blob and out of the head file gives 31 rows / 165,532 ceiling tokens before → 30 rows / 165,018 after; removed keys = exactly skills/objectstack-platform/evals/README.md (514); added keys = none; rows whose value changed = none. No other row moved, no ceiling was raised, no row was added, and no prose was edited anywhere.

The // objectstack-platform section comment above the row is left standing and untouched, per the flight constraint. It is not orphaned by this change: three rows remain under it (references/plugin-hooks.md, rules/plugin-lifecycle.md, rules/service-registry.md).

Token readings for the governed skills/** surface

Reading	Before	After	Delta
The changed skills file (evals/README.md)	514	0 (deleted)	−514
Package skills/objectstack-platform	20,673	20,159	−514 (−2.5%)
Package ceiling sum	20,865	20,351	−514
Published bundle (whole shipped tree)	157,662	157,148	−514

Pure deletion — nothing was added, so there is no expansion to budget against. 514 = ceil(2055 utf8 bytes / 4), the ratchet's own price convention, and the file sat at its ceiling with headroom 0.

Reverse verification — red, then green

Both readings taken with the exit code captured by redirect-then-capture, never after a pipe.

Leg 1 — file deleted, ceiling row still present ⇒ the gate must go RED, not skip. node scripts/check-skills-token-ratchet.mjs, EXIT=1, and it printed its documented missing-input line verbatim:

✗ check-skills-token-ratchet: cannot read skills/objectstack-platform/evals/README.md — red, not a skip (#4690).
✗ check-skills-token-ratchet: 1 of 42 published bundle file(s) failed their check.

Leg 2 — row dropped ⇒ green. Same command, EXIT=0:

✓ check-skills-token-ratchet: 30 authored bundle file(s) within their ceilings; 11 generator-owned file(s) measured, not ratcheted.

Leg 3 — the script's own test suite. node scripts/check-skills-token-ratchet.mjs --self-test, EXIT=0:

✓ check-skills-token-ratchet self-test: 64 cases pass.

The gate script is edited by this diff, so its own suite is owed on top of the derived family. --self-test is that suite: no vitest file names this script (git grep -l check-skills-token-ratchet over test globs returns nothing), and the three other scripts that do read it — check:ratchet-remedy-authority, check:doc-authoring, scripts/pm/bare-root-worklist.mjs --self-test — are all in the derived family below and all exit 0.

Gates

Head sha a8ceb57b — the merge commit, and the head every reading below was taken on. origin/main moved from the branch base 20b88391 to 2aa8456c while this was in flight, so it was merged in, not rebased; the merge was conflict-free, and neither the hot file nor any file of this package had moved on main. The PR's own delta is unchanged by the merge: 2 files, 50 deletions.

Family derived from the real change set at the merge head, not hand-written: node scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs --repo objectstack-ai/objectstack --commands ⇒ 24 families (22 by path + 2 by change kind — this diff edits a gate script). Byte-identical to the list derived before the merge. All 24 run through scripts/pm/os-verify-lock.sh, slot issue-14299-r2; every exit code captured before any pipe.

22 of 24 exit 0, plus check:skill-docs and check:nul-bytes run beyond the family. 2 of 24 are NOT MEASURED (exit 3), both by their own prerequisite text.

Gate	Exit	Its own verdict line
node scripts/check-skills-token-ratchet.mjs	0	✓ 30 authored bundle file(s) within their ceilings; 11 generator-owned file(s) measured, not ratcheted.
pnpm check:ratchet-remedy-authority	0	OK 184 scripts swept; 12 mark the expanding remedy ⛔ MAINTAINER-ONLY, 6 turn it down outright, 166 hand out no ratchet-expanding remedy.
node scripts/pm/bare-root-worklist.mjs --self-test	0	OK 57 live row(s), 49 unreachable as spelled, 49 recorded verdict(s) — none stale, none missing, none contradicted.
pnpm check:pm-dispatch-gates	0	✓ dispatch-gates self-test: 1240 cases pass.
pnpm check:skill-identifier-liveness	0	OK — Leg 1: 465 citation(s) over 40 published file(s) ... Leg 2: 8 registered exhaustive section(s), 0 ledgered gap(s).
pnpm check:skill-compatibility	0	✓ 11 SKILL.md file(s) reconciled against 79 workspace packages
pnpm --filter @objectstack/spec check:skill-docs	0	✅ Skill docs in sync — no regeneration demanded; this diff touches no frontmatter
pnpm check:skill-frame-sync	0	binding sentence present in all 4; 4 count mention(s) agree; 34 markdown files scanned
pnpm check:corpus-claim-drift	0	self-test plus live sweep, both clean
pnpm check:doc-authoring	0	✓ 14500 customer-facing string(s) across 710 spec sources clean
pnpm check:pm-governed-merges	0	✓ --self-test: 243 assertions + live: the real generator declared 9 output(s) and certified this tree
pnpm check:watch-hint-literal	0	✓ 45 declaration(s) across 4 rostered name(s) ... no unrostered spelling of the idiom in the tree.
pnpm check:role-word	0	ledger unchanged — 42 baselined file(s), 121 occurrence(s)
pnpm check:agent-test-spelling	0	—
pnpm check:bash32-floor	0	—
pnpm check:cli-command-ids	0	—
pnpm check:cross-package-test-inputs	0	—
node scripts/check-cross-package-test-inputs.mjs	0	—
node scripts/check-ci-filter-parity.mjs	0	—
node scripts/check-shard-attestation.mjs	0	—
pnpm check:entry-guard	0	—
pnpm check:parse-guard	0	—
pnpm check:pnpm-filter-targets	0	—
pnpm check:nul-bytes (beyond the family)	0	OK (scanned 7994 text file(s) ... no raw ASCII control bytes), plus a direct control-byte scan of the edited script: no hits

NOT MEASURED (exit 3 — a prerequisite this flight does not supply, never a red)

Gate	Prerequisite it names	Who supplies it
node scripts/check-test-completeness.mjs	PREREQUISITE NOT MET — this gate grades a saved 'turbo run test' log, and no log was named.	CI tees the log and passes the path
pnpm --filter @objectstack/lint run check:doc-formula-expressions	PREREQUISITE NOT MET — the workspace package @objectstack/formula is not built	the CI build job

Neither is touched by this diff — it adds no test and no formula expression — and both print, in their own words, that the local result "says NOTHING about what it gates ... It is NOT a finding". Recorded as NOT MEASURED, never counted as green and never called a flake.

Housekeeping

• No changeset, and skip-changeset is applied — checked against scripts/check-empty-changeset.mjs's own enumeration rather than by habit. That enumeration reads "It releases nothing (.github/, .claude/, skills/, docs/, content/, examples/, tests-only, and the like) -> delete the changeset and apply the 'skip-changeset' label (route 2)": skills/ is named verbatim, and scripts/check-skills-token-ratchet.mjs is a CI-internal gate script that publishes from no package, which is the "and the like" case. The same file pins a skills/**-only PR carrying no changeset at all as a green fixture (its GREEN 3 self-test case).
• No needs:contract-review: a deletion of a placeholder that documents nothing about runtime behaviour makes no operator or contract-semantics claim.
• Governed face (skills/**) ⇒ this PR stays DRAFT. Review requests are the seat's step; it is not flipped ready and not enqueued.
• content/docs/releases/ untouched. Assignee and card labels untouched.

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