Move the templates out of gauntlet.md into templates.md

[drmikecrowe]

⚠️ Stacked on #9 (config/isolation). Until that merges, this PR's diff shows #9's commits too. Review the top commit only, or merge #9 first and this will shrink to its own +238/-74.

gauntlet.md had become two documents: how to run each layer, and the fill-in forms for SPEC and EVIDENCE. They're read at different moments — the layer guidance while building the gauntlet, the templates while writing the two artifacts the human actually reads — and the file gets loaded in full either way.

So references/templates.md now holds the Gherkin scenario template, the SPEC template, the EVIDENCE template, and the tracker roll-up. gauntlet.md keeps a two-line pointer and drops ~70 lines; SKILL.md's EVIDENCE step points at the new location.

The templates also gained the fields this fork found it needed while running the loop:

• A Revisions section in SPEC. Spec drift is supposed to be visible, which needs somewhere to write it down.
• A Config line and per-layer wall-clock in the EVIDENCE header.
• "Layers not run" split into N-A / UNAVAILABLE / SUBSTITUTED, because those mean very different things to a reader — no such surface here, tool missing and nothing ran, versus something else ran and here's what it can't detect.
• A Dismissed-findings section. Fixes are self-evidencing; dismissals are not. One line each, naming the command or file:line that disproves the finding.
• A Structural-blind-spot line naming the layer this project cannot run at all (e.g. "the suite never exercises the container runtime, so nothing here is evidence about deployment behaviour").

Your Independent-verification EVIDENCE fields from #5 move across intact, with a note that they're prose and get no row in the layer table.

If you'd rather keep the templates inline in gauntlet.md, the added fields are separable — say the word and I'll re-cut this as a fields-only PR.

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Part of a series from a fork that has been running this skill daily (drmikecrowe/old-coder).

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[AmazingAng]

Taking you up on your own offer: yes to the fields-only re-cut, independent of #9.

Take

• N-A / UNAVAILABLE / SUBSTITUTED. The current "skipped layers" collapses three things a reader needs to tell apart — no such surface here, versus tool missing and nothing ran, versus something else ran and here is what it cannot detect. The second and third are very different confidence claims and right now they read identically. This one I would take even on its own.
• Dismissed findings. "Fixes are self-evidencing; dismissals are not" is the right principle, and one line each naming the command or file:line that disproves the finding is the right cost. It is the same rule the verification protocol already applies to attack lists: say what you tried, not only what you found.
• The structural blind-spot line. Naming the layer a project cannot run at all is exactly the kind of thing that otherwise reads as absent rather than accepted.
• The Revisions section in SPEC. Spec drift is required to be visible and there was nowhere to write it. Fair.

The templates split itself is fine by me if it comes independent of #9 — you are right that gauntlet.md is two documents read at different moments.

Leave out

• Per-layer wall-clock. EVIDENCE is one of the two artifacts a human actually reads, and we just pruned spec.md from 339 to 255 lines for exactly that reason. Timing per layer is diagnostics, not evidence about the code; it costs a column in the table everyone must read to buy information almost nobody acts on.
• The Config header line. Depends on Config and isolation: where settings live, and staying out of the user's tree #9's config format, which is deferred pending a positioning decision — see my note there.

One caution on the whole direction

Every field added to the EVIDENCE template is paid for by every future report, and the human reading it has a fixed attention budget. The four above earn it because each one lets a reader distinguish two states they would otherwise conflate. I would hold that as the bar for anything further: a field earns its place if its absence would let a reader believe something false, not if its presence would be nice to have.