The forward period runs before approval, not after
Two documents disagree, and the project's own rule is that a contradiction of this kind is a release blocker rather than a precedence question.
| source | claim |
|---|---|
ADR-0006, and the CONTEXT.md glossary entry | the forward period is wall-clock time "from approval onward" |
| The Strategy state machine, D22, ADR-0023 | MEASURED -> FORWARD -> APPROVED: forward runs before approval and can refuse it |
ADR-0023 is operative. Its window resolves three ways and two of them are refusals. A refusal issued after approval is incoherent: the Strategy would already be LIVE with real money against it, and the falsification window would have no power to stop anything. The entire purpose of ADR-0014 — that forward testing falsifies — depends on it preceding the gate.
**The forward period is wall-clock time from entry into FORWARD**: after the single reserve look, before approval, before any signature.
A second correction follows from the first. ADR-0006 says price history "is split four ways" and that "split percentages live in configuration". The fourth is not price history and has no percentage — it is future time, and it is declared as (minimum trades, maximum duration). Three configured splits partition the archive; the forward window is not one of them. Listing it alongside the other three is what invites reading it as held-out history, which is the misunderstanding this ADR exists to close.
Considered options
- **Take "from approval onward" as operative and move
FORWARDafterAPPROVED.** Internally consistent with ADR-0006 as written, and it destroys ADR-0014 and ADR-0023 entirely: the stage could no longer refuse, and real money would be committed before the only genuinely unseen data had been seen. - Keep both readings and let context decide. The deferral the working rules forbid, and it does not survive contact with the config schema: there are either four split percentages or three, and code has to pick.
Consequences
ADR-0006 is marked amended. The CONTEXT.md Forward period entry is corrected in place with a dated note — a glossary carrying a definition known to be wrong is worse than no glossary.
D11 and M4.6 change from four configured partitions to three. Definition, measurement and reserve are percentages over the archive. The forward window is a pair in wall-clock time and carries no percentage.
The ordering is now explicit end to end: measure, take the one reserve look, run the forward window in real time, then approve and sign. Nothing about alpha, the sealed reserve or the four refusals changes.