open-standards/wai/changes/2026-11-04-no-shared-append-points.md

Changelog entries and the conformance workflow's lists move into files a change adds

• Changelog entries, one a file. A change adds its entry as a file of changes/ (<yyyy-mm-dd>-<slug>.md, holding the entry exactly as the changelog does) and leaves the head of the changelog alone. scripts/changelog-assemble.py --write puts the files at the head of ## Unreleased for a release, newest date first and by name within a date, and removes them. wai breaking reads the lines a change adds to them as it reads the lines it adds to the changelog. The repository checks fail a pull request that changes anything under wai/ and adds or edits no entry file directly in changes/ (a release, which renders the files and removes them, passes), or one whose entry is malformed or in a subdirectory, and fail rather than pass when they cannot compare the change with its base. A pull request opened before the check reached main passes as it is; one opened since that adds its entry to the head of the changelog fails, saying to add the file. The check reads when it reached main from the base's first-parent history: the first commit there whose tree holds it, which is the merge that brought it in. The trailer line Changelog: none, exactly, in the trailer block of a commit message, says a change has nothing to record. changes/README.md states the form.
• CI: the lists wai-conformance.yml kept by hand are derived when it runs. Each step of the independent verifiers is a file of .github/wai-conformance/verifiers/ (its body, and a header naming its features, binaries, paths and order), each cargo-class corpus a file of .github/wai-conformance/corpora/, and each test of the fast integer kernels' steps names them in its own file (// wai-conformance: int-kernels). scripts/wai-conformance-lists.py derives from them WAI_FEATURES, WAI_PQ_FEATURES and WAI_RELEASE_FEATURES, the binaries and tests the verifiers' job builds first and the steps it runs, the feature lists features-alone checks, the integer kernels' tests and features, and the corpora and their features. A new verifier, corpus or kernel test adds a file, or a line to its own file, and edits no line of the workflow, unless a step's # paths: names a file under none of the trigger's paths. Its features and [[test]] entries in wai-rs/Cargo.toml stay shared.
• CI: every job runs what it ran. .github/wai-conformance/baseline.json holds the hand lists the files replaced. scripts/wai-conformance-lists.py selftest --exact requires each derived list to equal its hand list, and each step's body and directory to be those of the hand list's step of its name, in the same order; the repository checks run selftest, which fails a change that drops an entry of them, and a self-test that takes a step, a feature, a tag and a corpus away in turn and requires each to fail. dry-run prints every list and step in a stable form, of the tree or of a commit (--ref), with the command lines of the integer kernels' steps, the corpus step, int-kernels-amd and the features-alone loop, so a review compares two of them by diff alone.
• CI: the gate reads the steps' paths. The workflow starts on any extension text (wai/extensions/**), and its relevant job runs the jobs only for the paths the workflow lists and the ones the steps' files name, which it reads through scripts/pr-touches-paths.py --paths-from <dir> --wide <glob>, so a new step brings the extension text it reads in its own file. For every file outside the two paths this adds to the gate (.github/wai-conformance/** and scripts/wai-conformance-lists.py), the gate answers as it did.
• wai mcp's conformance tools read the verifier commands from the steps' files, and scripts/check-tests-in-ci.py counts a test as run when a step's file names it or a step takes a tag it carries.