Broken stub pattern: 4 sibling repos reference non-existent reusable-governance-gates.yml

[chitcommit]

Summary

Four repos in the CHITTYOS org have a stub governance-gates.yml workflow with uses: ./.github/workflows/reusable-governance-gates.yml but do not contain that reusable workflow file. Their governance-gates workflow fails to load at CI time with a "workflow file not found" error — but the file-presence check used by the governance scoring system still passes because governance-gates.yml exists. The result is hollow compliance: scores increase, but the workflow never actually runs.

Affected repos

Confirmed by enumeration at /home/ubuntu/projects/github.com/CHITTYOS/*:

Repo	governance-gates.yml	reusable-governance-gates.yml	Status
chittyapi	present (stub)	missing	BROKEN
chittymcp	present (stub)	missing	BROKEN
chittyregistry	present (stub)	missing	BROKEN
chittystorage	present (stub)	missing	BROKEN
chittycan	present (stub)	present	OK
chittycommand	present (stub)	present	OK (self)
chittydispute	present (stub)	present	OK (just fixed in CHITTYOS/chittydispute#13)
chittyrouter	present (stub)	present	OK
chittyconnect	uses different inlined pattern	n/a	OK
chittyops	uses different inlined pattern	n/a	OK

Reproduction

for dir in /path/to/CHITTYOS/chittyapi /path/to/CHITTYOS/chittymcp \
           /path/to/CHITTYOS/chittyregistry /path/to/CHITTYOS/chittystorage; do
  gg="$dir/.github/workflows/governance-gates.yml"
  rg="$dir/.github/workflows/reusable-governance-gates.yml"
  if [ -f "$gg" ] && grep -q "reusable-governance-gates" "$gg" && [ ! -f "$rg" ]; then
    echo "BROKEN: $(basename $dir)"
  fi
done

Proposed fix (pick one)

Option A — Include the reusable workflow in each repo. Copy reusable-governance-gates.yml (fixed version, per #86) into each of the 4 broken repos. Self-contained but duplicates the file 4 more times.

Option B — Reference a centralized workflow. Change the stub to uses: CHITTYOS/chittycommand/.github/workflows/reusable-governance-gates.yml@main. Single source of truth, but requires the caller repos to grant access to CHITTYOS/chittycommand and complicates pinning.

Option C — Inline the checks directly in governance-gates.yml like chittyconnect and chittyops already do. No reusable at all. Most portable, but duplicates logic.

Recommendation: Option B — treat CHITTYOS/chittycommand/.github/workflows/reusable-governance-gates.yml@main as the canonical entry point and have all CHITTYOS service repos reference it. This also enforces that fixes in this repo (like #86) automatically propagate.

Impact

• 4 repos currently show passing compliance scores without actually running any governance checks
• Issue Template drift: reusable-governance-gates.yml in governance-baseline has stale regex producing 'txt' false-positive #86 (template drift) cannot propagate to these repos until they include the reusable workflow

Related

• Template drift: reusable-governance-gates.yml in governance-baseline has stale regex producing 'txt' false-positive #86 (template drift)
• Driving incident: CHITTYOS/chittydispute#13 + CHITTYOS/chittydispute#14