Aspect Status

Yggdrasil aspects ship with three enforcement levels: draft, advisory, enforced. Status controls whether the reviewer runs and how yg check renders violations. It is the dial you turn as a rule matures — start silent, gather signal, then enforce.

Three levels

Status	Reviewer runs?	Refused renders as	Blocks yg check?
draft	no	n/a (skipped)	no
advisory	yes	warning	no
enforced	yes	error	yes

draft aspects are dormant — yg approve prints a skip line and never calls the reviewer. advisory aspects pay the full reviewer cost but their refusals surface as warnings only. enforced is the default: refusals block CI.

When to use each

• draft — content.md / check.mjs is still being authored, or the rule is unclear. Zero cost, zero enforcement. Use this while iterating on the rule text before any node has a real verdict.
• advisory — rule is complete; gather signal across the repo without blocking CI. Full reviewer cost, warnings only. Use this to measure how often a rule fires on real code before promoting it.
• enforced — rule is vetted; violations should block CI. Full reviewer cost, errors that block yg check.

A typical lifecycle: draft while authoring → advisory for one or two sprints to observe behavior → enforced once you have confidence the rule fires only on real violations.

Declaring status

status: can appear on the aspect itself (aspect-level default) and on every object-form attach site. The aspect-level default applies wherever the aspect attaches unless an attach site declares its own.

Aspect-level default

# .yggdrasil/aspects/audit-logging/yg-aspect.yaml
name: Audit Logging
description: "Every mutation emits an audit event"
status: advisory               # default for every attach site
reviewer:
  type: llm

If status: is omitted, the aspect defaults to enforced — same behavior as 4.x.

Per-node attach site

# .yggdrasil/model/orders/yg-node.yaml
aspects:
  - id: audit-logging
    status: enforced           # promote on this node only

Bare-string entries (- audit-logging) inherit the aspect-level default. Object form ({ id, status }) is the only way to override per site.

Architecture node-type default

# .yggdrasil/yg-architecture.yaml
node_types:
  command:
    aspects:
      - id: cli-contract
        status: enforced

Flow-level

# .yggdrasil/flows/checkout/yg-flow.yaml
aspects:
  - id: correlation-tracking
    status: advisory

Port-level

# .yggdrasil/model/payments/yg-node.yaml
ports:
  charge:
    aspects:
      - id: idempotency
        status: enforced

How effective status is computed

For each (node, aspect) pair, the resolver collects every channel that attaches the aspect (after when filtering), then takes the maximum:

effective_status = max(declared in each channel)

where draft < advisory < enforced. The strictest level wins.

If an attach site explicitly declares a status lower than what the cascade would yield from other channels (plus the aspect-level default), the validator emits aspect-status-downgrade as an error. The rule is bump up OK, downgrade is an error: a node can promote an aspect to enforced, but it cannot quietly weaken what the architecture or a flow demands.

To resolve a downgrade error: remove the explicit lower status from the attach site, or raise the lower-ranked channel to match.

This max() computation and the downgrade check apply to the cascading attach channels 1–6 (own, ancestor, own type, ancestor type, flows, ports). Channel 7 (implies) does not declare a status: — it carries status_inherit: instead, described in the next section.

Implies propagation

For aspect A that implies aspect B, propagation to a node depends on A's effective status on that node and the status_inherit: modifier on the implies edge.

Draft is dormant

If A's effective status on node N is draft, then B is not propagated via implies. Draft aspects have zero side effects. B may still arrive on N through any other channel.

Active implier — status_inherit modes

# .yggdrasil/aspects/audit-logging/yg-aspect.yaml
implies:
  - id: diagnostic-logging
    status_inherit: strictest        # default

Two modes:

• strictest (default) — B contributes max(A_effective, B_default) to the cascade. An implies bundle promotes its companions. If A runs as enforced and B defaults to advisory, B becomes enforced on that node.
• own-default — B contributes B_default regardless of A. Use this to decouple propagation when an implied aspect should retain its own status even when reached through a stricter implier.

implies:
  - id: diagnostic-logging
    status_inherit: own-default      # keep B at its own default

Bare-string implies entries (implies: [diagnostic-logging]) inherit the strictest default.

Migrating from 4.x

5.0.0 introduces status. Existing aspects without a status: field default to enforced — the same behavior as 4.x. Run yg init --upgrade to migrate; the migrator inspects your graph and warns about two patterns that may behave differently under the new defaults:

1. Escalation via strictest — implies: [B] where A is enforced and B's default is advisory or draft. Under the new strictest default, B will run as enforced wherever it reaches a node through A. The warning lists the implier, implied, both defaults, and the number of affected nodes. To keep the old behavior, add status_inherit: own-default on the implies entry.

2. Downgrade — any attach site with explicit status: lower than the cascade anchor. The warning gives the file path and the conflicting values. Fix by removing the explicit status, or raise the cascade channel to match.

If the migrator finds either pattern, it withholds the version bump. Resolve the warnings and re-run yg init --upgrade.

Status and drift

Status is not part of the canonical drift hash. The hash stays stable across advisory ↔ enforced flips — these transitions do not cascade re-approvals.

Transitions that affect drift:

• draft → advisory/enforced — produces drift indirectly: the node now has no baseline verdict for the newly active aspect. Surfaced as aspect-newly-active in yg check.
• advisory → enforced — does not drift. However, if the baseline already contains a refused verdict, CI flips from green to red overnight. Promote intentionally and expect the existing baseline to surface.
• active → draft — does not drift. The stale baseline entry is cleared lazily on the next yg approve of the node.

when is not status

The when predicate decides whether an aspect applies to a node. Status decides what happens when it applies. They are orthogonal:

• when=false → aspect is invisible on the node. No reviewer, no verdict, no display in yg context. Costs nothing.
• status=draft → aspect applies but is dormant. Appears in yg context, no reviewer call, no verdict in baseline.

Use when to model applicability (this rule only applies to nodes that call an external service). Use status to model rule maturity (this rule is still being authored / observed / enforced).

See Conditional Aspects for the when predicate grammar.

See also

• Core Concepts — aspects, the seven channels, drift
• Reviewers — how the reviewer is invoked
• Conditional Aspects — when predicates
• CLI Reference — issue codes emitted by yg check