Preserve original merged-PR lineage through staging

[adrianwebb]

Outcome

Preserve original already-merged PR commits as ancestors of staging, then main, without replaying obsolete source changes.

Work authority

• Work item / Issue: Consolidate feature branches into staging and main; clean preserved refs #118; central Consolidate project branches into staging and main; preserve work and verification gates platform#626

• Proposal / decision: N/A — direct human authorization for repository cleanup.

• Assignment / checkpoint: Exact original head-to-merged-PR authority table in the owning Issue.

• Actor: Codex in the owner's Platform workspace.

• Human authority: @adrianwebb requested consolidation through staging to main, commit-lineage preservation, no new tags.

• Agent / capacity provider: Codex; no managed capacity execution for this cleanup.

• Exact base ref: staging 4797f18

• Exact head ref: codex/cleanup-merged-pr-lineage-118 fdec338

• Agent-assisted under human authority

Plan

Fresh required Actions on the exact candidate; merge commit into staging; promote through a verified staging-to-main PR; delete only refs whose exact heads are now protected ancestors.

Changes and commits

History-only merges retain the original heads of 2 already-merged PR refs as parents. No file changes: candidate tree equals the current protected staging tree. Exact Git tree 0afcc3ccf2bcbc3fd61c437cdc99951a149500be. No tags, release dispatch, deployment activation or history rewrite.

Verification

Every selected original head exactly matches its prior merged PR head; each prior PR merge commit is a protected ancestor. Native ancestry confirms every original head is an ancestor of this candidate. Fresh current required Actions pending; older receipts are not substituted. This is lineage cleanup, not capacity-provider, Agent or SDK golden acceptance.

Risk and rollback

Existing dirty and truly unmerged work remains excluded and untouched. Retain original refs until protected ancestry and current Actions are verified. Revert a specific accepted CI-only follow-up through a separate protected PR if needed; never reset or rewrite protected history.

Completion summary

Candidate pushed and exact remote head independently read back. Staging merge, main promotion and redundant-ref deletion pending.

Submission checklist

• The change is bounded to the stated work item and target repository.
• Exact base and head refs are recorded and the branch is ready for review.
• Verification and compatibility evidence are recorded above.
• No plaintext secrets, credentials, machine state, or unrelated residue are included.
• Plan, status, commits, and completion summary form a complete durable record.
• Rollback or recovery steps are documented and executable.