Authoritative Inquiry Registry — Required Categories

Canonical companion to CLAUDE.md §14. This document carries the seven required-category catalog, the carved-out auto-decisions enumeration, and the bindings declaration. CLAUDE.md retains the anchor + pointer line; the substantive tables and bindings live here.

When operating on a host project, inquire — do not invent — on the seven categories below. Inquiries route through the AskUserQuestion canonical channel per src/apothem/rules/interactive-questions.md. Each option carries the three-segment annotation (rationale / recommendation / default-pointer) and a recommended marker per M7.

Category	Forbidden to invent	Inquire because
Identity	Names, emails, handles, pronouns, organizations, tenants, team affiliations, role descriptions	Bind to a real person; create real-world artifacts (commits, PRs, public attribution)
Scope direction	Which subtree, which branch, which environment (dev/staging/prod), which target (libraries vs services), which user-facing vs internal-only	The user has implicit context the agent lacks; silent picks misalign
Preference	Formatter, linter, test framework, documentation generator, CI provider, branch strategy, commit-message convention, release-signing, versioning scheme, license — where the host has not ratified one	Each is a long-lived ratification that resists silent adoption
Security	Secret-rotation cadence, allowed shells, allowed network egress, accepted-risks list, trusted-action allowlist, MCP-server auth endpoint specifics	Security misconfiguration is high-impact; silent picks risk silent breach
Naming	A new convention introduced where the host has none, or a name binding (function, CLI flag, subcommand, config key) where the user has implicit preferences	Names are durable; silent picks compound into namespace pollution
Infrastructure	Endpoints, hosts, ports, paths, regions, queue names, topic names, table names	Bind to real-world resources; invention causes real-world failures
Version pins	Which version of which dependency, where the host has not pinned and the choice matters (security-relevant deps, behavioral-shift deps, semver-major boundaries)	Long-tail consequences; silent picks burden the user

Required inquiries (Identity, Scope direction, Security posture, Naming-of-public-surfaces are always required) block dependent artifacts; emission produces <USER-CONFIRM:id=<id>> placeholders. Optional inquiries the user may decline by silence; the agent then falls back to the recommended option and records the fallback as a finding so the user sees a decision was made.

1. Carved-Out Auto-Decisions

The following the agent decides without inquiry — disclosed in the change ledger as "applied by default; revert if intended otherwise":

• Pure validity. Syntax errors, schema violations, unambiguous typos.
• Pure rigor. Folklore → cited; missing dates added; unverifiable claims marked.
• Universally-safe security. deny .env*, deny ~/.ssh/** reads, deny rm -rf:*, deny sudo:*, deny git push --force* to protected branches, deny eval/exec on untrusted input.
• Pure formatting normalization. EOL, trailing whitespace, single quote-style per file where the host has a ratified style and the artifact diverges.
• Internal reference repair where the fix is unambiguous. Dead path → unique live path discovered by search.

Anything outside this carve-out goes through the inquiry surface.

2. Bindings (§0.j five-direction)

• Drives → Every host-project artifact emission (the pre-emission gate fires on every meaningful-scope write per docs/pre-emission-gate-registry.md). Every multi-option presentation routes through AskUserQuestion per the canonical-channel obligation. The mechanical-fraction enforcement at src/apothem/conformity/*-grep.py. The per-rule enforcement at src/apothem/rules/{authority-inquiry,host-discovery,disclosure-ledger,ten-dimension-check,pre-emission-gate,expertise-posture,option-annotation,definitiveness,visual-leverage,bidirectional-binding,agile-sprints,canonical-layout,code-craft-*,systemic-participation,production-ready-prs}.md.
• Satisfies → The outward-conformity axis declared as a first-class governance dimension alongside the CM-N axis (M = host-project artifacts; CM = ecosystem-internal artifacts; both orthogonal, both apply where both apply). The standing-directives obligation that every session bootstrap inherits the M-set as always-on context.
• Established by ↑ CLAUDE.md itself (the registry is intrinsic to the always-on context, not derived from external state). The trivial-vs-non-trivial threshold ratification at docs/outward-conformity-registry.md §1.
• Cross-bound with ↔ Each rule named in the outward-conformity registry table at docs/outward-conformity-registry.md (the canonical per-mandate body). src/apothem/conformity/*-grep.py (the mechanical-fraction enforcement of the gate). src/apothem/rules/interactive-questions.md (the inquiry surface routes through the canonical-channel obligation that rule defines).