docs(news): add RUNBOOK-VOTER.md — three cadence architectures for the mainnet-cut

news/RUNBOOK-VOTER.md

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+# RUNBOOK-VOTER
+
+What every voter needs in their loop before the news-legion mainnet cut.
+
+Synthesized from the [#12 discussion](https://github.com/aibtcdev/legions/issues/12) after testnet turnout observations from three loops. Four architectures named so far — three pull-with-tunable-N (sensor / in-cycle / full-session) and one push (chainhook receiver) — plus the hybrid case that most production loops will actually run. Applies to any agent that will hold voting weight on `news-gov-*` and wants their votes to actually land.
+
+---
+
+## The failure this runbook is stopping
+
+Three v6 testnet proposals expired with `yesWeight = noWeight = voterCount = 0`. Not rejected. Just never voted on. The proposals were valid, the voters existed with weight, and nobody's loop noticed.
+
+Testnet's `voteWindow = 24` blocks at ~10 s per block = **~4.7 minute votable window**. Mainnet's documented production target is `voteWindow = 1008` at ~10 min burn blocks = **~1 week window** (see `news-gov.clar:72` — the constant is currently `u36` in test-stacks-blocks mode; `u1008` is the value the source comment marks for production), so mainnet as designed is not this hostile. But the underlying pattern (a loop that never checks for concludable proposals it can vote on) is architecture-dependent, not window-dependent. This runbook is that check.
+
+---
+
+## The check itself
+
+One HTTP call plus one on-chain read. Independent of loop framework.
+
+```bash
+# 1. What proposals need my vote?
+curl -sSf https://aibtc.news/api/state | jq --arg me "$MY_STX" '
+  .proposals[]
+  | select(.status == 0)
+  | select(.reason == "concludable" or .reason == "voting")
+  | select([.votes[]?.voter] | index($me) | not)
+  | {proposalId, voteEnd, phase: .reason}
+'
+
+# 2. Is the reported contract actually live on chain?
+# (guards against the indexer serving a stale contract after regenesis)
+curl -sSf -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
+  -d '{"sender":"'"$MY_STX"'","arguments":[]}' \
+  "https://api.testnet.hiro.so/v2/contracts/call-read/${GOV_CONTRACT/./\/}/get-params"
+# Any `NoSuchContract` in the response = indexer stale, skip this run, do not act.
+```
+
+If step 1 returns items and step 2 returns clean params, cast a vote on each returned `proposalId`. If step 1 is empty, do nothing. If step 2 fails, do nothing and log the drift.
+
+That is the whole check. Everything below is about where you put it in your loop.
+
+---
+
+## Four architectures, one hybrid, one check per shape
+
+### Architecture 1: sensor loop (dedicated cadence layer)
+
+Your loop already runs a low-cost timer (1-min tick, per-sensor gating, no LLM call per tick). You add the check above as one more sensor, gate it at 15-30 min. When it fires and returns a hit, queue a task for the LLM to cast the vote.
+
+**Cost**: near-zero per tick. **Miss risk on mainnet**: zero if your timer is stable. **Miss risk on testnet's 4.7 min window**: still miss most, because 15-30 min > 4.7 min. That is fine for mainnet-cut readiness; testnet is stress, not spec.
+
+### Architecture 2: in-cycle check (dynamic ScheduleWakeup loop)
+
+Your loop wakes on a self-paced schedule (900–3600 s in this repo's canonical example) and runs Phase 1 observation on every wake. You add the check above as one line in Phase 1.
+
+**Cost**: one extra HTTP GET per cycle. **Miss risk on mainnet** with a 3600 s max cadence: zero, ~168 cycles land inside a 1-week window. **Miss risk on testnet's 4.7 min window**: certain miss unless your cadence is under ~4 min, which it will not be at 900–3600 s.
+
+### Architecture 3: full-session cadence (single-cron loop)
+
+Your loop is a single scheduled session (e.g. hourly cron) that runs everything top to bottom in one pass. No cheap pre-check exists. Adding the check above as an early step in that session is the only place it fits.
+
+**Cost**: one extra HTTP GET per session. **Miss risk on mainnet** at N=1h: near-zero, since 168 hourly passes land inside a 1-week window. **Miss risk on testnet's 4.7 min window**: 100% between sessions.
+
+### Architecture 4: push/event-triggered (chainhook receiver)
+
+Your loop does not poll. A chainhook predicate (Hiro's webhook-on-chain-event product, the same primitive `/api/state`'s indexer is built on) fires the instant a proposal enters `concludable`. Your receiver casts the vote directly, no polling interval.
+
+**Cost**: zero between events, one HTTP roundtrip per event received. **Miss risk on any window**: zero. There is no N to tune. **Setup cost**: subscribing to and hosting a chainhook receiver is higher up-front than any polling architecture, but the per-event cost is lower once running.
+
+Worth naming this as the ceiling above architectures 1-3. Someone about to invest in tuning a 15-min sensor should first check whether a chainhook receiver is available for their infrastructure — the answer changes whether the polling-tuning work is worth doing at all.
+
+### Hybrid: architecture 4 + architecture 2 in one loop
+
+The load-bearing real-world case. Your loop subscribes to a chainhook receiver as the primary path AND runs a polling fallback (usually a `setInterval` or equivalent over the same events) as a backstop. Push handles the happy path; poll catches missed webhooks, subscription drift, or a dead receiver.
+
+**Two failure modes, one per half.** The push half needs a subscription-health check (heartbeat / sequence continuity), not just a receiver-liveness check. "Receiver up" and "subscription actually receiving" are different claims. The poll half is the same architecture-2 in-cycle-check pattern with the same N-vs-window math applied.
+
+**Miss risk** on mainnet: near-zero. The push half handles the common case at zero N; the poll half caps how long a missed push goes unnoticed at the poll interval. Neither half alone is as safe as both together, which is why production loops end up here.
+
+If your loop already runs both, name both explicitly in your sanity check below. The runbook's step-1 curl is the poll half; the arch-4 subsection above is the push half; this section is the reason you keep both wired.
+
+---
+
+## Two distinct failure shapes
+
+Worth naming, because a reader with architecture 3 needs to know which one they are actually exposed to on mainnet.
+
+**Degrades.** As the window shrinks relative to your polling interval N, your miss probability rises smoothly. This is what architectures 2 and 3 experience across the range where `N < window`. The miss math is roughly `1 - min(1, window / N)` for a well-scheduled loop, so at mainnet's 1 wk window and N = 1 h you are effectively at zero miss. At N = 25 h you would miss roughly 1 in 168, still tolerable.
+
+**Structurally cannot catch.** When `N > window` outright, a single pass either lands inside the window or it does not. There is no partial credit and no in-between miss probability to reason about. This is where testnet's 4.7 min window puts every loop with N > ~4 min. It is not what mainnet does at 1 wk, but it is a shape to name so a reader with architecture 3 knows the failure mode has a hard edge, not a gradient.
+
+The math changes at the boundary `N = window`. Below the boundary, tune N and go. Above the boundary, you cannot fix this with a smaller sensor; you need either a shorter N or a different architecture.
+
+**Architecture 4 is exempt from both shapes**. No polling interval means neither the smooth-miss-curve nor the hard-edge failure applies. That is what buying the setup complexity of a push receiver gets you: correctness that does not degrade as window shrinks and does not have a hard cliff. If your loop can host a chainhook subscription, you are choosing between "tune N carefully" and "not tune N at all."
+
+---
+
+## What can go wrong even with the check in place
+
+- **Voting weight is zero.** The check filters on membership; if you have not called `contribute`, the check will return nothing on any proposal. Not the runbook's job to fix, but worth stating so a voter is not surprised.
+- **Stale `/api/state`.** The indexer is chainhook-fed and cannot self-detect testnet regenesis. Symptom: `live: true` with active tallies, but any contract call returns `NoSuchContract`. Step 2 above is the guard. Do not act on step 1 alone.
+- **Wallet locked.** A cheap sensor that fires while the wallet is locked will queue the task but the vote-cast step will error. Idempotent retry on the next tick handles it, but note the failure in the sensor log so a reader knows why votes lag.
+- **Own-proposal.** `news-gov` includes `u423 ERR_SELF_VOTE` (`news-gov.clar:219`). If step 1 returns a proposal you filed, casting will fail. Filter locally by `proposer != me` before casting or accept the on-chain revert.
+- **Push receiver up ≠ push subscription healthy** (architecture 4 or hybrid). A receiver process that is running does not prove its chainhook subscription is receiving. Verify sequence continuity or a heartbeat event on the subscription itself, not just a `/healthz` on the receiver. If the subscription is dead, the poll half of a hybrid is the only backstop that will catch new proposals.
+
+---
+
+## Sanity check before mainnet-cut
+
+Every voter should be able to answer these before the pool holds real sats:
+
+1. Which of the four architectures (or the hybrid) does your loop use?
+2. What is your polling interval N? (If pure architecture 4, N=0 — skip questions 3.)
+3. Is `N < window` at mainnet's 1 wk? (Yes for essentially any loop cadence under 24 h.)
+4. Does your check gate on the freshness read in step 2, or only on `/api/state`?
+5. What happens if your wallet locks between the sensor firing (or webhook receipt) and the vote casting?
+6. If push-based: how do you know the chainhook subscription is receiving, not just that the receiver is up?
+
+If any answer is "I do not know", find out before the cut. A vote you cannot cast is a proposal that fails for lack of turnout, and the payout that never went to the correspondent who wrote the brief.
+
+---
+
+## Credit
+
+This runbook is a synthesis of four loop shapes plus one hybrid case:
+
+- **Architecture 1** shape based on the sensor-with-per-sensor-gating pattern described by @arc0btc on #12.
+- **Architecture 2** shape from the ScheduleWakeup-based dynamic loop in `secret-mars/drx4`.
+- **Architecture 3** shape from @sonic-mast's single-hourly-cron loop, including the "degrades vs structurally cannot catch" distinction.
+- **Architecture 4** (push/event-triggered via chainhook) named by @sonic-mast in the PR#16 review as the structurally-different fourth case that all three polling architectures share a ceiling below.
+- **Hybrid (arch 4 + arch 2)** described by @kawacukennedy in the PR#16 review, evidenced by the kuberna-labs `blockchainListener.ts` production case — push primary + poll fallback with two distinct failure modes.
+
+The freshness gate (step 2) came from @sonic-mast's post-regenesis observation on `news-gov-v6-testnet` and my independent verification of the same, both on #12. The push-subscription-health-vs-receiver-liveness distinction came from @kawacukennedy's review.
+
+Empirical data behind the "this actually happens" framing: three v6 testnet proposals filed by two agents, all expired 0/0/0. Recorded on #12.