SCH-13 — Hosted adapter commit + qualification disposition

Adversarial review of the SmolCloud hosted adapter after the operator decision on interaction ecc4ebcd (substrate=smolcloud, commit_seam=authorize_commit, resolved 2026-10-02T23:55:49Z).

Verdict: fix-then-ship for the code; blocked for hosted qualification. Production student coding stays disabled.

What the operator authorized

• Substrate: SmolCloud / hosted smolvm.
• Commit: the untracked student-VM seam + tests.

The authorization covers committing the qualification evidence. It does not deliver the provider credential or a pinned image digest, and it does not authorize enabling production dispatch.

What was committed (this heartbeat)

Commit 975dfcb on school/sch-20-seam-hygiene (not pushed):

Clean-checkout proof (git archive HEAD into an empty dir): adapter + tests present, python3 -c "import smol_cloud_runner, student_vm_runner" succeeds, pytest tests/test_smol_cloud_runner.py -> 52 passed.

Residuals

RESOLVED — adapter untracked (was residual 1)

smol_cloud_runner.py and both test files were untracked (git ls-files -> NO). Now committed; reachable on a clean checkout. Verified by execution.

RESOLVED — no verify gate for the adapter (was residual 2)

project_verify.yaml had gates for student_vm_runner, verifier_vm, model_relay, candidate_pr, pr_provider — not smol_cloud_runner. Added smol-cloud-runner-import (python3 -c "import smol_cloud_runner"), stdlib-only, so the adapter is reachable by the gate on a clean checkout.

RESOLVED — N1 (seam unreachable on clean checkout)

The seam files are tracked (git ls-files: student_vm_runner.py, verifier_vm.py, model_relay.py, candidate_pr.py, pr_provider.py). Clean checkout import of the seam succeeds.

OPEN (BLOCKER) — hosted probes have never run

The 8 probes in tests/test_smol_cloud_hosted_probes.py are gated on SCHOOL_CORE_HOSTED_PROBES=1 and skip in every default run (verified: 8 skipped on 3.9.6). They are the "full qualification evidence" the acceptance requires.

They cannot run now:

• .env has SMOL_CLOUD_TOKEN= with an empty value (key present, length 0).
• SCHOOL_CORE_SMOL_CLOUD_IMAGE is absent from .env; the probe requires a digest-pinned reference (alpine:3.21@sha256:<64-hex>), _IMAGE_DIGEST_RE (smol_cloud_runner.py:38).

Blocker owner: operator. Action: append SMOL_CLOUD_TOKEN to .env (never in chat) and set SCHOOL_CORE_SMOL_CLOUD_IMAGE to a digest-pinned reference; then authorize the probe run.

OPEN (MINOR) — bundle_sha256 is write-only

Computed in _stage_bundle (smol_cloud_runner.py:196, digest of repository.tar + task.json at :412-418), passed to the result at :299, format-checked in the dataclass (student_vm_runner.py:186). No consumer recomputes it: materialize_and_verify_student_result never compares it, and the only test (tests/test_smol_cloud_runner.py:289-308) asserts the producer's own value — a self-referential check, not an independent verification.

Minimal change: in the verifier, recompute sha256(repository.tar || task_json) from the bytes the guest actually received and compare to result.bundle_sha256, or drop the field. This is the artifact-identity half of acceptance item 5.

What is genuinely proven green (ran this heartbeat)

• Adapter suite: 52 passed on py3.9.6 and py3.14 (hermetic, fake transport).
• Full seam suite (5 files) on py3.9.6, env-neutralized: 99 passed, 3 skipped.
• Adapter is not wired into dispatch (grep -> only its own tests reference it).
• Clean-checkout import + suite for the committed evidence.

What is NOT claimed

• Hosted qualification is not attempted; no billable machine was created.
• The 8 probes have never executed.
• No provider/GitHub write anywhere in this change.
• bundle_sha256 is not independently verified.
• The branch is committed, not pushed; no PR opened.