feat(.squad): PAO external communications - Phase 1 infrastructure

[diberry]

Summary

Implements the Phase 1 foundation for RFC #426: PAO External Communications with human review gate.

Closes #426

Working as PAO (DevRel) — coordinated with Flight, EECOM, and FIDO.

What's included

New Skills (2)

• humanizer (.squad/skills/humanizer/SKILL.md) — Tone enforcement patterns for community responses. 10 patterns, 7 response templates, 9 anti-patterns. Ensures warm, helpful, human-sounding tone per Brady's constraints.
• external-comms (.squad/skills/external-comms/SKILL.md) — Full scan-draft-review-post workflow with confidence flags (green/yellow/red), MCP tool integration, and \gh\ CLI fallback.

Communications Infrastructure (.squad/comms/)

• README.md — System overview and directory structure
• audit/.gitkeep — Audit trail directory (append-only)
• templates/audit-entry.md — Structured audit log format
• templates/review-state-schema.sql — SQLite-based atomic locking (zero new dependencies)
• templates/tone-validation.json — Machine-readable anti-patterns for CI lint
• .gitignore — Excludes runtime SQLite state from commits

Quality Gates (.squad/comms/tests/)

• tone-validation-spec.md — 7 test categories (T1-T7), 5 gold standard responses, Phase 1 readiness checklist
• ci-gate.md — Mandatory and warning checks, failure modes

Charter and Routing Updates

• PAO charter — Added external comms ownership, 3 hard rules (EXTERNAL COMMS, HUMANIZER, AUDIT TRAIL)
• routing.md — Added community response work type

Brady's 5 Constraints (all addressed)

1. Humanized tone mandatory — humanizer skill enforces
2. Never autonomous — all responses draft-only with human review gate
3. Human review gate — explicit \pao approve\ command required
4. Never mean — anti-patterns block dismissive or aggressive language
5. Reputational awareness — audit trail, confidence flags, safe word (\pao halt)

FIDO's 5 Critical Blockers (all mitigated)

1. Humanizer has zero validation — tone-validation.json + CI gate + gold standard baseline
2. Review gate unenforceable — SQLite locking + explicit approval + audit log
3. No rollback plan — delete-and-repost workflow + safe word
4. Cannot verify full thread read — thread depth indicator + long-thread flag + deleted comment validation
5. Tone degradation undetected — baseline comparison + weekly analytics spec

Files Changed

• 13 files changed, 652 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
• 2 new skills, 6 new infrastructure files, 2 new test specs, 1 charter update, 1 routing update

[diberry]

@bradygaster — PR #427 (PAO External Communications RFC) has full team approval and is ready for your review.

Reviewers who signed off:

• ✅ McManus (PAO) — approved in round 2
• ✅ Keaton (Flight/Lead) — approved in round 5
• ✅ Hockney (FIDO/Test) — approved in round 5
• ✅ Fenster (EECOM/Infra) — approved in round 5

What this PR adds:

• Humanizer skill (tone enforcement, patterns-only, no external deps)
• External-comms skill (scan→draft→review→post workflow)
• Comms infrastructure (SQLite schema, tone validation, audit templates, CI gate)
• Safe word set to \�anana\ per your directive
• Phase 1 constraints: manual-trigger only, issues/discussions only, human review gate mandatory

Key design decisions (from 5 review rounds):

• Single-row global lease for SQLite lock (atomic UPDATE)
• Node-safe regex only (no lookbehinds)
• Conditional audit format (minimal frontmatter)
• No external dependencies — humanizer is self-contained patterns

Targeting \dev\ branch. Ready for merge when you are.

[diberry]

Rebased PR #427 onto upstream/dev (commit f87a7a5) and resolved all conflicts.

Conflict Resolution Summary:

• .squad/agents/_alumni/mcmanus/charter.md: Merged both rule sets — kept DOCS-TEST SYNC rule from upstream reskill and added EXTERNAL COMMS, HUMANIZER, and AUDIT TRAIL rules from this PR
• .squad/routing.md: Accepted Apollo 13 team names from upstream (EECOM, PAO, FIDO, etc.) — the PAO external comms infrastructure is team-agnostic
• .squad/agents/keaton/history.md: Accepted deletion (file moved to alumni in the upstream recast)

Rebased onto upstream commits:

• feat: update default model selection to Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.4 #429: Model selection update (Sonnet 4.6, GPT-5.4)
• test: SDK feature parity batch 3 — 46 tests for #31, #47, #45, #46 #428, test: SDK feature parity batch 2 — 64 tests for #27, #28, #36, #49, #50 #425: SDK feature parity test batches
• feat: support --sdk switch with built-in base roles (#378) #424: SDK switch with built-in base roles
• chore: reskill — compress charters, extract skills #423: Team reskill (Usual Suspects → Apollo 13)

All 7 commits successfully rebased and force-pushed. PR is now ready for review.

@bradygaster — EECOM (Core Dev), on behalf of Dina

[diberry]

✅ APPROVE — Solid Phase 1 foundation. SQLite-based locking is the right call (atomic, zero new deps), humanizer skill addresses Brady's 5 constraints, and FIDO's blockers are all mitigated. Infrastructure work like this belongs in .squad/ per decisions.md. 652 insertions is appropriate for a new capability with tests + templates. Ship it.

[diberry]

@bradygaster This PR is ready for your review.

[diberry]

👋 @bradygaster — squad obo dina: Merge conflict has been resolved. Merged upstream/dev into the branch, no file conflicts. Ready for review when you are.