FCF Camps

Status: authoritative FCF stay policy

Scope: durable, bounded stays when a new Oasis cannot honestly be declared

SemVer effect: none

Oasis assurance effect: none

Publication authority: none

A Camp is a place to stay. It is not an Oasis.

Verdict first

Oasis is not dead. Oasis is the steadily advanced stable snapshot of the current main and mirage trees. It is made by placing that tree on the current oasis tip so Oasis does not regress, passing the complete gate, and fast-forwarding oasis. After that, development continues on mirage and main.

The published Oasis is CENTL v0.15.0 Al-Nur. Camps do not close that path, weaken it, or inherit it.

A Camp is still the named stay for inhabiting work that is not (yet) the next Oasis snapshot. Camp #1 remains occupied on main and mirage. Occupying a Camp does not mean Oasis can never be made from the stable tree.

What is true of an unpromoted laboratory checkout:

• it is not on oasis;
• it is not an Oasis declaration merely because it matches the snapshot tree;
• laboratory surfaces do not inherit Oasis by proximity.

Declaring Oasis still requires the official snapshot, the complete gate, an unchanged fast-forward, the SemVer tag, and qualified bytes.

Definition

An FCF Camp is a named, bounded, inspectable stay in the desert. FCF uses a Camp when an expedition has produced real work that people may inhabit, but that work cannot honestly be declared an Oasis release.

The canonical short definition is:

FCF Camp: a durable stay for work that is real enough to keep and honest enough not to call Oasis.

A Camp names habitation, not qualification.

Desert vocabulary

These terms remain independent. None substitutes for the evidence required by another.

MIRAGE        = where uncertain work can develop
Secret Oasis  = a deliberate search for unusually valuable directions
Wellspring    = a foundational, generative finding
Camp          = a durable stay when Oasis cannot be declared
Oasis         = a qualified stable-product release

Al-Tih already says Oasis is not scheduled and must be earned. A Camp is the named waystation for that epoch. See MIRAGE-AL-TIH.md and OASIS.md.

What a Camp is not

A Camp is not:

• an Oasis release or Oasis candidate declaration;
• a CENTL SemVer identity such as vX.Y.Z, or a substitute for Oasis;
• a Wellspring;
• a full product promotion of mirage or main;
• permission to skip, weaken, or rewrite Oasis gates;
• a change to the signed join-caravan cryptographic scheme;
• permission to serve JavaScript on the public site;
• a claim that a Camp supersedes the published Oasis.

If a sentence would be false after replacing "Camp" with "Oasis," the Camp record is lying.

When to occupy a Camp

Pitch a Camp only when all of the following are true:

1. Oasis inspect reports blockers that this checkout cannot honestly clear without weakening a gate or dropping the oasis tip.
2. The work is still worth keeping as a stayable laboratory line.
3. The bounds can be written down: what is inside the camp, what remains experimental, and what remains forbidden.
4. Occupying the camp does not require a false Oasis, Wellspring, or release declaration.

Failure to find Oasis is not failure of the research process. A Camp records that fact instead of inventing a promotion.

Camp invariants

• declaration is always false for Oasis and for Camp-as-Oasis.
• origin/oasis should be an ancestor of the camp identity. If it is not, that is a camp defect, not an excused regression.
• Existing Oasis tests, installer channels, and supported command surfaces stay.
• Site visual design stays as intended: HTML and CSS only, no JavaScript.
• The signed join-caravan installer and invite schema stay. join.html remains a consent-gated signed-release path and must not execute JavaScript.
• Inspect commands may occupy or describe a Camp. They may never declare Oasis.

Official path remains

feature / research work
         |
         v
      mirage
         |
         +---- occupied Camp (stay; not a release)
         |
         | inhabit / integrate
         v
       main
         |
         | linear snapshot on the oasis tip
         | satisfy the complete Oasis gate
         v
       oasis
         |
         v
 stable release / tag
         |
         v
 continue on mirage and main

Leaving a Camp toward Oasis still requires the official Oasis path. Occupying a Camp does not shorten it.

Named camp artifacts

A Camp may publish a named stay artifact on GitHub under a tag of the form fcf-camp-NNN. That tag is a snapshot of the occupied stay. It is not vX.Y.Z, it is not latest Oasis, and it must not be marked as an Oasis release.

The artifact may attach the camp source tree, a SHA-256 manifest, and notes that list which surfaces are inherited from the published Oasis and which remain laboratory. It must not rebuild or replace the Oasis native bytes.

Inspection

centl-mirage camps
centl-mirage camps CAMP-001
scripts/oasis.py --inspect

These commands report published Oasis identity, camp occupation, and blockers. They never declare Oasis.

Durable records live under docs/camps/.