feat(core): prove the accounting laws (Kani + Lean); fix three engine gaps

The money arithmetic every invariant rests on now lives in one kernel,
ledger-core/src/kernel.rs: signing a line, totals, net, per-account
movements, reversal, normal balances, trial-balance columns, closing
lines, and the rounding plug for member splits. It is generic over a
checked `Amount` trait. The engine runs it on Decimal (validate,
movements, reverse_entry, account_balance, close_period_to, allocate,
trial_balance): there is one copy of the arithmetic, and it is the one
under proof.

Three layers, docs/verification.md maps every law to its proofs:

- Kani (src/proofs.rs): 17 harnesses prove the kernel at i64 for every
  input up to 4 lines over 3 accounts. An entry is accepted exactly
  when it is two or more positive, in-range lines whose debits equal
  credits; accepted entries net to zero; grouping by account loses
  nothing; a reversal mirrors and cancels its original; trial-balance
  columns balance iff the books net to zero; closing lines zero their
  accounts and a close balances however the net is split; the plug
  makes parts sum to the whole. No panics, no overflow. kani::cover!
  shows the proofs are not vacuous.
- Lean 4 (verify/lean): 24 headline theorems for books of any size. The
  ledger is a state machine (add account, draft, post, reverse, open,
  close), and in every reachable state the books net to zero, the trial
  balance balances (as of any date), and the accounting equation holds.
  Posting only appends ("posted is forever"), closed periods are
  frozen, a close zeroes revenue and expenses and credits exactly the net
  income, and period statements add up. Audit.lean shows standard axioms
  only, no sorry.
- Bridge (tests/kernel_bridge.rs): the Decimal and i64 kernels agree.

What the proofs found (each one missed by every test, fuzzer, and
mutant):

- The engine accepted negative line amounts; only MCP refused them. Now
  NegativeAmountLine: direction is the side's job.
- Summing lines near Decimal::MAX panicked. Lines are now capped at one
  quadrillion and ten decimal places (AmountOutOfRange), which keeps
  every realistic sum exact, and the kernel's sums are checked.
- FX conversion (foreign_amount * fx_rate) could panic the same way; it
  is now a checked multiply.
- Kani itself: 0.68 mis-models symbolic-length copy_from_slice
  (model-checking/kani#4904) and reported a reversal that doesn't net to
  zero. The counterexample, replayed natively, passes, and a 15-line
  standalone crate reproduces the bug. Harnesses avoid bulk copies, and
  a should_panic canary will flag the upstream fix.

`just prove` runs it all (Kani memory- and time-capped, fails on an
unsatisfiable cover or a non-standard Lean axiom). AGENTS.md now makes
formal coverage part of every core change.

Also, docs: GnuCash is *an* oracle, never *the* oracle (Stephen). The
spec is accounting principles, proved. Golden files are recomputed from
principles. External implementations (GnuCash, the old Sheet, QBO/Xero)
are cross-checks whose disagreements get adjudicated, never obeyed.
docs/oracle.md gains "Who is right"; AGENTS, README, architecture,
roadmap, parity, and STATUS are reworded to match.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GWVo7x3UHw5kwCUaWxiejX
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swaitsandClaude Opus 5.5 committed 2026-10-13 11:12:13 -06:00
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@@ -9,15 +9,33 @@ our oracle is *semantic*, not visual.
1. **Fixture books.** A canonical set of journal entries exercising a feature
(the January 2026 fixture company in `tests/invariants.rs` is the first).
2. **Two engines.** The same fixtures go through our engine and through
**GnuCash** — the open-source, double-entry reference implementation with
open file formats. GnuCash is both the spec and the oracle.
2. **More than one engine.** The same fixtures go through our engine and
through independent implementations: **GnuCash** (open source, open file
formats), the old Google Sheet, and later QBO/Xero exports. These are
*cross-checks*, not authorities (see "Who is right" below).
3. **Exact diff.** `reports::snapshot()` renders trial balance, P&L, and
balance sheet as canonical JSON. The outputs must be **identical** —
decimal strings, no floats, no locale, no epsilon. Where storytold allows
2/255 of perceptual slop, we allow zero: accounting has no "close enough".
## The three oracle layers (today → future)
## Who is right
No other program is the spec. GnuCash, the Sheet, QuickBooks: each is
*an* oracle, and each can be wrong. The order of authority:
1. **Accounting principles, stated as proofs.** The laws in
`docs/verification.md`, proved in Lean and model-checked by Kani. They
do not depend on any other implementation's behavior.
2. **Golden files recomputed by hand** from those principles (Layer 1).
3. **External oracles** (GnuCash, the Sheet, QBO/Xero exports). A
disagreement with one is a *finding*: work out from principles which
side is wrong and write the reasoning down. Never change our output just
to match theirs. If theirs is wrong, add a test that pins our correct
behavior, and note their bug in `docs/parity.md`.
Nothing in this repo may rest on an external oracle's behavior alone.
## The oracle layers (today → future)
**Layer 1 — Golden files (live now).** `tests/golden/*.json` hold
hand-verified expected reports for canonical fixtures. The golden test fails
@@ -53,16 +71,28 @@ always balances exactly), `fuzz_op_sequence` (arbitrary op sequences via
`arbitrary`; the trial balance always balances). 11.5M execs, zero crashes
as of 2026-10-10. Corpora persist in `fuzz/corpus/` for regression.
**Layer 5 — GnuCash diff harness (roadmap phase 3).** A `ledger-oracle` crate
will run fixture books through our engine and through GnuCash headless, then
diff `snapshot()` output automatically — `cargo xtask oracle`. This is the
direct analog of storytold's `cargo xtask corpus` / `oracle_diff`. Note the
distinction: GnuCash is the *behavioral* oracle, not a file-format target
**Layer 4½ — Formal proofs (live now).** The accounting arithmetic lives
in one generic kernel (`kernel.rs`). Kani model-checks it exhaustively
within bounds, Lean 4 proves the laws for books of any size (trial
balance, accounting equation, reversals, posted-is-forever, frozen closed
periods, closing to net income), and a property test bridges the two.
`just prove`; see `docs/verification.md`. Its first pass found three
engine bugs that Layers 1–4 had all missed.
**Layer 5 — Cross-implementation diff harness (roadmap phase 3).** A
`ledger-oracle` crate will run fixture books through our engine and through
other implementations (GnuCash headless first), then diff `snapshot()`
output automatically: `cargo xtask oracle`. This is the direct analog of
storytold's `cargo xtask corpus` / `oracle_diff`, with one difference: a
diff does not mean we are wrong. Each one is adjudicated from principles
(see "Who is right"). Note also: GnuCash is *a* behavioral cross-check, not
a file-format target
(Stephen: "for file format import/export I could not give a single shit
about GnuCash XML — QBO is all that matters"). The harness feeds fixtures to
GnuCash via whatever it imports reliably (QIF/OFX) or its Python bindings;
the exact mechanism is decided at implementation time. Until the harness
exists, Layers 1 and 2 are the oracle, and they are not optional.
the exact mechanism is decided at implementation time. The proofs and
Layers 1–4 are the foundation and are not optional. The harness adds
evidence. It never overrides them.
## What the oracle does NOT cover (yet)