Phase 0 follow-up — Pattern A migration (post-Pattern-C trailer strip
+ archive tag deletion).
Updates the public-facing explanation to match the post-strip state:
no more Co-authored-by trailers in commit messages, no more archive
tag on origin. The off-platform bundle remains as the canonical
pre-rewrite preservation record.
Why the change from Pattern C → A: the Co-authored-by trailers added
in the original rewrite caused GitHub to render the AI identities
(claude, cowork, certctl-bot, certctl-copilot, github-actions) as
co-author chips on every AI-touched commit AND count them in the
repo's contributor graph. Operator opted to clean the contributor
list. The legal posture (counsel-signed AI-authorship declaration in
cowork/legal/) is unchanged — only the git-history layer's
transparency signal was dialed back.
Bundle at cowork/legal/pre-rewrite-2026-05-13.bundle still preserves
the original history (all 14 author identities + un-stripped commit
messages) for any future forensic / diligence question.
Public-facing transparency artifact for the 2026-05-13 git-history
rewrite. Plain-language explanation of: what changed (uniform author
metadata to canonical operator identity + Co-authored-by trailers
preserving AI involvement), why (LLC ownership transfer to certctl LLC
+ pre-traction cleanup), what is preserved (archive tag +
off-platform bundle), how to recover a stale clone, and the operational
note that external PRs aren't accepted until a CLA workflow is set up.
The README pointer to this doc is intentionally omitted — the page is
discoverable via grep against the repo (`history-normalization`),
via the next CHANGELOG entry, and via any forensic observer who
notices the rewrite and grep-searches for an explanation.
Closes the public-transparency leg of Phase 0 (Path B2, Pattern C).
shankar0123