[aharvard]

Problem

GAP's intro pages are accurate but dense. A new reader meets profiles, ratification, authorization, approvals, rejections, withdrawal, dependency sets, and signatures at roughly equal weight, which makes the core hard to see. The lifecycle can also read as a state machine (draft → released → withdrawn), although GAP never changes a record; it adds new ones.

Changes

• Add GAP in five minutes (documentation/docs/intro/gap-in-five-minutes.md), placed after the Intro index in the sidebar. It builds up in layers, each complete on its own:
  • one sentence: a receipt showing this exact content, under this exact approved template, was released by someone allowed to release it;
  • five words: profile, version, authority, release, proof;
  • four rules: nothing is edited; every decision names exactly what it covers; only an authority can decide; the receiver can check the proof;
  • one move made twice: propose, then approve, once for the profile (ratification) and once for the content (authorization), mapped to the six lifecycle steps;
  • optional parts grouped apart from the core: approvals and rejections, withdrawal, dependencies, signatures;
  • records are added, never changed;
  • a software-release comparison (commit, signed tag, lockfile, yank), labeled as comparison rather than equivalence, with a pointer to Related work;
  • what a valid proof does not establish.
• Register the page's route and sidebar position in documentation/test/site-structure.test.ts.

This is a documentation-only change. It adds no protocol requirements and changes no schemas, digest domains, examples, or demo behavior.

Open question

The new page overlaps the Intro index and "What is GAP?". If it reads well, a follow-up could make it the Intro landing page or merge it with "What is GAP?" so there are fewer overview pages.

Verification

• pnpm docs:test (19/19 pass)
• pnpm --dir documentation typecheck
• pnpm docs:build
• DOCS_BASE_URL=/governed-artifact-protocol/ pnpm docs:build

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