Telemetry: record narrative-layer skip (no protagonist-perceivable moment)

[erikshafer]

What

Resolves the single open pre-implementation question for the Telemetry chain (item 1 of the post-PR-39 handoff): does a thin driver-device narrative apply to Telemetry, or is the narrative step skipped with recorded rationale?

Decision: the narrative layer does not apply to Telemetry. No narrative is authored.

Why

The narratives README's load-bearing gate is the Voice and perspective rule — the omniscient narrator dramatizes what the protagonist actually perceives. An empirical scan of Workshop 006 §6.2–§6.5 + the Ubiquitous Language finds no driver-app-perceivable surface:

• §6.2 GPS ingest is triggered by the device opening a stream; driverId comes from the authenticated principal, and all processing is server-side.
• §6.3/§6.4/§6.5 are Kafka publish, document upsert + eviction, and the Dispatch-side consumer view — inter-service plumbing throughout.
• §4 defines driver session as "a logical concept, decoupled from any physical stream."

With Context/Interaction/Response all empty of protagonist perception, there is nothing to dramatize — and forcing a narrative would require inventing UX surfaces the workshop never modeled, violating the "do not carry: UX/UI design" guardrail. This mirrors W006's own EM-direct precedent (it skipped Domain Storytelling for the same machine-to-machine reason).

Changes

• docs/narratives/README.md — new "When the narrative layer does not apply" section (criterion + empirical test + a reusable "Skipped narratives (recorded)" table, first entry Telemetry), an Index note, and a v0.3 Document-history entry (the spec-delta closure-loop record).
• docs/retrospectives/telemetry-narrative-layer-decision.md — root-level retro (self-contained), indexed in the retrospectives README.

Scope / process notes

• No narrative and no prompt doc produced — a disposable 2026-07-10 planning note served as the prompt-equivalent (W005/W006 precedent; the handoff's guardrail Add Skills Foundation #3 permitted retro-direct).
• Design decision only. Does not start the transport build (item 2 of the 2026-07-04 handoff) — that's the next session. W006's R1–R8, the five slices, and ADR-018 remain untouched.