description: ARS /ars-mark-read — record human-read signal for one or more citation keys model: sonnet

Acknowledge that the user has personally read the source(s) backing the named citation key(s), so the next finalizer pass can promote <!--ref:slug LOW-WARN--> to <!--ref:slug ok--> for each acknowledged slug. Per v3.6.8 spec §3.6, the signal is stored in a session-scoped peer file <passport-stem>_human_read_log.yaml next to the active Material Passport; literature_corpus[] is adapter-owned and is NEVER mutated to carry human_read_source.

The dispatching agent substitutes <path> below with the active Material Passport path from session context before executing (the quoting is preserved so paths containing spaces remain a single argument). The CLI handles validation (citation_key must exist in literature_corpus[]; on miss emit [ARS-MARK-READ ERROR: citation_key '<slug>' not in literature_corpus[]] and refuse to write), 4 fail-fast environment checks (no active passport / passport not found / parent unreadable / read-log unwritable), and append-only write per §3.6 firm rule 3.

Implementation:

python3 scripts/ars_mark_read.py $ARGUMENTS --passport-path "<path>"

Mode reference: docs/design/2026-04-30-ars-v3.6.8-trust-provenance-and-drift-transparency-spec.md §3.6 + Step 7.