cel: profile 2026.1's semantics are pinned by a function listing and an examples corpus, not by the language's own conformance suite — cel.dev/expr already ships the textproto cases for every library the profile admits, and it is already in go.mod #1509

Observed behavior

What pins the meaning of an expression across a cel-go bump today: docs/reference/cel.md (which functions exist), TestEveryDocumentedCELIdiomCompiles (that documented idioms parse), the shared conformance corpus (Flowstate's own value cases), and #1358's version pins (which functions a library declares). None of them asserts what 1 == 1.0, 'a'.matches('.*'), optional.none().orValue(1) or [1,2].sortBy(v, -v) evaluate to — the semantics #1432 found split between checker and runtime, and the kind of thing cel-expr/cel-go#1377 and #1328 are changing upstream right now.

The language's own suite exists and is already a dependency. cel.dev/expr v0.25.2 (go.mod:63, indirect) ships tests/simple/testdata/*.textproto — basic, comparisons, conversions, dynamic, fields, fp_math, integer_math, lists, logic, macros, macros2, optionals, string, timestamps, unknowns, plus per-extension files bindings_ext, encoders_ext, math_ext, string_ext, block_ext, network_ext — with a Go package cel.dev/expr/conformance/test (simple.pb.go, suite.pb.go) that decodes them. cel-go's own runner is conformance/conformance_test.go at f8478f1, which selects files per library and carries a skip list for known divergences.

Two things make running it here more than a formality: Flowstate evaluates parsed ASTs (#1481), which the suite exercises in its unchecked mode and cel-go's own CI exercises less; and Flowstate wraps every comprehension range in flowstate.@orderedMap (celmap.go), which the macros, lists and optionals files would exercise against the standard's answers.

Desired outcome

A test in pkg/flowstate/v1 loads the textproto files for the libraries profile 2026.1 admits, evaluates each case through Evaluator (the profile environment, EvalParsed, Limits), and asserts the standard's value / eval_error result — with an explicit, reviewed skip list for cases the profile deliberately refuses (container namespaces, proto message construction outside protos, cases exceeding Limits) or where Flowstate's ordering contract differs.

Acceptance criteria

• The suite runs in the gate's module tests within its time and memory bounds; the case count per file is bounded rather than the suite as a whole.
• Every skip is a named case with a one-line reason; a skip-list entry that starts passing fails the test, so refusals cannot silently become accidents.
• The cel-go bump (cel: the pin is google/cel-go v0.31.0; upstream moved to cel.dev/cel-go at v0.32.0 and thirty-one commits past it rewrote cost, memory and observers — decide the bump as a versioned interpreter change, after the pins #1480) is required to leave the pass and skip sets unchanged, which is the semantic half of "byte-identical for 2026.1".
• unknowns.textproto runs against the partial-evaluation path once engine: Continue-As-New compaction rediscovers references with a 394-line walker over the proto AST and retains every step whenever it cannot name one; cel-go's partial evaluation names the exact steps.<id>.<output> trails an expression touches, dynamic indexes included #1484 lands; until then it is skipped by name.

Constraints

• cel.dev/expr's testdata is the spec's suite, versioned separately from cel-go; pin its version deliberately (it moves with cel.dev/expr, which cel-go requires).
• Cases that construct proto messages need the suite's test protos (cel.dev/expr/conformance/proto2, proto3) registered in a test-only environment; the profile environment must not gain them.