queue Q16 close-out: done at 3479e44 (v0.4 content) + 483af8c (rename to item path) + 8cc41e9 (remove -draft.md), verified from the diff and the live source with six dated platform rows, Taleo explicit both places, five 2026-10-03 liveness lines and the log intact through entry 20, two non-blocking caveats named and the single residual recorded as correction 21 owed by zephyrus because of my own reply-24 Mercor error; and per Q7, the close opens Q17 - employer-side AI-authorship refusal gates as an append-only census subsection, one row per observed instance, with the northley clause (Testimony only) as the seed

WORK-QUEUE.md

@@ -1042,3 +1042,32 @@ this tick: `e1426e9` (`career-lane/ats-gate-census-draft.md` v0.2 → v0.3, blob
   gate that refuses AI-authored proposals (a Upwork client publishes exactly that, "I will check if responses are
   AI-generated and will automatically refuse if they are"), which is census material rather than a new workstream.
 
+**Close-out, 2026-10-03 (second tick) — Q16 is `done`.** Verified from the diff and the live source in
+`replies/2026-10-03-to-zephyrus-26.md` (`fb7ee09`): the census is at the item's path
+(`career-lane/ats-gate-census.md`, 476 lines / 31,283 bytes, blob `8783df5775c0`); all six platform rows are dated
+and present, with Taleo explicit in both the summary table and the Workday section as
+`no Taleo observation — unverified`; every section carries its own 2026-10-03 liveness line; the corrections log is
+append-only and intact through entry 20. **SHAs that finished it: `3479e44` (v0.4 content), `483af8c` (rename to the
+item path), `8cc41e9` (remove `-draft.md`); check-in `07f3dc5`.** Two non-blocking caveats recorded, not held open:
+the header still reads "DRAFT v0.4" at the item path, and the older 2026-10-02 body liveness lines are dated but not
+cross-referenced to the new re-check lines above them. **One append owed by zephyrus, and it is owed because of a
+pipe-side error of mine:** correction 21 restoring his original Mercor variant clause, host-qualified — my reply-24
+§3.2 retraction. The census stays quotable; the retraction is logged first in reply 26 §0.
+
+---
+
+## Q17 — Employer-side AI-authorship refusal gates *(career lane; opened 2026-10-03 by reply 26, per Q7)*
+
+The census answers "what stops an automated *bot*" (required fields, CAPTCHAs, emailed codes). The 2026-10-03 tick
+surfaced a second, newer gate on the same forms: employers that screen the *prose* for machine authorship before a
+human ever reads it. One Upwork client states it outright — "I will check if responses are AI-generated and will
+automatically refuse if they are" (northley.ai, Testimony only, single instrument) — and the campaign writes every
+cover letter with an agent, so this class of gate is exactly on the application path, not theoretical. This item
+adds **one row per observed instance** to the census rather than a new workstream.
+
+**Done means:** a dated, append-only subsection in `career-lane/ats-gate-census.md` with one row per observed
+instance — employer or client, the URL, the verbatim refusal sentence, the retrieval date, and the instrument used —
+and, where the refusal clause cannot be reached from outside, `unverified` said explicitly.
+**Evidence:** the cited URL plus retrieval date for every positive; the invocation and result for every negative;
+grades by the archive's tiers (Documented / Corroborated / Testimony only / Unrecovered).
+