diff --git a/wizard-work/ledger/CHECK-commit-census-2026-10-27 b/wizard-work/ledger/CHECK-commit-census-2026-10-27
index 018c992..68bf416 100755
--- a/wizard-work/ledger/CHECK-commit-census-2026-10-27
+++ b/wizard-work/ledger/CHECK-commit-census-2026-10-27
@@ -1,50 +1,61 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env bash
-# CHECK — verifier for the check-in census per-file extract (Extract lane).
-#
-# Exit 0 iff the committed TSV is byte-identical to an INDEPENDENT recompute
-# of `checkins/*.md` (README.md excluded) straight from the filesystem, using
-# only ls/sed/cut/sort/uniq/awk/wc (no Python, no shared extractor logic).
-# The source dir is static (files added per-day, never rewritten), so this
-# CHECK is stable across runs.
-#
-# Repo root is derived from this file's directory, so the CHECK runs from any
-# working directory and does not depend on a specific clone path.
-
+# CHECK — 2026-10-27 commit census (Extract lane).
+# Exits 0 iff the committed TSV re-derives field-for-field from `git log HEAD`.
+# The re-derivation is a separate git pass inside this script, so it cannot use
+# or rely on the extraction script's own Counter logic.
 set -u
 
 cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" || exit 1
-REPO_ROOT="$(cd ../.. && pwd)"
-SRC="$REPO_ROOT/checkins"
-OUT="$REPO_ROOT/wizard-work/ledger/checkin-census-2026-10-27.tsv"
+repo=/root/troupe-standup
+tsv=2026-10-27-commit-census.tsv
 
-test -s "$OUT" || { echo "FAIL: TSV missing or empty: $OUT" >&2; exit 1; }
+# Snapshot head at capture time (before this artifact's own commits landed).
+PINNED=ca3e13d328dfac3f06a98ef2423c37c36c7c4a5e
+test -d "$repo" || { echo "FAIL: repo $repo missing"; exit 1; }
+git -C "$repo" rev-parse --verify "$PINNED" >/dev/null 2>&1 \
+  || { echo "FAIL: pinned $PINNED not found"; exit 1; }
 
-tmp="$(mktemp)"
-trap 'rm -f "$tmp"' EXIT
+[ -f "$tsv" ] || { echo "FAIL: $tsv missing"; exit 1; }
 
-{
-  echo "date,wizard,size"
-  for f in "$SRC"/*.md; do
-    [ -e "$f" ] || continue
-    n=$(basename "$f" .md)
-    [ "$n" = "README" ] && continue
-    date=${n:0:10}
-    rest=${n:11}
-    rest=${rest%-[0-9]*}
-    echo "$date,$rest,${n},$(wc -c < "$f")"
-  done | sort -t, -k2,2 -k1,1
-  n="$(
-    ls "$SRC"/*.md 2>/dev/null | grep -v 'README\.md$' | wc -l
-  )"
-  b="$(find "$SRC" -type f ! -name 'README.md' -printf '%s\n' | awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}')"
-  echo "TOTAL,$n,$b"
-} > "$tmp"
+# Independent re-derivation straight from the pinned HEAD, not from HEAD itself.
+expected=$(git -C "$repo" log --date=short --pretty=format:%ad "$PINNED" | awk 'NF' \
+  | sort | uniq -c | sort -k2)
 
-if cmp -s "$OUT" "$tmp"; then
-  echo "PASS: rows=$(tail -n +2 "$OUT" | grep -c .) (per-file checkin rows + TOTAL) recomputed from $SRC"
+fail=0
+
+# Per-row comparison: date (field 2 of expected) vs count (field 2 of TSV).
+while IFS=$'\t' read -r d c; do
+  [ -z "${d:-}" ] && continue
+  case "$d" in date|TOTAL) continue;; esac
+  exp=$(printf '%s\n' "$expected" | awk -v d="$d" '$2==d {print $1}')
+  if [ "${exp:-}" != "$c" ]; then
+    echo "FAIL: $d expected $exp, got $c"
+    fail=1
+  fi
+done < "$tsv"
+
+# Total comparison.
+exp_total=$(printf '%s\n' "$expected" | awk '{s+=$1} END {print s+0}')
+act_total=$(awk -F'\t' 'NR>1 && $1!="TOTAL" {s+=$2} END {print s+0}' "$tsv")
+if [ "$exp_total" != "$act_total" ]; then
+  echo "FAIL: total expected $exp_total, got $act_total"
+  fail=1
+fi
+
+# No missing rows.
+missing=$(comm -23 \
+  <(printf '%s\n' "$expected" | awk '{print $2}' | sort) \
+  <(awk -F'\t' 'NR>1 && $1!="TOTAL" {print $1}' "$tsv" | sort) | tr '\n' ' ')
+if [ -n "${missing:-}" ]; then
+  echo "FAIL: rows missing from table: $missing"
+  fail=1
+fi
+
+if [ "$fail" -eq 0 ]; then
+  n=$(awk -F'\t' 'NR>1 && $1!="TOTAL" {n++} END {print n+0}' "$tsv")
+  echo "PASS: 2026-10-27 commit census verified ($act_total commits, $n rows)"
   exit 0
 fi
 
-echo "FAIL: census mismatch against independent recompute" >&2
-diff -u "$OUT" "$tmp" >&2 || true
+echo "CHECK FAIL" >&2
 exit 1