queue: Q53 (Mercury R5-a/R5-b) DONE at f30a243 -- both reply-06 residuals discharged and verified (R5-b finding restated as in-place checkpointing, R5-a digests graded Unrecovered); live census 121 = 1+115+5+0 reproduced; no decision; open set now Q37:5278 + career-lane Q53:7303

WORK-QUEUE.md

@@ -9863,3 +9863,15 @@ correction the control plane's 17:41Z tick returned against this lane.
 - **The systemic defect is bigger than one sentence: landed work is recorded `merged=false`.** Today's #76 joins #74, #75 (merge commits on `main`, provider flag false) and the hand-pushed #77 — four instances in which the forge cannot corroborate a landing because merges go in by push rather than through the API's merge. Any release accounting or risk count that keys on the provider's `merged` flag scores shipped work as abandoned. Two consequences: (a) the flag is evidence in neither direction — **ancestry is**, and it was checked here; (b) **six stale open PRs (#60–65, last touched 2026-08-22 → 08-27) age in the same limbo**, and #62 is the one place the idiomatic-negative table lives, with its `Closes #21` target closed on 10-15. Repairing the flow (merge through the API, or log the housekeeping close explicitly and idempotently) is a process call for Alexander; closing stale records is a repo-state change this lane will not make unsolicited.
 - **One carry still standing in an owning lane's file.** `tools/append_only_audit.py:41` continues to advertise `--selftest … 13 cells` while the selftest prints **18 cells / 18 passed**; the file is byte-unchanged (22,110 B / 475 lines) and reply 05 already flagged it — flag-not-fix, Volt's append. Discharged by their owners since the last tick: `tools/citation_hash_class.py` is now **412 lines / 20,675 B** with `:61` naming the revision ("Name the rev with the number"), closing the 21:54Z labelling nit; and `citation_resolve_check.py` no longer carries the `441` docstring figure.
 - **Nothing operational.** No queue item opened or closed; open set unchanged (Q37 `:5278`, career-lane Q53 `:7303`, Q53 `:8530`); no deploy path touched — page **9,865 B / `427b7b54…`**, snapshot **14,039 B / `aa842b0f…`**, pin **120 B / `5b6d7071…`**; `/tmp/q31-g8-deploy-*` **475**; disk 38 G free. No counterparty messaged: nothing of Vincent's moved and his route is dead (expired auth), and Praetorian's lane is `blocked_config`, where a request would fail silently. No secret printed; no another-party file edited.
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+---
+
+**Q53 — DONE at `f30a243` (Mercury's R5-a/R5-b, 2026-10-16). Both residuals from reply 06 §4 discharged and verified; the state.db pair is in-place checkpointing at constant size, not quiescence, and every digest is now graded. 2026-10-16 12:28Z (control plane; clock read immediately before this edit).**
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+- **Residual 2 (R5-b finding) — discharged.** His check-in now states exactly the corrected form reply 06 §4 required: no size change (state.db **4,095,447,040 B**, WAL **67,108,864 B** constant) with mtime/ctime advancing across the 12:00:09→12:03:42Z window and again post-window — *in-place rewriting / checkpointing at constant size, not quiescence*. Re-verified this tick: sizes exact, header bytes 18/19 `write_version 2 read_version 2`, mtime still advancing at constant size.
+- **Residual 1 (R5-a grade) — discharged.** Historical `41c8be74` (state.db) and `4a2d811b` (container log) graded **Unrecovered as to byte range**; fresh state.db `1f81539e…` (prefix 4,095,447,040) and WAL `263e5748…` (prefix 67,108,864) graded **Unrecovered by construction** — my re-reads at 12:22Z (`919460b4…` / `7806bf0a…`) differ, the moving-object class, confirming the grade.
+- **Live census reproduced to the row:** `alexanderwhitestone.com/stackchain/blocks/` 200 / 34,488 B, `<li id=` **121**, **1 corroborated + 115 documented + 5 testimony + 0 unrecovered**. Repo-state claim (head `92cda6a`) correct for his measurement instant. Grade **Documented**.
+- **Carry, Mercury's own "Next", not a closure condition:** the append of these corrections to `checkins/2026-10-15-mercury.md` — its line *"No change in size … this is the finding"* still stands there uncorrected and is now superseded by `2026-10-16-mercury.md`; the append is his to do if he wants the older file self-correcting.
+- Reply `replies/2026-10-16-to-mercury-07.md`. **No decision for Alexander.** Open set after this closure: Q37 `:5278`, career-lane Q53 `:7303` (held for Alexander). Queue not thin; no new item opened. Nothing from `inbox/` quoted; no another-party file edited; the uncommitted `tools/doc_census_check.py` working-tree change predates this tick and was left untouched.
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+— Timmy (control plane)