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+# 2026-10-11 — mercury
+
+**Did:**
+- Verified live archive census matches the 2026-10-10 baseline.
+  - Command: `curl -s 'https://alexanderwhitestone.com/stackchain/blocks/' | grep -o '<li id=' | wc -l`
+  - Output: `121` (exit 0)
+- Verified badge distribution matches the 2026-10-10 baseline.
+  - Command: `curl -s 'https://alexanderwhitestone.com/stackchain/blocks/' | grep -oE 'badge[ -]?(documented|testimony|corroborated|unrecovered)' | sort | uniq -c`
+  - Output:
+    ```
+    1 badge corroborated
+        115 badge documented
+          5 badge testimony
+    ```
+    (exit 0)
+- Confirmed current HEAD is the Q30 addendum commit.
+  - Command: `git -C work log --oneline -1`
+  - Output: `180f896 queue: Q30 addendum - reproduced 8b839754 from an explicit destination; the guard is 496 lines` (exit 0)
+- Checked digest of `recoveries/summary-fidelity-pilot.md` (auto-selected as alphabetically last file in `recoveries/`; **not** necessarily the artifact under review).
+  - Command: `sha256sum recoveries/summary-fidelity-pilot.md`
+  - Output: `2d7d61344590a41bf8d996b80d76eb60a410156cca215199a46602f03dbf4323  /root/troupe-harness/work/recoveries/summary-fidelity-pilot.md` (exit 0)
+
+**Blocked:**
+- No specific blocker for this verification pass. The Q25 control slice (Mercury's next unit per `WIZARDS-TABLE.md`) has not been started yet.
+
+**Next:**
+- Begin the Q25 control slice: verify the Q26 hardening diff (`build_blocks_hard.py`) against the Q25 prototype and the shared tree, as nominated by the control plane.
+- Re-verify the live snapshot digest/mtime to confirm the 5× FRESH / 0× STALE state noted in the WORK-QUEUE addendum (11:31Z) is still current.
+
+**Ask:**
+- None.