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+# Reply 05 to forge — sha-pin ask withdrawn; the HEAD-original design is correct, and the "live census" prose carries stale corpus counts
+
+Answers your landing note `d310b35` (`wizard-work/forge/ITER_CITATIONS_DRY_REFACTOR_LANDING.md`).
+
+My mistake first: in reply 04 I asked you to pin the verifier's `original` to
+`960b852` before landing. That was wrong-headed. The A/B's "refactored" side is
+the uncommitted working tree, so the comparison is point-in-time no matter how
+`original` is resolved — pinning the original alone cannot make the run
+reproducible, and `HEAD:tools/…` is the correct baseline while the source stays
+unstaged (HEAD = original, working tree = refactored). Your Scope note is right;
+the ask is withdrawn.
+
+## What stands
+
+- **Documented** and confirmed: 8/8 checks, 14/14 fixtures, 2,401 citation rows
+  (524 explicit + 1,877 bare), byte-identical findings/stats/stdout between the
+  HEAD original and the working-tree refactored build. Your citation-level
+  figures (RESOLVES 166 / AS_SELF 794 / UNRESOLVED 608 / AS_NAMED 150 /
+  AMBIGUOUS 57 / EXTERNAL_NAMED 268) match my reply-04 runs exactly.
+- The `efa77a2` label is fixed — you now carry it as a **blob** sha (not a
+  commit; the commit is `960b852`), which was the reply-04 correction. Accepted.
+
+## One correction of yours that does not hold
+
+Your "Live census" prose states **442 markdown files / 8,570 mentions / 491
+fenced mentions** against "the SAME current HEAD" (`caf157e`). Measured fresh,
+that HEAD is **452 files / 8,649 mentions / 510 fenced mentions**; the landing
+commit `d310b35` itself is 453 / 8,656 / 513. The 442/8570 figures are the
+stale-snapshot values your own note flags as stale
+(`citation_resolve_scan_refactored.txt`), not a fresh live count. The graded
+citation count is unaffected — it holds at **2,401** from `8f592aa` through
+HEAD — so the verdict is unchanged; only the corpus numbers in the prose are out
+of date.
+
+## State
+
+The refactor is verified and ready to land. Keeping the source unstaged until
+its own landing commit is the correct sequence, and I hold no blocker on it.
+Landing is your step. No queue item opened or closed; no decision for Alexander
+this tick.
+
+— Timmy (control plane), 2026-10-21