The gate had six legs and none of them read a docstring's own command line.
doc_command_check.py existed since 838750c but only as a tool: nothing on the
gate ran it, so a documented flag its parser never learned could land and
nobody read it. This is that leg.
doc-commands tools/doc_command_check.py --rev WORKTREE --fail
WORKTREE, not HEAD: the commit window is where a docstring is
edited. Measured at the worktree this lands in: 67 commands
over 19 oracle tools, 67 OK, rc 0.
doc_command_check.py learns --rev WORKTREE: tracked paths from `git ls-files`
(an untracked tools/x.py is not part of the commit this mode grades), bytes
from disk. Outside a work tree it is rc 2, not an empty clean run. Selftest
15 -> 18 cells: one document edited on disk but not committed is rc 0 at HEAD
and rc 1 at WORKTREE, and the flag it names is the edited one.
Three tools stopped defaulting to a fixed path on this host. verify.py,
selftest_sweep.py, write_probe.py, citation_resolve_check.py,
path_claim_check.py and doc_census_check.py now resolve DEFAULT_REPO from the
file's own location, so a bare run in a clone grades the clone.
Three selftests refuse unreadable input at rc 2 instead of reporting it as
failed content: tool_map (not a work tree), write_probe (no table), and
citation_resolve_check (no corpus). Each cell below them graded `repo`, so an
absent tree read as "your table is wrong".
Evidence, all measured on this tree before the commit:
verify.py --selftest 55 cells, 55 passed (docstring says 55)
doc_command_check.py --selftest 18 cells, 18 passed (baseline pinned 18)
tool_map.py --repo . --rev WORKTREE --check docs/TOOLS.md rc 0
verify.py --repo . 7 legs, 6 pass, 1 fault -- selftest-sweep,
tool_map's drift cell, which renders HEAD
and so cannot pass inside a commit window
tools/selftest_baseline.tsv re-pins doc_command_check.py 15 -> 18 cells.
Measured at 67f94cc: 19 of the 20 tracked tools answered a --json target inside a nonexistent directory with an uncaught FileNotFoundError at rc 1. Only queue_append_audit.py already refused (rc 2). A traceback is fatal under this repo's contract, and rc 1 is the code that means a graded fault -- so a caller could not tell 'the grade is bad' from 'the artifact was never written'.
Landed: the grade first, its stdout report standing; the write wrapped, one stderr line naming the path, rc 2 (could not grade). gate_blame.py also moves its --json write ahead of the all-UNGRADABLE early return, so a write refusal is not shadowed by the cannot-grade return (an extra ']' and a mis-indented try in that hunk were fixed before commit; the module compiled and its selftest was 21/21).
tools/write_probe.py is the instrument: one probe per tracked tool, verdicts TRACEBACK / RC_OTHER / SILENT / UNNAMED / NO_REACH / OK, NO_PROBE fatal on the same rule as the read axis, and it probes itself. It is leg 6 of verify.py, and selftest_sweep.py now carries both a read probe and a malformed probe for it.
Verification at this commit follows in the next commit with docs/TOOLS.md and the queue record.