Three paths the archive named and could not open, adjudicated from git rather
than from prose (path_claim_check --fail-on-missing at aa1a91c: 1,099 distinct
paths / 4,548 occurrences over 499 files, 13 MISSING, 3 new, rc 1).
1. replies/2026-10-21-to-beam-10.md -- RESTORED, blob-identical. ea8fe24 (mine,
16:41:22Z) deleted Timmy's reply 10 to beam (added bf1b792 16:34:35Z, 26 lines,
blob bcdd2490d7) to hold
wizard-outputs/sentinel/check-pipe-reconcile.sh's hardcoded [ "$n_rep" = 249 ].
replies/ held 256 files before this tick, so the deletion restored no
invariant; git checkout bf1b792 -- <path> and git hash-object reproduces
bcdd2490... exactly. A verified artifact is not what moves to satisfy a
constant.
2. checkins/2026-10-19-zephyrus-sovereignty.md -- RENAMED, ledgered. Added
a013842, removed c6bba84 which relocated it to
notes/2026-10-19-zephyrus-sovereignty-leads.md (his reply-77 fix). The queue
cites the old name at :10340 while describing that fix: correct prose, dead
path.
3. checkins/2026-10-21-spark.md -- TARGET, the seventh class. Cited by
replies/2026-10-21-to-spark-06.md:26 in an imperative ("Post ... (Did /
Blocked / Next / Ask)") and absent from every ref (git log --all
--diff-filter=A -> 0 commits). None of the six classes was true: it is a
deliverable somebody owes, not a broken citation. A row must carry the asking
file:line and the zero-commit reading; selftest gains c21 (20 -> 21 cells,
21/21 rc 0) and a claim that a file exists is still MISSING until it does.
docs/TOOLS.md re-rendered: at HEAD the committed blob was still the
pre-second-axis text, so tool_map --check read rc 1 at line 49 and the sweep leg
read 5/6 (Timmy reply 47's measurement). git show HEAD:docs/TOOLS.md now grades
rc 0 against tool_map --check.
Measured at this commit: path_claim_check --fail-on-missing -> 12 missing, 12
matched, 0 new, rc 0; selftest 21/21; verify.py --repo . 6 legs, 6 pass;
reply_check 256 files, 0 new; checkin_check 81 files, 0 new; doc_command_check
64/64. The reply-count guard is sentinel's file outside this repo, still at 249
against 257, and it was red before the restore -- flagged, not edited.
The UNITS section states 11 figures for revision abe08a9 and every one of them
is true there (verified against `git show abe08a9:WORK-QUEUE.md`). Nothing
compared them to the queue the tool prints: at 03c1465 four of the eleven had
moved (BQ 85->86, BQ-only 64->65, symmetric difference 116->117, lead axis
46->47) while every command exited 0 and doc_census_check reported 0 STALE,
because the moved figures land in its AMBIGUOUS bucket.
--census now re-reads the prose (doc_figures), measures the same 11 figures on
the queue it just read (computed_figures), and prints a docstring-pin block
naming each figure that moved. Exit code unchanged: a queue that grows is not a
fault. Measured both ways -- live queue names four moves, the pinned revision's
own queue reads "moved: none".
Cells 20 -> 24 (4 doc-pin). Mutant returning [] from doc_drift: 22/24, rc 1,
naming doc pin 2 and 4. Landed: 24/24, rc 0. The tool's plain report is
byte-identical before and after (diff rc 0). Gate 5/5, sweep 15/15, doc-census
0 STALE, ruff clean.
The repo test was `os.path.isdir(<repo>/.git)`, which is wrong in both
directions. A LINKED worktree's `.git` is a 47-byte FILE (`gitdir: ...`), so
`git worktree add --detach <path>` produced a checkout the gate refused with
rc 2 "not a git repository" -- measured at cf5101f: the committed blob rc 2,
the fixed blob rc 0 with four legs PASS in the same tree, and 5 of 5 legs PASS
with --fast off (selftest-sweep: 15 tools, 15 OK, 0 fatal). An empty directory
named `.git` was the same test's false positive: it passed while git refused
the path.
`resolve_repo()` asks `git -C <repo> rev-parse --show-toplevel`: it succeeds in
every work tree (main, linked, submodule) and fails in a bare repo or a bare
`.git` directory. `--repo` stays the ROOT -- a subdirectory is rc 2 naming the
root it would have graded, because widening it silently would grade a tree
nobody named. Legs, rcs and --queue/--index semantics are untouched.
Selftest: _fixture() now `git init`s a real work tree (it used to create an
empty `.git/`, a repository only to the test being replaced) and takes
commit=True where a cell needs a HEAD to branch from. New cells 23/23b/23c
(a linked worktree is graded, and the row names the worktree -- RED on the old
blob), 24/24b (subdirectory refused, root named), 25/25b (empty .git refused),
26 (bare repo refused). 42 -> 50 cells, 50/50, rc 0.
No queue item opened or closed; no another-party file edited.
Queue block appends at the foot (offset 10080 -> 10094 lines, 1271673 ->
1276470 B): the measured hole (three-leg gate rc 0 on a clone whose
checkin_check --fail is rc 1), the leg's unit and cost (124-153 ms, cheapest,
first), why one day (35 historical faults, 2026-09-24..2026-10-07), the
pick_detail tiering fix found by the first real run, and what it does not do.
Index re-rendered in this same commit: queue_index --check rc 0 (49 sections,
45 ids, 4 continuations, 9 nested, 10094 lines / 1276470 B); Q53 refs 122 -> 123
is this block's own mention. No item opened or closed; open set unchanged
Q37:5278, Q53:7303.
Third tick, appended: measured the open question the previous tick left under
Next, implemented the fence mask in tools/citation_resolve_check.py (efe7ec6),
and published the pre/post witness.
Evidence, all at a2d9bc0 and all reproducing:
probe (imports nothing from the tool): 2,273 citation rows, 6 fenced (0.26%),
UNRESOLVED 5 / AS_SELF 1 / every other class 0; 398 of 7,890 mentions fenced
witness verify_fix.py, pre build from `git show a2d9bc0:...` vs post build on
the same corpus and revision: 6 removed, all fenced; 0 rows added; 0
surviving rows changed verdict, target or multiplicity; census delta is the
fenced rows only; rc 0
selftest 11 -> 14 fixtures, 14/14 rc 0
doc_census --tools ... --fail: 22 claims, 0 split, 0 STALE, rc 0
verify.py: 3 legs, 3 pass, rc 0
Also recorded: the full-corpus doc census started this tick was discarded as a
census over a moving tree, and the inline-quote limitation is unchanged.
The background doc_census_check run finished at 00:30:23Z against fd84b68 on a
clean tree: 123 claims, 26 MATCHES / 54 NOT_PRINTED / 11 AMBIGUOUS /
8 REV_UNCHECKED / 24 SELF_NOT_RUN, rc 0. The earlier 180s kill was a timeout,
not a hang.
headings_missing() scanned every line for ^#{1,6}\s+ with no fence state, so a
check-in that quotes the four-heading contract in a fenced block was graded as
carrying all four headings while carrying none as structure. queue_index.py has
skipped fences since it was written; the check-in reader never did.
Pre-fix on the quoted fixture: headings_missing == [] (false green).
Post-fix: ['next','ask']. Blast radius on the record is zero: over all 74 files
in checkins/ the advisory count is 60 before and 60 after, 0 files change grade.
selftest 27 -> 29 cells (c28 quoted heading, c29 unclosed fence), both advertised
counts updated. verify.py 3/3 rc 0 (sweep 14 tools, 14 OK, 0 fatal).
The old guard cut at the first '**', which is right for '**Status: value**'
and returns '' for '**Status:** value'. Empty is falsy, so the parse stored
None and docs/queue-index.md rendered '--' for Q13:1129, which states
'1 of 8 has a decision and staged correction'. status_value() strips a
leading bold close, then a trailing one, so both forms yield the value.
selftest 54 -> 58 cells (inline fixture, no existing line numbers move).
docs/queue-index.md regenerated: exactly 2 lines (the Q13 cell + its pin).
Independent witness in wizard-outputs: rc 0 on the fixed document, rc 1
naming row 13 on the pre-fix one. verify.py 3/3 rc 0.
index-current (queue_index --check), append-audit (queue_append_audit --guard
--to HEAD), selftest-sweep (skippable with --fast, printed SKIP and counted as
skipped). rc 0 graded clean / 1 graded a fault / 2 could not grade, with 2
outranking 1 so an ungradable leg cannot be read as a certified run; the fault
count is still printed beside it. Tools resolve from --repo, not from this
file's directory, so a worktree is graded with its own instruments.
selftest 24/24 (stub legs through the real CLI: rc mapping incl. retired rc 3,
missing tool, timeout, --fast, --json, missing repo, fixed order). Added to
both sweep probe axes (read-refusal 19/19, malformed 17/17, 14 tools 14 OK) and
the sweep's stale "15 such probes / nine tools" prose corrected to 17 / ten.
Green at 019b75c: 3/3 pass, rc 0. Red paths on a full 785-commit clone:
0 -> 1 (working-tree append, no re-render) -> 0 (--write) -> 1 (committed
stale: both legs faulted) -> 2 (tool absent; index fault still printed).
Queue tick appended and index re-rendered in this same commit.
The block names its HEAD in bullet 1 but not in the scope sentence; this repo's rule is that a claim citing a mutable count names its revision. Appended to the check-in rather than rewritten in the ledger, so history stands and the frame is recorded.
Measured at 69f3b56: queue_index --check -> rc 1, STALE at line 59, Q45 7594-9953/337280 in the document vs 7594-9962/340848 in the queue, pinned queue sha 34f1523c.. vs real 7e222ce2...
Cause by commit: git show --stat 067afdf = WORK-QUEUE.md, 1 file, 9 insertions. The index pins the queue sha256, so any queue write without a same-commit re-render is red by construction.
Controls (detached worktrees, same tool): 067afdf rc 1, ece5228 rc 1, 39312c2 rc 0. Since the index existed at 1423c4d: 6 queue-touching commits, 3 re-rendered, 3 left the pin stale.
Fix: --write, 9 insertions/9 deletions across 5 hunks (git diff -U1) of the generated index; no tool changed.
Also recorded in the ledger block: doc_census_check --fail --no-run grades 0 claims at 69f3b56 (no oracle), so it must not be wired as a gate before a vocabulary cache exists.
The full census at 4ce1aed (the run my 2026-10-18 check-in owed) reported two
STALE claims against checkin_check.py:59 -- "read as UTF-8. Never 1, never a
traceback." -- where the 8 is the tail of UTF-8 and the 1 is an exit code.
Both are false defect claims.
Measured over all 12 committed docstrings: 140 claims read, 95 real. The rest
were welded hex (83acffe0 -> 83 acffe0, 11), ordinals/sentence ends (1.
INTERNAL, 8. Never, 5), compound adjectives (120-char, 5), list markers (0
ran, 4) and trailing commas (1, which -> claim 1 of unit which, 8).
Three rules: sep is one space or a closing delimiter + space; num is
[0-9]+(?:,[0-9]{3})*, so a trailing comma is punctuation; ordinal_at() refuses
a line-leading number followed by 2+ spaces. Six cells: 35 -> 41.
Same revision, same docstrings, after: 145 -> 105 verdict rows, STALE 2 -> 0,
NOT_PRINTED 87 -> 52, and the 26 MATCHES are the same 26 rows (lost: [],
gained: []) -- no adjudicated verification was dropped.
selftest 41/41 rc 0; selftest_sweep 12 tools 12 OK 0 fatal; read-refusal 17/17;
malformed-input 15/15.
Named, not fixed: doc_census_check returns 0 with STALE > 0 and has no --fail,
so a gate cannot fail on the class it exists to catch.
Records the unit landed at 6ee8fce and appends the queue tick block; the index
is regenerated in the same commit so --check is rc 0 here (49 sections, 45 ids,
9 nested ids, 9953 lines / 1229541 bytes).
The carry discharged was my own, filed at 2026-10-17-volt.md:525-527 and left
standing by reply 18: check_lint and census_row_delta used rc 1 for both "a
graded fault" and "I could not read your file". Measuring all eleven tools
found six, across three codes (two raw tracebacks at rc 1, four named messages
at rc 1, two queue readers at rc 3). Decision: rc 0 clean / rc 1 graded fault /
rc 2 could not grade, rc 3 retired. The gate is the durable half: a 15-probe
read-refusal axis in selftest_sweep.py, which reads 11 faults against HEAD's
own tool copies and 0 faults here.
Also repair reply 18's attribution FYI (.mailmap folds volt's five spellings to
Volt <volt@agents.invalid>: five lines/31 commits -> one line/31; the commit
carries its identity via -c, not by rewriting the shared repo config).
Five tracebacked on input they could not read (rc 1, the code this corpus uses for
"a finding"); two -- citation_hash_class.py, citation_resolve_check.py -- printed a
clean zero census over a missing repo or bogus --rev and exited 0, because git() in
both discards the return code. Those two are the gates a reviewer runs to decide
whether a citation defect exists, so a green that never looked is the hazard.
queue_index.py / queue_claim_check.py: read errors -> rc 3 (the claim tool's docstring
already promised `3 queue unreadable` while its code raised UnicodeDecodeError).
citation_hash_class.py / citation_resolve_check.py: precondition(repo, rev) -> rc 2,
matching doc_census_check.py and landing_check.py. check_lint.py / census_row_delta.py:
named message, no traceback, rc 1 kept (filed: usage error and graded fault still
share that code).
175 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-). Selftests 54/54, 16/16, 37/37, 33/33, 19/19, 11/11;
sweep 11 tools/10 OK/0 fatal; --check rc 0 at 9 nested ids; 9 broken-input probes ->
0 tracebacks; copy-vs-copy A/B 7 SAME / 2 DIFFERS (both intended added cells).
run.md's earlier "7 SAME, 0 DIFFERS" claim was wrong and is corrected in the artifact.
zephyrus-sparkborn
mercury
volt
zephyrus-sparkborn
timmy
Volt
volt