diff --git a/.verify-floor.json b/.verify-floor.json
index 48941ac..134d03c 100644
--- a/.verify-floor.json
+++ b/.verify-floor.json
@@ -4,6 +4,6 @@
  "skipped_max": 26,
  "selftest_skipped_max": 7,
  "gate_skipped_max": 2,
- "note": "Recorded by verify.py --update-floor, except the *_max ceilings, which are edited BY HAND and never re-measured. `collected` catches tests that stopped being collected; `passed` is compared against passed+skipped, so a check may move between passing and consciously-skipped but the two together may never shrink. The *_max ceilings bound the skipped side: 24/7/2 is exactly what a machine with none of this instance's local prerequisites skips (a GitHub runner: no agent CLIs, no ~/.codex/skills, no /Applications/ChatGPT.app, no populated capability ledger), measured 2026-08-21. On the owner's machine all prerequisites exist and nothing skips at all. Raising a ceiling is a deliberate act: it means agreeing that one more thing is allowed to go unchecked, so say which and why in the commit. LOWERED 26 -> 24 on 2026-08-22, reverting the raise made earlier the same day. The two kill-switch exemption tests no longer need to skip on a bare runner: their declarations moved out of the running instance's ledger and into capabilities.KNOWN_DECLARATIONS, so they assert code-derived truth and run everywhere. Moving a test back below the ceiling is the preferred way to lower it -- fix what made it machine-dependent, rather than agreeing to check less. FLOOR 345 -> 353 on 2026-08-22: 345 was measured on a branch cut before #13 (research panels/rounds/domain studies) merged, so the recorded floor sat 8 tests BELOW what main actually collects. A floor below reality is the permissive direction -- those 8 could have silently stopped being collected and still cleared the check, which is exactly the hole this file exists to close. Measure the floor on the merge result, not on the branch. Raised again on 2026-08-22 by the producer-identity-scope branch, which adds tests on top of the 353 recorded by #15; re-measured after rebasing rather than assumed. NOTE: `verify.py --update-floor` REPLACES this note with a generic one, so it must be restored by hand after every use \u2014 the ceiling rationale is the only record of which prerequisite justifies each skip. FLOOR 365 -> 366 on 2026-08-22 (heartbeat-ordering work, PR #18): exactly one new test, test_capabilities.test_no_tick_producer_runs_above_the_heartbeat_export. No ceiling moved and nothing new is skipped -- it reads source files rather than a populated ledger, so it runs on any machine. The branch recorded 354 because it was cut before #16 merged; re-measured on the MERGE RESULT per the rule above, which is exactly the mistake that put the floor 8 below reality last time. FLOOR 366 -> 368 on 2026-08-23: main collected 368 while this file recorded 366, drift left by #34 (evidence-acquisition landed, +1) and #37 (tick capability evidence, +1) whose authors each measured against a branch cut before the other merged. A floor BELOW reality is the permissive direction this file exists to close -- those two could have silently stopped being collected and still cleared the check. Measured on the merge result per the rule above: 368 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, 83/83 selftests, 43/43 can-fire, 5/5 gates. CEILING 24 -> 26 and FLOOR 368 -> 387 on 2026-08-23 (profiles/provenance branch, PR #42). This file CONFLICTED with #50, which raised the floor 366 -> 368 on main while this branch raised it to 387; resolved as the UNION rather than by taking a side -- #50's rationale is retained above and the count was RE-MEASURED on the new merge result instead of keeping either number. 368 (main) + 19 (this branch's net new tests) = 387; #50 corrected recorded drift rather than adding coverage, which is why 387 is unchanged from the pre-conflict measurement. Measured in a runner sandbox reproducing CI exactly (361 passed, 26 skipped, 387 collected) AND on the owner's machine (387 passed, 0 skipped, 5/5 gates). The two new skips are drift detectors against a REAL installed agent runtime, so neither can be moved below the ceiling -- the preferred way to lower one: (1) agy advertised-models cache absent, since comparing declared model ids against the catalogue agy actually advertises needs that catalogue, and a fixture would exercise the comparison while detecting no real drift; (2) vibe config absent (~/.vibe/config.toml), since active_model cannot be read to check for drift when there is no config to read. Both name their missing prerequisite, so a green run still states what it did not check. A third candidate skip was REFUSED: dispatcher's per-run agy-log assertion failed on a bare runner because adapters.advertised_models shells out to `agy models` when its disk cache is cold, and that probe landed inside a monkeypatched subprocess.run and overwrote the captured command. That is a stub leak, so it was fixed by ISOLATING the double rather than by skipping -- which makes CI run MORE. FLOOR 387 -> 391 on 2026-08-23 (improvement-log accessor, PR #59): exactly four new tests, all in test_improvement_log.py -- three read tracked files in the tree (the pointer's size and content, and that CLAUDE.md 0 step 3 and 5 name the accessor rather than a bare path) and one runs the accessor as a subprocess against a path that cannot exist. None reads a populated ledger, an agent CLI or ~/.codex, so all four RUN on a bare runner and NO ceiling moved: nothing new is skipped. Measured on the MERGE RESULT after rebasing onto origin/main af6654d, which collected 387 -- not on the branch base, per the rule above. FLOOR 391 -> 402 on 2026-08-23 (Gate python-ci configuration, the PR that adds the missing .github/workflows/autofix-versions.env): exactly 11 new tests, all in test_ci_gate_config.py, which read committed files only -- the pin file, ruff.toml, mypy.ini, pr-00-gate.yml's toggle annotations and docs/CI_LINT_BASELINE.md. NO ceiling moved. On any CHECKOUT -- CI, the owner's tree, a second instance -- all 11 run: they need no installed linter and no populated ledger. In the EXEC-MIRROR layout all 11 skip with one named reason, because orch-sync-mirror.sh copies root-level *.py only, so .github/workflows, docs/ and scripts/ are genuinely absent there (env_prereq.repo_files_absent). That lands at 11/26 on a machine that otherwise skips nothing, and CI stays at 26/26, so no ceiling needed raising. The skip gate is the presence of those DIRECTORIES, never of the pin file itself -- gating on the file would have made the test that checks for it unable to fail. Measured on the merge result, twice: the branch was rebuilt on origin/main after #42 and #59 merged, and re-measured after #61 merged and was merged in -- 393 passed + 9 skipped = 402 collected both times, so #61 added no collected tests and this floor is not sitting below reality. #61 itself left main's floor at 391, which is exactly main-without-these-11, so there is no inherited drift to correct. RULE CHANGE 2026-08-23: `collected` is now an EQUALITY, not a minimum. Every floor entry above this one records the number being found BELOW reality and hand-raised after the fact -- 21 low at the worst, then 8, then 1, then 2 -- because nothing ever required a test-adding PR to touch this file, so the permissive direction was silent by construction and the rule 'measure on the merge result' had to be restated three times with nothing enforcing it. verify.py now FAILS when collected exceeds the floor, printing the two integers to write. That also makes the concurrency case self-enforcing: once every test-adding branch must edit these same two lines, two concurrent branches CONFLICT IN GIT, so the second cannot merge without rebasing onto the first and re-measuring on the actual merge result. Demonstrated repeatedly on the change itself: six merges landed on main in the two hours it took to write, moving this file 368 -> 387 -> 391 -> 402, and every one would have left the floor below reality under the old one-directional rule. `passed` deliberately stays a MINIMUM on passed+skipped: only collection is machine-invariant (a skipped test is still collected), measured across machines at 391 collected on both, with pass/skip splits of 365/26 on CI against 391/0 locally. The *_max ceilings are untouched by this change and nothing new is skipped. `--update-floor` also stops REPLACING this note -- it appends -- so the warning above about restoring it by hand no longer applies; and drift does NOT block --update-floor, since a gate that forbade its own only remedy would be a deadlock (the first draft was exactly that). FLOOR 402 -> 407 on 2026-08-23 (findability admission requirement). (findability admission requirement). (findability admission requirement). (findability admission requirement). Exactly five new pytest tests, all in test_capability_admission.py: test_findability_distinguishes_its_three_sub_causes, test_findability_blocks_new_capabilities_and_reports_older_ones_as_debt, test_unreadable_reach_is_not_evaluated_and_never_a_failure, test_findability_exemption_is_declared_in_code_not_in_a_live_ledger, test_consult_sites_are_falsifiable_claims_about_real_callers. NO CEILING MOVED and nothing new skips: all five build synthetic ledgers in a tempdir or read committed tables, so none needs a populated capability ledger, an agent CLI or ~/.claude/skills. The one machine-dependent thing they touch -- an external consult site declared in capability_advisor.CONSULT_SITES whose skill prompt is not on this machine -- is reported as UNVERIFIED rather than skipped, because absence of the caller is not refutation of the claim; the in-tree site (tick) is asserted verified on every machine so the check can never degrade into 'everything unverified, nothing tested'. Measured on the merge result per the rule above: this file CONFLICTED three times while the branch was open, as main went 387 -> 391 -> 402 (#61, #64, #65, #60). Each time it was resolved as the UNION rather than by taking a side, and the count was RE-MEASURED on the new merge result rather than either number being carried forward: 402 (main at bd6da2e) + 5 (this branch's new tests) = 407. That is the rule this file already states -- measure the floor on the merge result, not on the branch -- and it mattered here, because #60 both deleted test_ci_gate_config.py and added more than it removed, so guessing in either direction would have been wrong. -> re-measured on 2026-08-23 (PR #62, the four deferred #42 review findings): three new tests, all machine-independent (each builds its own tmp_path Brain and manifests), so NO CEILING MOVED and nothing new is skipped. Fourth conflict for this branch, and the first one under the EQUALITY -- which is the point: the equality's own rationale says git conflict detection is what enforces 'measure on the merge result', and that is exactly what happened here. Under the old minimum the three earlier conflicts could each have been resolved by keeping the larger number; under the equality the count MUST be measured, and it was. RESOLVED AGAINST #68 (findability admission requirement) on 2026-08-23: taken as the UNION per the rule this file states -- #68's five-test entry is retained above and this branch's three-test entry beside it -- and the count RE-MEASURED on the merge result rather than keeping either side's number. main fc1fd42 collects 407; this branch adds 3; 410 measured with `pytest --collect-only -q` on the merge result, not assumed. Ceilings untouched at 26/7/2 and nothing new is skipped. Also resolved in the same merge: langsmith-fleet-worker-attempt.json, a CI-emitted `langsmith-fleet/v1` worker-attempt record whose two sides differed only in `emitted_at` and `pr_number` (62 here, 68 on main). Main's NEWER record was kept rather than this branch's older one -- discarding a newer provenance observation to win a merge would corrupt exactly the causal-provenance evidence CLAUDE.md 2 protects, and this branch's own run re-emits its record anyway. FLOOR 410 -> 411 on 2026-08-23 (CodeRabbit follow-up on PR #42, thread 3837879039; re-measured again after #56 made `collected` an EQUALITY, which makes an assumed number a hard RED rather than a quiet pass -- main stayed at 402 across #56, and the merge result measures 403, so #56 added no collected tests and this is main's 402 plus this branch's one): exactly one new test, test_feedback_model_provenance.test_late_sweep_completes_terminal_attempts_never_one_in_flight, which pins that ledger_reconcile.resolve_unresolved_worker_attempts completes only TERMINAL unresolved worker attempts and never one still in flight. No ceiling moved and nothing new is skipped -- the test builds its own tmp ledger and codex rollout fixture and monkeypatches adapters.CODEX_SESSIONS, so it needs no agent CLI and no populated capability ledger and runs on a bare runner. RESOLVED AGAINST #59 (improvement-log accessor), which raised the floor 387 -> 391 on main while this branch raised it to 388: taken as the UNION -- #59's rationale is retained above and the count was RE-MEASURED on the new merge result rather than keeping either number, which is the rule this file states and the mistake that once put the floor 8 below reality. 391 (main, incl. #59's four tests) + 1 (this branch's one new test) = 392 measured, not assumed: 392 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, 83/83 selftests, 43/43 can-fire, 5/5 gates. Three sibling follow-up branches are in flight against this same main (CI/ruff config, arm-attribution + durability, adapters label->ID); if this file conflicts with one of them, resolve as the UNION and RE-MEASURE on the new merge result rather than taking either number -- that is what #42 and #50 did, and taking a side is what put the floor 8 below reality earlier. RESOLVED AGAINST #68 (findability admission requirement) on 2026-08-23: taken as the UNION per the rule this file states -- #68's five-test entry is retained above and this branch's one-test entry beside it -- and the count RE-MEASURED on the merge result. main fc1fd42 collects 407; this branch adds 1; 408 measured with `pytest --collect-only -q` on the merge result, not assumed. Ceilings untouched at 26/7/2 and nothing new is skipped -- the one new test builds its own tmp ledger and codex rollout fixture, so it runs on a bare runner. Also resolved in the same merge: langsmith-fleet-worker-attempt.json, a CI-emitted `langsmith-fleet/v1` worker-attempt record differing only in `emitted_at` and `pr_number`; main's NEWER record was kept, since discarding a newer provenance observation to win a merge would corrupt the causal-provenance evidence CLAUDE.md 2 protects. FLOOR 411 -> 415 on 2026-08-23 (PR #70 diagnostics salvage): four new collected tests in test_capability_set_coverage.py from the PR #43 salvage plus CodeRabbit follow-ups on PR #51/#70 \u2014 union/missing-candidate fetch command, truncation after six modules, AST-scoped gate-call audit, and entrypoint-diagnosis coverage. NO CEILING MOVED and nothing new is skipped; all inject synthetic ledgers or read committed source. Measured on the merge result at 91d37fa: 389 passed + 26 skipped = 415 collected on CI, not assumed. FLOOR 415 -> 416 on 2026-08-23 (the dangling-citation follow-up, PR #74): exactly ONE new test, test_ci_gate_config.test_every_cited_repo_path_resolves, which reads the two committed config files this repo OWNS (the pin file and ruff.toml) and asserts every repo-relative path they cite exists. It exists because the pin file shipped citing docs/ci/LINT_BASELINE.md when the real path was docs/CI_LINT_BASELINE.md: the sibling checks read that file's CONTENTS thoroughly and its PROSE not at all, and the prose is the only pointer telling a reader where to re-measure before bumping a pin. Scoped to the two owned files deliberately -- scanning pr-00-gate.yml yields six findings that are all correct as written (guarded by hashFiles or a .agents check, or upstream paths), and a test that cries wolf gets waived. NO ceiling moved. RE-MEASURED SIX TIMES as the base moved under this ONE-LINE change: bd6da2e 402 -> ddb0928 402 -> fc1fd42 407 -> 0d661e3 407 -> 0593eeb 411 -> 6fed4ad 415, each +1 with this test, and the branch was rebuilt on each rather than the number carried forward. THIS BRANCH IS THE WORKED EXAMPLE of the equality's concurrency cost, so record it rather than rediscover it: main moved EIGHT times in the ~2.5 hours a one-line comment fix was open (#56, #68, #73, #69, #62, #70 and two direct commits), the floor line conflicted THREE separate times, and two merges overlapped the change directly -- #73 landed a byte-identical copy of the backplane-conformance.yml guard this branch also carried (dropped as redundant), and #69 edited this very test file in a neighbouring region. The equality is still the right call and should stay: every entry above this one records the floor being found BELOW reality, which is the permissive direction. But no amount of author care wins this race, because the correct value is only knowable on the merge result. The durable fix is CI running `verify.py --update-floor` on the merge commit, which keeps the equality and removes the race; until then a test-adding PR must be merged promptly after going green, because it re-conflicts on roughly every subsequent merge. FLOOR 416 -> 427 on 2026-08-23 (PR #72 hygiene untrack, rebased after #71 merged): exactly 11 new tests from test_repo_artifact_hygiene.py with root-anchored gitignore patterns. NO ceiling moved. Measured on merge result after #71 landed on main: 416 (main) + 11 = 427 collected via pytest --collect-only -q, not assumed. #71's simpler untrack landed first; this branch carries the full hygiene test suite and corrected root-anchored patterns. FLOOR 427 -> 428 on 2026-08-23 (PR salvaging #34/#42 remnants): exactly one new test, test_feedback_model_provenance.test_gemini_provenance_reads_the_per_run_log_before_the_conversation_store, recovered from #42's post-merge commit 4e0d6ae along with the adapters catalog work it exercises. No ceiling moved and nothing new is skipped -- it seeds adapters._ADVERTISED_MEMO instead of letting the catalog probe shell out, so it runs on any machine and adds no prerequisite. `passed` is 428 rather than the 426 verify.py suggested on this machine: two test_capabilities liveness tests (test_gate_blocks_execution_is_opt_in_and_narrow, test_evidence_gate_kind_is_not_blanket_observer) currently fail HERE on pristine main as well, because the hourly fleet tick mutated the machine-local ledger and range-lane-rollout now classifies matched_not_invoked rather than deliberately_gated. That is ledger STATE, not this branch and not the code -- CI bootstraps an empty ledger and counts 428/428. Recording 426 would have baked a local environment failure into the floor as though it were the expected result. FLOOR 428 -> 441 on 2026-08-23 (coverage measures what actually runs): exactly 12 new tests, all in test_verify_coverage_mode.py. They read committed files and verify.py's own source, and monkeypatch verify.COVERAGE in-process -- no populated ledger, no agent CLI, no ~/.codex, and no coverage RUN -- so all 12 execute on any machine and NO ceiling moved. The change itself is a measurement fix, not a gate: `verify.py --coverage` wraps each child in `coverage run --parallel-mode` and combines, because the per-module --selftest is a SUBPROCESS and a pytest-only coverage run cannot see it. That blind spot was most of the codebase -- 78 modules have no test_*.py at all, ~85,500 lines, 79.6% of non-test root Python -- so the reported 48.45% was measuring the gap in the instrument, not a gap in the tests. Combined: 76.1% (45,049 statements, 10,774 missed). Twelve of the twelve modules the old report named as worst were selftest-only; outcomes.py reported 9.0% and measures 61.9%, watch.py 9.6% -> 86.9%. Coverage is OFF by default and deliberately never touches the exit code -- one of the 12 tests pins that, because enforcing a threshold here would reward pytest wrappers around already-tested modules: metric up, assurance flat. Measured on the MERGE RESULT: branched from origin/main bcc68cd (floor 427), then REBASED onto f5f1c39 when it landed underneath and re-measured on the new merge result rather than carrying the old number: 428 + 13 = 441. +1 on 2026-08-23 (440 -> 441 after the rebase), same branch: test_the_cli_help_actually_renders. It exists because this branch BROKE `verify.py --help` and its own twelve tests did not notice. argparse interpolates help strings with `% params`, so the literal `~80%` in the --coverage help was read as an `%o` octal conversion and --help died with 'badly formed help string'. All twelve original tests passed: every one inspected source text or monkeypatched a flag, and not one RENDERED the help -- a construction-time test suite that never exercised the constructed thing, which is this repo's founding defect one layer up. CI's verify.py gate caught it, which is the check of last resort working as intended. The new test runs `verify.py --help` as a subprocess and asserts it exits 0, so it runs anywhere and NO ceiling moved. Rendering rather than grepping for `%` is deliberate: a grep would flag the legitimate `%(default)s`. FLOOR 441 -> 442 on 2026-08-23 (matched_not_invoked yields to observers and declared gates): exactly one new test, test_capabilities.test_matched_not_invoked_yields_to_observers_and_declared_gates. It is SYNTHETIC on purpose and that is the point of it: the two tests that caught this bug in the wild read the LIVE ledger, so they skipped with a named reason on the empty ledger ci.yml bootstraps -- the defect was red on every populated machine and green on CI for as long as it existed. A synthetic row asks the same question everywhere, so this one RUNS on a bare runner and NO ceiling moved. The fix itself moves matched_not_invoked below `observing` and below the DECLARED deliberately_gated check in classify_liveness: it was the first check, which made it the fourth instance of the unescapable label the comments in that function exist to fix. Audited before committing -- 12 of 43 live rows reclassify (ten observers to observing, two declared gates to deliberately_gated) and ZERO move for any other reason, so nothing is reclassified by inference and the weaker gate_reason-only branch is untouched. Measured on origin/main 0d9c3a7, whose recorded floor is 441, so 441 + 1 = 442. FLOOR RECORDED by verify.py --update-floor on 2026-08-23: collected=442, passed=442. Ceilings preserved, never re-measured \u2014 they are edited by hand. FLOOR RECORDED by verify.py --update-floor on 2026-08-24: collected=442, passed=442. Ceilings preserved, never re-measured \u2014 they are edited by hand. FLOOR RECORDED by verify.py --update-floor on 2026-08-24: collected=442, passed=442. Ceilings preserved, never re-measured \u2014 they are edited by hand. MYPY_EXEMPT_MAX introduced at 64 on 2026-08-23, the same change that flipped `typecheck` ON in pr-00-gate.yml. It was OFF because 608 whole-tree errors were drainable 0 per PR -- a gate whose clear path is blocked by the thing it measures. Two real changes opened it: the src/ move scoped the Gate's `target=src` to the 99 modules (608 -> 467), and pyproject.toml's [[tool.mypy.overrides]] exempts the modules that still have findings BY NAME so the 35 already-clean ones are checked today. 12 var-annotated findings were then drained (467 -> 455, 66 -> 64 modules) to prove the drain works rather than promise it. This ceiling may only ever be LOWERED, by typing a module and deleting its line -- raising it means agreeing one more module goes unchecked, so say which and why. NOT a suppression: no error code is disabled anywhere and the 455 stay visible via `python3 scripts/ci_lint_baseline.py`. Edited BY HAND like the other *_max values; --update-floor never re-measures it. MYPY_EXEMPT_MAX LOWERED 64 -> 43 on 2026-08-24, the ratchet's first real drain: 21 modules typed clean and removed from the exempt list, 455 -> 430 findings. Targeted the modules with 1-3 errors on purpose -- fixing 50 errors spread across the big modules would move this number by ZERO, and this number is what the gate reads. Lowering it is the drain; it may never be raised without naming the module and why. MYPY_EXEMPT_MAX LOWERED 43 -> 33 on 2026-08-24 (batch 2 of the drain): the whole <=5-finding tail typed clean. 66 of 99 modules now checked. What remains is five per-module campaigns (capability_advisor, dispatcher, capability_propensity, runtime_ac_gate, capabilities hold most of it), so future batches take ONE big module at a time rather than skimming. (batch 2 detail: 43 -> 26, 430 -> 374 findings, 73 of 99 modules checked. `mypy_path` gained `tests` so mypy can RESOLVE the recurrence-fixture roster capability_admission legitimately imports; the target stays `src`, but mypy then follows into that one test file, whose two findings were fixed rather than configured around.)",
- "mypy_exempt_max": 26
+ "note": "Recorded by verify.py --update-floor, except the *_max ceilings, which are edited BY HAND and never re-measured. `collected` catches tests that stopped being collected; `passed` is compared against passed+skipped, so a check may move between passing and consciously-skipped but the two together may never shrink. The *_max ceilings bound the skipped side: 24/7/2 is exactly what a machine with none of this instance's local prerequisites skips (a GitHub runner: no agent CLIs, no ~/.codex/skills, no /Applications/ChatGPT.app, no populated capability ledger), measured 2026-08-21. On the owner's machine all prerequisites exist and nothing skips at all. Raising a ceiling is a deliberate act: it means agreeing that one more thing is allowed to go unchecked, so say which and why in the commit. LOWERED 26 -> 24 on 2026-08-22, reverting the raise made earlier the same day. The two kill-switch exemption tests no longer need to skip on a bare runner: their declarations moved out of the running instance's ledger and into capabilities.KNOWN_DECLARATIONS, so they assert code-derived truth and run everywhere. Moving a test back below the ceiling is the preferred way to lower it -- fix what made it machine-dependent, rather than agreeing to check less. FLOOR 345 -> 353 on 2026-08-22: 345 was measured on a branch cut before #13 (research panels/rounds/domain studies) merged, so the recorded floor sat 8 tests BELOW what main actually collects. A floor below reality is the permissive direction -- those 8 could have silently stopped being collected and still cleared the check, which is exactly the hole this file exists to close. Measure the floor on the merge result, not on the branch. Raised again on 2026-08-22 by the producer-identity-scope branch, which adds tests on top of the 353 recorded by #15; re-measured after rebasing rather than assumed. NOTE: `verify.py --update-floor` REPLACES this note with a generic one, so it must be restored by hand after every use \u2014 the ceiling rationale is the only record of which prerequisite justifies each skip. FLOOR 365 -> 366 on 2026-08-22 (heartbeat-ordering work, PR #18): exactly one new test, test_capabilities.test_no_tick_producer_runs_above_the_heartbeat_export. No ceiling moved and nothing new is skipped -- it reads source files rather than a populated ledger, so it runs on any machine. The branch recorded 354 because it was cut before #16 merged; re-measured on the MERGE RESULT per the rule above, which is exactly the mistake that put the floor 8 below reality last time. FLOOR 366 -> 368 on 2026-08-23: main collected 368 while this file recorded 366, drift left by #34 (evidence-acquisition landed, +1) and #37 (tick capability evidence, +1) whose authors each measured against a branch cut before the other merged. A floor BELOW reality is the permissive direction this file exists to close -- those two could have silently stopped being collected and still cleared the check. Measured on the merge result per the rule above: 368 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, 83/83 selftests, 43/43 can-fire, 5/5 gates. CEILING 24 -> 26 and FLOOR 368 -> 387 on 2026-08-23 (profiles/provenance branch, PR #42). This file CONFLICTED with #50, which raised the floor 366 -> 368 on main while this branch raised it to 387; resolved as the UNION rather than by taking a side -- #50's rationale is retained above and the count was RE-MEASURED on the new merge result instead of keeping either number. 368 (main) + 19 (this branch's net new tests) = 387; #50 corrected recorded drift rather than adding coverage, which is why 387 is unchanged from the pre-conflict measurement. Measured in a runner sandbox reproducing CI exactly (361 passed, 26 skipped, 387 collected) AND on the owner's machine (387 passed, 0 skipped, 5/5 gates). The two new skips are drift detectors against a REAL installed agent runtime, so neither can be moved below the ceiling -- the preferred way to lower one: (1) agy advertised-models cache absent, since comparing declared model ids against the catalogue agy actually advertises needs that catalogue, and a fixture would exercise the comparison while detecting no real drift; (2) vibe config absent (~/.vibe/config.toml), since active_model cannot be read to check for drift when there is no config to read. Both name their missing prerequisite, so a green run still states what it did not check. A third candidate skip was REFUSED: dispatcher's per-run agy-log assertion failed on a bare runner because adapters.advertised_models shells out to `agy models` when its disk cache is cold, and that probe landed inside a monkeypatched subprocess.run and overwrote the captured command. That is a stub leak, so it was fixed by ISOLATING the double rather than by skipping -- which makes CI run MORE. FLOOR 387 -> 391 on 2026-08-23 (improvement-log accessor, PR #59): exactly four new tests, all in test_improvement_log.py -- three read tracked files in the tree (the pointer's size and content, and that CLAUDE.md 0 step 3 and 5 name the accessor rather than a bare path) and one runs the accessor as a subprocess against a path that cannot exist. None reads a populated ledger, an agent CLI or ~/.codex, so all four RUN on a bare runner and NO ceiling moved: nothing new is skipped. Measured on the MERGE RESULT after rebasing onto origin/main af6654d, which collected 387 -- not on the branch base, per the rule above. FLOOR 391 -> 402 on 2026-08-23 (Gate python-ci configuration, the PR that adds the missing .github/workflows/autofix-versions.env): exactly 11 new tests, all in test_ci_gate_config.py, which read committed files only -- the pin file, ruff.toml, mypy.ini, pr-00-gate.yml's toggle annotations and docs/CI_LINT_BASELINE.md. NO ceiling moved. On any CHECKOUT -- CI, the owner's tree, a second instance -- all 11 run: they need no installed linter and no populated ledger. In the EXEC-MIRROR layout all 11 skip with one named reason, because orch-sync-mirror.sh copies root-level *.py only, so .github/workflows, docs/ and scripts/ are genuinely absent there (env_prereq.repo_files_absent). That lands at 11/26 on a machine that otherwise skips nothing, and CI stays at 26/26, so no ceiling needed raising. The skip gate is the presence of those DIRECTORIES, never of the pin file itself -- gating on the file would have made the test that checks for it unable to fail. Measured on the merge result, twice: the branch was rebuilt on origin/main after #42 and #59 merged, and re-measured after #61 merged and was merged in -- 393 passed + 9 skipped = 402 collected both times, so #61 added no collected tests and this floor is not sitting below reality. #61 itself left main's floor at 391, which is exactly main-without-these-11, so there is no inherited drift to correct. RULE CHANGE 2026-08-23: `collected` is now an EQUALITY, not a minimum. Every floor entry above this one records the number being found BELOW reality and hand-raised after the fact -- 21 low at the worst, then 8, then 1, then 2 -- because nothing ever required a test-adding PR to touch this file, so the permissive direction was silent by construction and the rule 'measure on the merge result' had to be restated three times with nothing enforcing it. verify.py now FAILS when collected exceeds the floor, printing the two integers to write. That also makes the concurrency case self-enforcing: once every test-adding branch must edit these same two lines, two concurrent branches CONFLICT IN GIT, so the second cannot merge without rebasing onto the first and re-measuring on the actual merge result. Demonstrated repeatedly on the change itself: six merges landed on main in the two hours it took to write, moving this file 368 -> 387 -> 391 -> 402, and every one would have left the floor below reality under the old one-directional rule. `passed` deliberately stays a MINIMUM on passed+skipped: only collection is machine-invariant (a skipped test is still collected), measured across machines at 391 collected on both, with pass/skip splits of 365/26 on CI against 391/0 locally. The *_max ceilings are untouched by this change and nothing new is skipped. `--update-floor` also stops REPLACING this note -- it appends -- so the warning above about restoring it by hand no longer applies; and drift does NOT block --update-floor, since a gate that forbade its own only remedy would be a deadlock (the first draft was exactly that). FLOOR 402 -> 407 on 2026-08-23 (findability admission requirement). (findability admission requirement). (findability admission requirement). (findability admission requirement). Exactly five new pytest tests, all in test_capability_admission.py: test_findability_distinguishes_its_three_sub_causes, test_findability_blocks_new_capabilities_and_reports_older_ones_as_debt, test_unreadable_reach_is_not_evaluated_and_never_a_failure, test_findability_exemption_is_declared_in_code_not_in_a_live_ledger, test_consult_sites_are_falsifiable_claims_about_real_callers. NO CEILING MOVED and nothing new skips: all five build synthetic ledgers in a tempdir or read committed tables, so none needs a populated capability ledger, an agent CLI or ~/.claude/skills. The one machine-dependent thing they touch -- an external consult site declared in capability_advisor.CONSULT_SITES whose skill prompt is not on this machine -- is reported as UNVERIFIED rather than skipped, because absence of the caller is not refutation of the claim; the in-tree site (tick) is asserted verified on every machine so the check can never degrade into 'everything unverified, nothing tested'. Measured on the merge result per the rule above: this file CONFLICTED three times while the branch was open, as main went 387 -> 391 -> 402 (#61, #64, #65, #60). Each time it was resolved as the UNION rather than by taking a side, and the count was RE-MEASURED on the new merge result rather than either number being carried forward: 402 (main at bd6da2e) + 5 (this branch's new tests) = 407. That is the rule this file already states -- measure the floor on the merge result, not on the branch -- and it mattered here, because #60 both deleted test_ci_gate_config.py and added more than it removed, so guessing in either direction would have been wrong. -> re-measured on 2026-08-23 (PR #62, the four deferred #42 review findings): three new tests, all machine-independent (each builds its own tmp_path Brain and manifests), so NO CEILING MOVED and nothing new is skipped. Fourth conflict for this branch, and the first one under the EQUALITY -- which is the point: the equality's own rationale says git conflict detection is what enforces 'measure on the merge result', and that is exactly what happened here. Under the old minimum the three earlier conflicts could each have been resolved by keeping the larger number; under the equality the count MUST be measured, and it was. RESOLVED AGAINST #68 (findability admission requirement) on 2026-08-23: taken as the UNION per the rule this file states -- #68's five-test entry is retained above and this branch's three-test entry beside it -- and the count RE-MEASURED on the merge result rather than keeping either side's number. main fc1fd42 collects 407; this branch adds 3; 410 measured with `pytest --collect-only -q` on the merge result, not assumed. Ceilings untouched at 26/7/2 and nothing new is skipped. Also resolved in the same merge: langsmith-fleet-worker-attempt.json, a CI-emitted `langsmith-fleet/v1` worker-attempt record whose two sides differed only in `emitted_at` and `pr_number` (62 here, 68 on main). Main's NEWER record was kept rather than this branch's older one -- discarding a newer provenance observation to win a merge would corrupt exactly the causal-provenance evidence CLAUDE.md 2 protects, and this branch's own run re-emits its record anyway. FLOOR 410 -> 411 on 2026-08-23 (CodeRabbit follow-up on PR #42, thread 3837879039; re-measured again after #56 made `collected` an EQUALITY, which makes an assumed number a hard RED rather than a quiet pass -- main stayed at 402 across #56, and the merge result measures 403, so #56 added no collected tests and this is main's 402 plus this branch's one): exactly one new test, test_feedback_model_provenance.test_late_sweep_completes_terminal_attempts_never_one_in_flight, which pins that ledger_reconcile.resolve_unresolved_worker_attempts completes only TERMINAL unresolved worker attempts and never one still in flight. No ceiling moved and nothing new is skipped -- the test builds its own tmp ledger and codex rollout fixture and monkeypatches adapters.CODEX_SESSIONS, so it needs no agent CLI and no populated capability ledger and runs on a bare runner. RESOLVED AGAINST #59 (improvement-log accessor), which raised the floor 387 -> 391 on main while this branch raised it to 388: taken as the UNION -- #59's rationale is retained above and the count was RE-MEASURED on the new merge result rather than keeping either number, which is the rule this file states and the mistake that once put the floor 8 below reality. 391 (main, incl. #59's four tests) + 1 (this branch's one new test) = 392 measured, not assumed: 392 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, 83/83 selftests, 43/43 can-fire, 5/5 gates. Three sibling follow-up branches are in flight against this same main (CI/ruff config, arm-attribution + durability, adapters label->ID); if this file conflicts with one of them, resolve as the UNION and RE-MEASURE on the new merge result rather than taking either number -- that is what #42 and #50 did, and taking a side is what put the floor 8 below reality earlier. RESOLVED AGAINST #68 (findability admission requirement) on 2026-08-23: taken as the UNION per the rule this file states -- #68's five-test entry is retained above and this branch's one-test entry beside it -- and the count RE-MEASURED on the merge result. main fc1fd42 collects 407; this branch adds 1; 408 measured with `pytest --collect-only -q` on the merge result, not assumed. Ceilings untouched at 26/7/2 and nothing new is skipped -- the one new test builds its own tmp ledger and codex rollout fixture, so it runs on a bare runner. Also resolved in the same merge: langsmith-fleet-worker-attempt.json, a CI-emitted `langsmith-fleet/v1` worker-attempt record differing only in `emitted_at` and `pr_number`; main's NEWER record was kept, since discarding a newer provenance observation to win a merge would corrupt the causal-provenance evidence CLAUDE.md 2 protects. FLOOR 411 -> 415 on 2026-08-23 (PR #70 diagnostics salvage): four new collected tests in test_capability_set_coverage.py from the PR #43 salvage plus CodeRabbit follow-ups on PR #51/#70 \u2014 union/missing-candidate fetch command, truncation after six modules, AST-scoped gate-call audit, and entrypoint-diagnosis coverage. NO CEILING MOVED and nothing new is skipped; all inject synthetic ledgers or read committed source. Measured on the merge result at 91d37fa: 389 passed + 26 skipped = 415 collected on CI, not assumed. FLOOR 415 -> 416 on 2026-08-23 (the dangling-citation follow-up, PR #74): exactly ONE new test, test_ci_gate_config.test_every_cited_repo_path_resolves, which reads the two committed config files this repo OWNS (the pin file and ruff.toml) and asserts every repo-relative path they cite exists. It exists because the pin file shipped citing docs/ci/LINT_BASELINE.md when the real path was docs/CI_LINT_BASELINE.md: the sibling checks read that file's CONTENTS thoroughly and its PROSE not at all, and the prose is the only pointer telling a reader where to re-measure before bumping a pin. Scoped to the two owned files deliberately -- scanning pr-00-gate.yml yields six findings that are all correct as written (guarded by hashFiles or a .agents check, or upstream paths), and a test that cries wolf gets waived. NO ceiling moved. RE-MEASURED SIX TIMES as the base moved under this ONE-LINE change: bd6da2e 402 -> ddb0928 402 -> fc1fd42 407 -> 0d661e3 407 -> 0593eeb 411 -> 6fed4ad 415, each +1 with this test, and the branch was rebuilt on each rather than the number carried forward. THIS BRANCH IS THE WORKED EXAMPLE of the equality's concurrency cost, so record it rather than rediscover it: main moved EIGHT times in the ~2.5 hours a one-line comment fix was open (#56, #68, #73, #69, #62, #70 and two direct commits), the floor line conflicted THREE separate times, and two merges overlapped the change directly -- #73 landed a byte-identical copy of the backplane-conformance.yml guard this branch also carried (dropped as redundant), and #69 edited this very test file in a neighbouring region. The equality is still the right call and should stay: every entry above this one records the floor being found BELOW reality, which is the permissive direction. But no amount of author care wins this race, because the correct value is only knowable on the merge result. The durable fix is CI running `verify.py --update-floor` on the merge commit, which keeps the equality and removes the race; until then a test-adding PR must be merged promptly after going green, because it re-conflicts on roughly every subsequent merge. FLOOR 416 -> 427 on 2026-08-23 (PR #72 hygiene untrack, rebased after #71 merged): exactly 11 new tests from test_repo_artifact_hygiene.py with root-anchored gitignore patterns. NO ceiling moved. Measured on merge result after #71 landed on main: 416 (main) + 11 = 427 collected via pytest --collect-only -q, not assumed. #71's simpler untrack landed first; this branch carries the full hygiene test suite and corrected root-anchored patterns. FLOOR 427 -> 428 on 2026-08-23 (PR salvaging #34/#42 remnants): exactly one new test, test_feedback_model_provenance.test_gemini_provenance_reads_the_per_run_log_before_the_conversation_store, recovered from #42's post-merge commit 4e0d6ae along with the adapters catalog work it exercises. No ceiling moved and nothing new is skipped -- it seeds adapters._ADVERTISED_MEMO instead of letting the catalog probe shell out, so it runs on any machine and adds no prerequisite. `passed` is 428 rather than the 426 verify.py suggested on this machine: two test_capabilities liveness tests (test_gate_blocks_execution_is_opt_in_and_narrow, test_evidence_gate_kind_is_not_blanket_observer) currently fail HERE on pristine main as well, because the hourly fleet tick mutated the machine-local ledger and range-lane-rollout now classifies matched_not_invoked rather than deliberately_gated. That is ledger STATE, not this branch and not the code -- CI bootstraps an empty ledger and counts 428/428. Recording 426 would have baked a local environment failure into the floor as though it were the expected result. FLOOR 428 -> 441 on 2026-08-23 (coverage measures what actually runs): exactly 12 new tests, all in test_verify_coverage_mode.py. They read committed files and verify.py's own source, and monkeypatch verify.COVERAGE in-process -- no populated ledger, no agent CLI, no ~/.codex, and no coverage RUN -- so all 12 execute on any machine and NO ceiling moved. The change itself is a measurement fix, not a gate: `verify.py --coverage` wraps each child in `coverage run --parallel-mode` and combines, because the per-module --selftest is a SUBPROCESS and a pytest-only coverage run cannot see it. That blind spot was most of the codebase -- 78 modules have no test_*.py at all, ~85,500 lines, 79.6% of non-test root Python -- so the reported 48.45% was measuring the gap in the instrument, not a gap in the tests. Combined: 76.1% (45,049 statements, 10,774 missed). Twelve of the twelve modules the old report named as worst were selftest-only; outcomes.py reported 9.0% and measures 61.9%, watch.py 9.6% -> 86.9%. Coverage is OFF by default and deliberately never touches the exit code -- one of the 12 tests pins that, because enforcing a threshold here would reward pytest wrappers around already-tested modules: metric up, assurance flat. Measured on the MERGE RESULT: branched from origin/main bcc68cd (floor 427), then REBASED onto f5f1c39 when it landed underneath and re-measured on the new merge result rather than carrying the old number: 428 + 13 = 441. +1 on 2026-08-23 (440 -> 441 after the rebase), same branch: test_the_cli_help_actually_renders. It exists because this branch BROKE `verify.py --help` and its own twelve tests did not notice. argparse interpolates help strings with `% params`, so the literal `~80%` in the --coverage help was read as an `%o` octal conversion and --help died with 'badly formed help string'. All twelve original tests passed: every one inspected source text or monkeypatched a flag, and not one RENDERED the help -- a construction-time test suite that never exercised the constructed thing, which is this repo's founding defect one layer up. CI's verify.py gate caught it, which is the check of last resort working as intended. The new test runs `verify.py --help` as a subprocess and asserts it exits 0, so it runs anywhere and NO ceiling moved. Rendering rather than grepping for `%` is deliberate: a grep would flag the legitimate `%(default)s`. FLOOR 441 -> 442 on 2026-08-23 (matched_not_invoked yields to observers and declared gates): exactly one new test, test_capabilities.test_matched_not_invoked_yields_to_observers_and_declared_gates. It is SYNTHETIC on purpose and that is the point of it: the two tests that caught this bug in the wild read the LIVE ledger, so they skipped with a named reason on the empty ledger ci.yml bootstraps -- the defect was red on every populated machine and green on CI for as long as it existed. A synthetic row asks the same question everywhere, so this one RUNS on a bare runner and NO ceiling moved. The fix itself moves matched_not_invoked below `observing` and below the DECLARED deliberately_gated check in classify_liveness: it was the first check, which made it the fourth instance of the unescapable label the comments in that function exist to fix. Audited before committing -- 12 of 43 live rows reclassify (ten observers to observing, two declared gates to deliberately_gated) and ZERO move for any other reason, so nothing is reclassified by inference and the weaker gate_reason-only branch is untouched. Measured on origin/main 0d9c3a7, whose recorded floor is 441, so 441 + 1 = 442. FLOOR RECORDED by verify.py --update-floor on 2026-08-23: collected=442, passed=442. Ceilings preserved, never re-measured \u2014 they are edited by hand. FLOOR RECORDED by verify.py --update-floor on 2026-08-24: collected=442, passed=442. Ceilings preserved, never re-measured \u2014 they are edited by hand. FLOOR RECORDED by verify.py --update-floor on 2026-08-24: collected=442, passed=442. Ceilings preserved, never re-measured \u2014 they are edited by hand. MYPY_EXEMPT_MAX introduced at 64 on 2026-08-23, the same change that flipped `typecheck` ON in pr-00-gate.yml. It was OFF because 608 whole-tree errors were drainable 0 per PR -- a gate whose clear path is blocked by the thing it measures. Two real changes opened it: the src/ move scoped the Gate's `target=src` to the 99 modules (608 -> 467), and pyproject.toml's [[tool.mypy.overrides]] exempts the modules that still have findings BY NAME so the 35 already-clean ones are checked today. 12 var-annotated findings were then drained (467 -> 455, 66 -> 64 modules) to prove the drain works rather than promise it. This ceiling may only ever be LOWERED, by typing a module and deleting its line -- raising it means agreeing one more module goes unchecked, so say which and why. NOT a suppression: no error code is disabled anywhere and the 455 stay visible via `python3 scripts/ci_lint_baseline.py`. Edited BY HAND like the other *_max values; --update-floor never re-measures it. MYPY_EXEMPT_MAX LOWERED 64 -> 43 on 2026-08-24, the ratchet's first real drain: 21 modules typed clean and removed from the exempt list, 455 -> 430 findings. Targeted the modules with 1-3 errors on purpose -- fixing 50 errors spread across the big modules would move this number by ZERO, and this number is what the gate reads. Lowering it is the drain; it may never be raised without naming the module and why. MYPY_EXEMPT_MAX LOWERED 43 -> 33 on 2026-08-24 (batch 2 of the drain): the whole <=5-finding tail typed clean. 66 of 99 modules now checked. What remains is five per-module campaigns (capability_advisor, dispatcher, capability_propensity, runtime_ac_gate, capabilities hold most of it), so future batches take ONE big module at a time rather than skimming. (batch 2 detail: 43 -> 26, 430 -> 374 findings, 73 of 99 modules checked. `mypy_path` gained `tests` so mypy can RESOLVE the recurrence-fixture roster capability_admission legitimately imports; the target stays `src`, but mypy then follows into that one test file, whose two findings were fixed rather than configured around.) MYPY_EXEMPT_MAX LOWERED 26 -> 20 on 2026-08-24 (batch 3): 79 of 99 modules checked.",
+ "mypy_exempt_max": 20
 }
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 698c9cd..086295d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -109,8 +109,8 @@ explicit_package_bases = true
 # affects RESOLUTION only — the check target stays `src`, so the tests are not themselves checked.
 mypy_path = ["src", "tests"]
 
-# THE RATCHET, and the reason the check can be ON at all. 73 of the 99 modules are already clean;
-# the 26 below are not, and each is exempt BY NAME so the check can run TODAY over the
+# THE RATCHET, and the reason the check can be ON at all. 79 of the 99 modules are already clean;
+# the 20 below are not, and each is exempt BY NAME so the check can run TODAY over the
 # clean two-thirds instead of being off over everything. A blanket `ignore_errors` or a
 # `disable_error_code` list was rejected: both make the job green while checking nothing, which is
 # the defect verify.py exists to stop, and neither has anything to count.
@@ -127,21 +127,16 @@ mypy_path = ["src", "tests"]
 [[tool.mypy.overrides]]
 module = [
     "capabilities",
-    "capability_activation_audit",
     "capability_advisor",
     "capability_compiler",
     "capability_outcome_bridge",
     "capability_propensity",
     "capability_recurrence_check",
     "codemod_lane",
-    "consumer_sync_artifact_ingest",
     "dispatcher",
-    "durability_sweep",
     "exp_abcd",
     "feedback",
-    "issue_quality",
     "issue_readiness",
-    "keepalive_evidence",
     "keepalive_outcomes",
     "observability_dashboard",
     "redirect_sweep",
@@ -151,6 +146,5 @@ module = [
     "runtime_ac",
     "runtime_ac_gate",
     "switch_review",
-    "tick",
 ]
 ignore_errors = true
diff --git a/src/adversarial.py b/src/adversarial.py
index 1042e73..4a24768 100644
--- a/src/adversarial.py
+++ b/src/adversarial.py
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 import json
 import re
 import sys
+from collections.abc import Mapping
 
 import dispatcher
 
@@ -110,14 +111,14 @@ def is_high_stakes(item: dict) -> bool:
     return high_stakes_reason(item) is not None
 
 
-def reviewers_from_env(env: dict | None = None) -> list[str]:
+def reviewers_from_env(env: Mapping[str, str] | None = None) -> list[str]:
     env = env or {}
     raw = env.get("ORCH_ADVERSARIAL_REVIEWERS", "")
     reviewers = [part.strip() for part in raw.split(",") if part.strip()]
     return reviewers or list(DEFAULT_REVIEWERS)
 
 
-def review_enabled(env: dict | None = None) -> bool:
+def review_enabled(env: Mapping[str, str] | None = None) -> bool:
     env = env or {}
     return env.get("ORCH_RUN_ADVERSARIAL_REVIEW") == "1"
 
diff --git a/src/capability_activation_audit.py b/src/capability_activation_audit.py
index 526491e..b3cb685 100644
--- a/src/capability_activation_audit.py
+++ b/src/capability_activation_audit.py
@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@
 import sys
 import time
 from pathlib import Path
+from typing import Any
 
 import backlog
 import capabilities
@@ -968,7 +969,7 @@ def heartbeat_env_gate(*, here: Path | None = None) -> dict:
     # Shell drivers live at the CHECKOUT root, not beside the modules. `here` is still honoured so
     # the selftest can point this at a synthetic tree.
     root = here or paths.checkout_root(HERE)
-    out = {
+    out: dict[str, Any] = {
         "flag": HEARTBEAT_ENV_FLAG,
         "anchor": HEARTBEAT_EXPORT_ANCHOR,
         "drivers": {},
@@ -1222,7 +1223,7 @@ def audit_capability(
                 defects.append("no_prompt_template")
                 notes.append(f"no PROMPT_TEMPLATES[{value!r}]")
             cov = label_coverage(value, label_index)
-            row.setdefault("label_coverage", {})[value] = cov
+            row.setdefault("label_coverage", {})[value] = cov  # type: ignore[index]
             if cov.get("repos_with") == 0:
                 defects.append("label_absent_from_fleet")
                 notes.append(f"no repo carries a label producing {value!r}")
@@ -2049,8 +2050,8 @@ def _selftest() -> None:
 
             # An UNREADABLE ledger must degrade to a visible note, never to an exception that
             # replaces the real assertion with a complaint about the diagnostic.
-            broken = absent_entrypoint_note(sorted(rows), path=droot / "not-a-ledger-dir")
-            assert broken == "" or "diagnostic unavailable" in broken, broken
+            broken_note = absent_entrypoint_note(sorted(rows), path=droot / "not-a-ledger-dir")
+            assert broken_note == "" or "diagnostic unavailable" in broken_note, broken_note
         finally:
             globals()["HERE"] = saved_here
     # (b) a mention inside a shell COMMENT is not a caller — matching it reported a
diff --git a/src/consumer_sync_artifact_ingest.py b/src/consumer_sync_artifact_ingest.py
index 0fda185..a7f08ae 100644
--- a/src/consumer_sync_artifact_ingest.py
+++ b/src/consumer_sync_artifact_ingest.py
@@ -1713,7 +1713,7 @@ def main(argv: list[str] | None = None) -> int:
         # throttled call: at LOW budget gh_capacity paces up to 10s each.
         blob_reader = BlobReader(state.setdefault("blob_digests", {}))
         needs_processing_lower = {repo.lower() for repo in needs_processing}
-        report_repos = {
+        report_repos: dict[str, dict[str, Any]] = {
             repo.lower(): {"status": "already_recorded"}
             for repo in deduped_cohort
             if repo.lower() not in needs_processing_lower
diff --git a/src/durability_sweep.py b/src/durability_sweep.py
index b6fae17..2fc9636 100644
--- a/src/durability_sweep.py
+++ b/src/durability_sweep.py
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 import subprocess
 import sys
 import time
+from typing import Any
 from urllib.parse import quote
 
 import feedback
@@ -291,7 +292,7 @@ def _live_revert_status(pr: dict, revert_cache: dict | None = None) -> tuple[boo
     if not repo:
         return None, "missing repo"
 
-    pr_check = (None, "missing PR number")
+    pr_check: tuple[bool | None, str] = (None, "missing PR number")
     if pr_number is not None:
         pr_check = _revert_pr_status(repo, int(pr_number), revert_cache=revert_cache)
         if pr_check[0] is True:
@@ -449,7 +450,7 @@ def sweep_durability(
     _now: int | None = None,
 ) -> dict:
     """Patch old merged+pending outcomes when their durability can be resolved with confidence."""
-    summary = {
+    summary: dict[str, Any] = {
         "checked": 0,
         "durable": 0,
         "reverted": 0,
@@ -590,7 +591,7 @@ def _verdict_for(files):
     assert _verdict_for([{"path": ".agents/x.yml"}, {"path": "app.py"}])["durability"] == "durable"
 
     # FAIL-SAFE: unknowable delivery must never manufacture a failure.
-    for unknown in (None, []):
+    for unknown in (None, []):  # type: ignore[var-annotated]  # deliberate mixed-type probe
         got = _verdict_for(unknown)
         assert got["durability"] == "durable", (unknown, got)
 
diff --git a/src/issue_quality.py b/src/issue_quality.py
index 8a94bbb..8a174b4 100644
--- a/src/issue_quality.py
+++ b/src/issue_quality.py
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
 import time
 from dataclasses import dataclass
 from pathlib import Path
+from typing import cast
 from urllib.parse import quote
 
 import feedback
@@ -280,7 +281,7 @@ def parallel_fetch(keys: set[tuple[str, int]], fn) -> dict[tuple[str, int], obje
     )
     body_keys: set[tuple[str, int]] = set()
     for repo, pr_number in linked_cache:
-        issue_numbers = list(linked_cache.get((repo, pr_number)) or [])
+        issue_numbers = cast(list, linked_cache.get((repo, pr_number)) or [])
         if not isinstance(issue_numbers, list):
             continue
         for issue_number in issue_numbers:
@@ -291,7 +292,7 @@ def parallel_fetch(keys: set[tuple[str, int]], fn) -> dict[tuple[str, int], obje
     body_cache = parallel_fetch(body_keys, fetch_body)
 
     for row, repo, pr_number in parsed_rows:
-        issue_numbers = list(linked_cache.get((repo, pr_number)) or [])
+        issue_numbers = cast(list, linked_cache.get((repo, pr_number)) or [])
         if not issue_numbers:
             skipped.append(
                 {
diff --git a/src/keepalive_evidence.py b/src/keepalive_evidence.py
index 5396337..e3f5646 100644
--- a/src/keepalive_evidence.py
+++ b/src/keepalive_evidence.py
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
 import tempfile
 import time
 from pathlib import Path
-from typing import Any
+from typing import Any, cast
 from urllib.parse import quote
 
 import feedback
@@ -374,7 +374,7 @@ def _process_signals(
     signals = []
     for work_type in sorted(grouped):
         bucket = grouped[work_type]
-        prs = list(bucket["prs"] or [])
+        prs = cast(list, bucket["prs"] or [])
         count = len(prs)
         signals.append(
             {
diff --git a/src/repo_knowledge.py b/src/repo_knowledge.py
index a11a4c5..903d44c 100644
--- a/src/repo_knowledge.py
+++ b/src/repo_knowledge.py
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 import subprocess
 import sys
 from pathlib import Path
+from typing import Any
 
 import feedback
 import provision
@@ -189,7 +190,7 @@
     },
 }
 
-SEED = {
+SEED: dict[str, Any] = {
     "schema_version": SEED_SCHEMA_VERSION,
     "repos": {
         "stranske/Workflows": {
@@ -1915,7 +1916,7 @@ def approve_suggestion(
         "already_present": already,
     }
     if apply and not already:
-        item = {"text": text}
+        item: dict[str, Any] = {"text": text}
         if suggestion.get("task_type"):
             item["task_types"] = [suggestion["task_type"]]
         entry.setdefault(chosen, []).append(item)
@@ -2595,13 +2596,13 @@ def main(argv: list[str]) -> int:
     if "--validate-agents-md" in argv:
         idx = argv.index("--validate-agents-md")
         repo_path = Path(argv[idx + 1]) if len(argv) > idx + 1 else Path(".")
-        repo = argv[argv.index("--repo") + 1] if "--repo" in argv else None
+        repo_arg = argv[argv.index("--repo") + 1] if "--repo" in argv else None
         max_lines = (
             int(argv[argv.index("--max-lines") + 1])
             if "--max-lines" in argv
             else AGENTS_EXPORT_MAX_LINES
         )
-        result = validate_agents_md_export(repo_path, repo=repo, max_lines=max_lines)
+        result = validate_agents_md_export(repo_path, repo_arg=repo_arg, max_lines=max_lines)
         print(json.dumps(result, indent=2) if "--json" in argv else result)
         return 0 if result["ok"] else 1
     if "--suggest-from-snapshot" in argv:
@@ -2657,7 +2658,7 @@ def main(argv: list[str]) -> int:
     if "--suggest-from-docs" in argv:
         idx = argv.index("--suggest-from-docs")
         repo_path = Path(argv[idx + 1]) if len(argv) > idx + 1 else Path(".")
-        repo = argv[argv.index("--repo") + 1] if "--repo" in argv else None
+        repo_arg = argv[argv.index("--repo") + 1] if "--repo" in argv else None
         max_per_repo = int(argv[argv.index("--max") + 1]) if "--max" in argv else 10
         sections = [
             argv[i + 1] for i, arg in enumerate(argv) if arg == "--section" and i + 1 < len(argv)
@@ -2666,7 +2667,7 @@ def main(argv: list[str]) -> int:
             json.dumps(
                 suggest_from_docs(
                     repo_path,
-                    repo=repo,
+                    repo_arg=repo_arg,
                     max_per_repo=max_per_repo,
                     include_root_docs="--include-root-docs" in argv,
                     sections=sections,
diff --git a/src/roles.py b/src/roles.py
index ade4cfb..68928f7 100644
--- a/src/roles.py
+++ b/src/roles.py
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
 import re
 import sys
 import time
-from collections.abc import Callable
+from collections.abc import Callable, Mapping
 from dataclasses import dataclass
 from pathlib import Path
 from typing import Any
@@ -1453,12 +1453,12 @@ def select_role_activation(
     return out
 
 
-def _shadow_gate(env: dict | None) -> bool:
+def _shadow_gate(env: Mapping[str, str] | None) -> bool:
     source = os.environ if env is None else env
     return str(source.get("ORCH_ROLE_SHADOW", "0")).strip() == "1"
 
 
-def _role_cap(env: dict | None, role_name: str) -> int:
+def _role_cap(env: Mapping[str, str] | None, role_name: str) -> int:
     source = os.environ if env is None else env
     specific = source.get(f"ORCH_{role_name.upper()}_ROLE_MAX_PER_CYCLE")
     raw = specific if specific is not None else source.get("ORCH_ROLE_MAX_PER_CYCLE", "1")
@@ -1504,7 +1504,7 @@ def activate_dispatch_roles(
     baseline_prompt: str,
     *,
     cwd: str,
-    env: dict | None = None,
+    env: Mapping[str, str] | None = None,
     cap: dict | None = None,
     dry_run: bool = False,
     prompt_runner=None,
@@ -1617,7 +1617,7 @@ def activate_tick_triage(
     items: list[dict],
     cap: dict,
     *,
-    env: dict | None = None,
+    env: Mapping[str, str] | None = None,
     dry_run: bool = False,
     runner=None,
 ) -> dict:
@@ -1714,7 +1714,7 @@ def activate_adjudicator_disagreement(
     review_status: dict | None,
     cap: dict,
     *,
-    env: dict | None = None,
+    env: Mapping[str, str] | None = None,
     dry_run: bool = False,
     runner=None,
 ) -> dict:
diff --git a/src/tick.py b/src/tick.py
index dd4ef21..efb29f6 100644
--- a/src/tick.py
+++ b/src/tick.py
@@ -360,7 +360,7 @@ def research_tick(
                 metadata={"target": target, "task_type": task_type},
             )
             prepare_result = prepare(
-                repo,
+                str(repo),
                 str(spec_file),
                 exp_id,
                 research_v2_arms(arms, item.get("profiles")),