[finding] 7 of 119 gate families enumerate the workspace at RUNTIME from pnpm-workspace.yaml, so they carry no population literal and dispatch-gates can never name them for any package

[os-zhuang]

Measured while fixing #9955 (PR #10540), which closed the other half of the same question. Filed unassigned; not fixed here.

The shape

scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs derives a gate's relevance from the path literals in the gate's own source. A gate that hardcodes its population can therefore be named (that is what #9955 / #10114 / #10314 / #10516 are all about, one literal at a time). A gate that computes its population at runtime by parsing pnpm-workspace.yaml names no literal at all — so it is not "silent", it is undetermined, permanently, for every workspace path in the tree.

This is strictly larger than the bare-literal class and nothing has measured it before.

The measurement

Over the 119 families the workflows discover, against four layout specimens — packages/cli/src/index.ts (flat package), packages/services/service-cache/src/index.ts (nested package), apps/docs/package.json, examples/showcase/package.json:

families whose gate script reads pnpm-workspace.yaml at runtime: 12
 ... naming NONE of the four specimens: 7
 ... of those 7, rescued by CHANGE_KIND_GATES: 2 (check:type-check-coverage, check:type-check-debt)
 ... UNRESCUED: 5

The five unrescued:

family	hints it does carry
pnpm check:published-files	4, none covering a workspace path
pnpm check:published-readme-exports	2, likewise
pnpm check:release-body	0
node scripts/check-dev-prereqs.mjs	1
node scripts/check-prerelease-pin-watch.mjs	0

Reproduce: build the family table the way derive() does, then ask coveringKey(entry, specimen) for each. The five come back null for all four layouts. check:test-source-alias and check:type-source-resolution were in this set until PR #10540 and now name all four — so the instrument moves when the tree does, rather than reporting a constant (the #8999 failure mode).

Triage this needs before it is a fix

The number above is an upper bound on the actionable set, not a defect count, and the difference matters:

• check:published-files / check:published-readme-exports really do read every published package's manifest, so their population genuinely is the workspace and the fix(pm): declare check-role-word's skills root for dispatch-gates derivation #10114 escape (declare the subtree in a spelling with a separator) applies directly.
• check:prerelease-pin-watch is different: what it watches is pnpm-workspace.yaml itself — a repo-root file spelled as a bare filename, which is the second documented refusal in hintCovers, not this one. Declaring packages/** for it would be a fabricated lead.
• check:release-body carries zero hints for an unrelated reason already recorded in the isNonPathNamespace docblock.

So the work is per-gate, and the honest first step is reading each of the five and saying which refusal it is actually under.

The adjacent duplication, same root

Twelve scripts each carry their own pnpm-workspace.yaml parser, several admitting it in a comment ("Minimal pnpm-workspace.yaml block parsers (same approach as …)", "Same approach as …"). Two of them — check-test-source-alias.mjs and check-type-source-resolution.mjs — carried byte-identical 11-entry WORKSPACE_PARENT_DIRS arrays, and the blind spot in #9955 existed identically in both while being reported for only one. A shared enumerator (the shape scripts/i18n-bundle-surface.mjs already sets) would make the population declarable in one place instead of twelve, which is the same refactor as the fix above rather than a separate one.

Related

#9955 (the instance that surfaced this), #10314 and #10516 (the bare-literal class, one gate each), #10114 (the merged precedent for declaring a population), #9626 (why hintCovers refuses bare literals, with the +139084 measurement), #9883 / #10097 (the unreachable verdict, which does not fire for these because they declare nothing at all).

[os-zhuang]

Triage: routed finding + domain:skills — landing surface is scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs coverage semantics plus per-gate population declarations (same class as #10516, which the skills lane holds). First-touch grading left to the skills seat per its lane's self-triage exception. Note the card's own caution: the 5 unrescued families are an upper bound, and at least two (check-prerelease-pin-watch, check:release-body) sit under different documented refusals — the per-gate reading is the first deliverable, not a blanket declaration sweep.

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