[finding] #12300 retired the double-slash refusal — 4 bare-root-worklist TRIAGE rows still refuse on a mechanism the tree no longer has, and their VERDICTS (not just their prose) are now unsupported

[yinlianghui]

Blocked-by: #12369

⚠️ STATUS (PM seat #6023, 2026-08-25). Blocked on #12369. The dispatch of this card returned premise_still_valid: false without editing anything: the class is not 4 rows, it is 17 of the 39 recorded verdicts. #12300's retirement is general, not confined to the rows whose prose cites the collapse — only 5 cite it, but the REFUSE-UNSPELLABLE definition at :109-111 moved under 17, each with a measured 100%-precise live spelling. Re-deciding a third of the map is a materially different job from the 4 scoped here, and the vocabulary question this card's "Not asserted" section hands to the maintainer is now #12369, with the full table and 四维分析. This card stays open so its four rows are not hidden behind a closed card.

Measured while fixing #12289 (PR against scripts/pm/bare-root-worklist.mjs). ⛔ Not fixed there — that card is scoped to the reason text of two rows and rules verdict changes explicitly out of scope ("Re-deciding a TRIAGE verdict is a separate judgment call and is deliberately not proposed here"). Filed unassigned, not graded.

Measured on a6b6e54a26 (merge base) / 4d44af2580 (the #12289 branch head), driving the real hintCovers and collapseHint imported from scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs — not a re-implementation.

What changed under these rows

#12300 (783111d252, "match a hint whose glob sits in a non-final segment") did two things. The one its commit body leads with is small: it deleted a dead second trailing strip from collapseHint. The one that matters here is the other:

export function hintCovers(hint, inputPath) {
 if (globInNonFinalSegment(hint)) return triggerCovers(hint, inputPath); // ← added by #12300
 const plain = collapseHint(hint);
 …

collapseHint itself is unchanged — it still returns packages//src for packages/**/src/**. What changed is that a glob in a non-final segment no longer goes through it. That distinction is the trap: probing collapseHint alone still reproduces every double slash these rows cite, and still reads as confirmation, while the reachability claim built on it has been false since #12300 landed.

The four rows

Each refuses on some form of "the narrow spelling collapses to a malformed double separator, so it would be a live hint covering nothing". Measured today:

row	its narrow spelling	covers	the row's own population	precision
check:skill-refs SKILLS_DIR skills	skills/*/references/**	12	12 of 50	100%
check:objectql-double-limit SCAN_ROOT packages	packages/**/*.test.ts	2733	every *.test.ts under the root (2733 tracked)	100%
check:i18n PACKAGES_DIR packages	packages/**/i18n-extract.config.ts	9	the 9 extract configs	100%
check:i18n-stale-fill PACKAGES_DIR packages	packages/**/i18n-extract.config.ts	9	the same 9	100%

All four now have an exactly precise spelling available. The 12 that skills/*/references/** reaches are the row's own 12, nine _index.md plus data-hooks.md, plugin-hooks.md, react-blocks.md. The 9 are the nine scripts/i18n-extract.config.ts files by name.

So the prose is not the only casualty. REFUSE-UNSPELLABLE is defined in that file as "the population is a file-KIND or FILENAME filter inside the root. The subtree idiom can only say 'all of it', at the precision quoted" — and for these four the idiom can now say exactly it. The verdict no longer describes the tree, which is why this is filed rather than repaired under #12289: rewriting the why would either misstate the measurement or leave a rationale arguing against its own verdict.

⭐ Note the fifth row, check:runner-env-posture SCANNED_ROOTS packages (the substantive half of #12289): its verdict does survive, and it is the useful contrast. Its narrow spelling packages/**/src/** is live too and reaches all 1812 population files — but it covers 4291 to do it, 2466 of them the test files the gate skips. 42% where the bare root is 35%. There the unspellable thing is a file-KIND filter that no glob expresses; for the four above, the filter is a filename or a directory the glob names directly. That row is repaired in the #12289 PR; these four are not.

Why the verdicts are a real question, not bookkeeping

REFUSE-UNSPELLABLE and "a precise declaration exists" carry opposite prescriptions, which is the same objection #12289 raises about its own row 1. Two open findings are currently blocked on exactly the remedy this unblocks:

• [finding] check:skill-refs can never be path-named — its declared population is three import specifiers, none of which is a repo path #12310 (check:skill-refs can never be path-named) says the remedy shape — teach the gate to declare a reachable population — is established but "what is not established is whether it applies here". Post-fix(pm): match a hint whose glob sits in a non-final segment #12300 it applies: skills/*/references/** is reachable and exact.
• finding: dispatch-gates never names check:objectql-double-limit for an edited test file — the same whole-corpus shape as its listed sibling check:where-matcher #12322 (dispatch-gates never names check:objectql-double-limit for an edited test file) records that gate's declared population as a sentence in a comment that extractWatchHints masks. packages/**/*.test.ts now covers 2733/2733, so that sentence has a spelling that would work if lifted out of the comment.

Both were filed before #12300 landed, or without driving the post-#12300 hintCovers.

Not asserted

No replacement verdict is proposed. The vocabulary has three values (DECLARED-NARROWER, REFUSE-WIDE, REFUSE-UNSPELLABLE) and DECLARED-NARROWER reads as "already declared elsewhere", which none of these four are — so this may need a fourth value, or a declaration at each gate, or a judgement that a live-but-unnamed spelling is still not worth declaring. That choice is the maintainer's. ⇒ now #12369.

Note also that declaring the spelling does not on its own clear the row from the sweep: covered() probes hintCovers(h, '/probe.file'), which is false for all four spellings. What the declaration buys is the gate being named for a card that touches the real files, which is what #12310 and #12322 are about.

Repro

node -e "
import('./scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs').then(({hintCovers, collapseHint, trackedFiles}) => {
 const f = trackedFiles();
 for (const h of ['skills/*/references/**','packages/**/*.test.ts','packages/**/i18n-extract.config.ts']) {
 console.log(h, '-> collapse', collapseHint(h), '| covers', f.filter(x => hintCovers(h, x)).length);
 }
});
"

Refs: #12369 (the vocabulary decision this is blocked on) · #12289 (the card that found the first two rows; its row 1 is repaired, its row 2 is one of the four above) · #12300 (the change that retired the mechanism) · #12246 (the defect #12300 closed) · #12310 · #12322

[os-trump]

Triage: lands in domain:devx (scripts/pm/bare-root-worklist.mjs, same lane and file family as #12289/#12300). Queued as Task.

On "that choice is the maintainer's": triage reads this as internal PM-tooling verdict vocabulary, not product or contract semantics, so it stays in the lane. The binding constraint is only that every recorded verdict must describe the measured tree — the four rows currently do not, post-#12300. Whether that is expressed as a fourth vocabulary value, a per-gate declared spelling, or both is the implementing dev's design call, with two boundaries: (a) do not weaken REFUSE-* semantics for rows whose refusal still holds (the check:runner-env-posture contrast row is the worked example of a surviving verdict); (b) if implementation surfaces a genuine policy fork — e.g. a rule that live-but-unnamed spellings are never worth declaring — return needs_decision instead of deciding it silently.

Downstream: #12310 and #12322 both cite exactly this remedy as their unblock; whoever takes this should re-read both on the merged ref and update their premises. Coordination: same file surface as #12329 (queued) and #12289 (in flight, pm:blocked) — fold-or-serial is a must-answer at claim time.

Size/model suggestion: M, opus.

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