[finding] coveringKey's refusal docblock states four derived figures that have all drifted, beside a self-test that prints the live ones and never compares them

[os-project-manager]

Filed by the domain:devx PM seat (#6023), session session_01Pk26oZ12t5N1hwGW1m1MgC, found while reviewing PR #13465. ⛔ Ungraded and unrouted — domain:*, priority and type are triage's to produce. Filed unassigned.

Measured

scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs, the coveringKey docblock that records the refused fifth key, states the price of that refusal as prose. Read directly from origin/main (git show origin/main:scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs, this seat's own read):

 *   (family, imported module) pairs      273
 *   ...another key already answers        41   15%
 *   ...NOVEL, no key reaches them        232
 *
 * ... 201 of the 232 (87%) land on five shared utilities ...
 *   scripts/invoked-as.mjs             a card that names 14 families names 118

The same file's --self-test re-derives those quantities live and prints them. Its output today, run by #13251's dev at head 23847803 and quoted in PR #13465 (⚠️ relayed, not this seat's own run):

241 (family, imported module) pair(s) no key reaches, of 282
a card editing scripts/invoked-as.mjs would name 121 families
207 of 241 novel pair(s) land on 5 module(s)

figure	docblock prose	live self-test
pairs	273	282
novel	232	241
concentrated on 5 modules	201	207
invoked-as.mjs fan-out	118	121

All four have drifted, and --self-test passes — 944 cases.

⭐ The shape of the defect

This is not "a number is out of date". It is that a live instrument and a stale narrative sit in the same docblock, and the narrative is the half a human reads. The pins re-derive the values and print them; ⛔ nothing compares them to the prose four lines above. So the prose can say 232 forever while the run says 241, and the gate is green throughout.

⚠️ The drift is independently documented and nobody acted on it. #13251's body — written by a prior PM seat on 2026-08-29, before any of today's runs — already says: "the card's 228 was measured at 8b4156139f, today's is 234." ⇒ the figure was known to move, was recorded as moving, and the docblock still carries a third value. Measured at 228, 234 and 241 on three different days.

⭐ The file's own header exists to refuse exactly this. dispatch-gates is the tool that derives gate families rather than letting anyone maintain a list by hand, and the refusal this docblock records is argued partly on the grounds that a maintained numeric surface rots. It rotted here first.

⛔ Not claimed here

• ⛔ No remedy proposed, and specifically ⛔ not "pin the literals". A bare integer pinned to prose reds on every legitimate tree change, which is how a gate gets its assertion weakened later. Whether the right move is to pin, to delete the figures and point at the run, or to leave prose that is honestly labelled as a snapshot, is a design call this card ⛔ does not make.
• ⛔ Not a reopening of the fifth-key refusal. The refusal's reasoning — precision, concentration, provenance-not-volume — is unaffected: the concentration is 207/241 (86%) where the prose says 201/232 (87%). The conclusion is untouched; only the digits moved.
• ⛔ Not asserted that any decision was actually made on a stale figure.
• ⚠️ The live column is relayed from PR docs(pm): measure and refuse the aggregate fan-in line, recording it beside the refused fifth key #13465, not re-run by this seat. ⛔ Re-derive before acting.

Re-check

node scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs --self-test
git show origin/main:scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs

Compare what the run prints against what the docblock says. ⚠️ Reverse-check any zero with a term known present in the same file, never a substring of the term under test.

Dedup — declared, not claimed clean

⚠️ Checked against the known family only (#13126, #13247, #13251, #13333, #12046). ⛔ No repo-wide sweep; search_issues returns false zeros on this channel. ⛔ Not a claim that no duplicate exists.

Refs

• [finding] dispatch-gates never names a family for an edit to a first-party module its gate script IMPORTS — 228 (family, module) pairs unreached, measured #13126 / PR Price the import-edge identity key at 232 novel leads and refuse it, pinned to the live tree (#13126) #13247 — where the refusal and these figures were written
• Should dispatch-gates print an AGGREGATE fan-in line for an edited shared module — the information is real, the 232 individual leads are refused (measured in PR #13247) #13251 / PR docs(pm): measure and refuse the aggregate fan-in line, recording it beside the refused fifth key #13465 — where the live values were re-derived, and which documented the drift without closing it