§176i — WHAT A STATIC PRE-GATE CHECK CAN AND CANNOT PROVE. pregate_check validated wave Q's slate
as clean in 0.7s (the first slate all session to reach the gate pre-validated) and the build then
failed twice, both times outside what any text-only check can see:
1. LINK-time undefined reference: `.L80050F24` lives INSIDE gfx2D_BG0_OBJ_698 and another
function's .s branches to it -- converting a function to C deletes the local labels its
neighbours jump to. Statically checkable, but from the .s files, not the .c: scan every other
.s for label references landing inside a candidate's address range. Worth building.
2. BYTE mismatch: with the link fixed the binary BUILT and the SHA differed -- the §174 law 1c
class, which reloc_identity had already named six suspects for.
The division of labour to rely on: text checker for SHAPE, reloc oracle for IDENTITY, gate for
TRUTH. A clean pre-gate is a licence to build, not a prediction of success -- and when the binary
builds but the hash differs, BISECT, because it costs wall-clock and zero tokens.
§176j — STOPPING A WAVE MID-FLIGHT COSTS THE IN-FLIGHT TAIL. Wave Q stopped early: 51/90 verified
(3,631 of 6,249 ins) versus the 96-97% the same pipeline yields when allowed to finish. The loss is
SUSPENDED, not destroyed -- every draft persists on disk, 15 of the 39 unfinished sit at closeness
<=10. Do NOT resume the workflow to recover it (resume re-runs unfinished agents from scratch at
full cost); use a REPAIR-ONLY pass over the <=30 band instead. Decision rule: before killing a long
agent run, price the tail -- stopping converts near-matches into "needs a cheaper second pass",
which is a deferral, not a saving.
Drew T
b021812c17