The blocker: every one of the five commits carried `Decisions-Edit: yes`, and
git parsed NONE of them. `Refs #756` has no colon, so it is not a trailer, and
one bad line voids the whole block — `git log --format='%(trailers:key=...)'`
returned empty for all five and `decisions_validate.py --base origin/main`
failed. It would have surfaced as a red `decisions lifecycle`, which is the one
red this repo is standing-instructed to treat as a known flake. This commit's
trailer block is clean; `Refs:` now carries its colon.
Committed the gate value MATRIX (16 cases). Cold review showed round 3's
`gate-unset` parametrisation was vacuous in the same way round 3 itself had
just fixed: the positive control still passes when the gate wrongly skips,
because the guard prints "All 2 expected step(s) executed" and exits 0. Only a
test asserting skip-iff-exactly-true discriminates, and `(true, true)` — a
docs-only merge to main on an already-validated tree — had no coverage at all.
Three claims were wrong rather than merely stale:
* The workflow comment said `build` gets no markers because "it is not a
required context, so they would buy little" — the exact dismissal the
record names as the claim not to repeat. Markers there would buy MORE than
the ban, which only runs on pull_request.
* The #767 deferral claimed measuring a guard on the release path "would mean
cutting a real release tag". False: `build` runs on every push to main and
Smoke's ref condition admits refs/heads/main.
* "Both advisory steps" — there are three.
On GITHUB_RUN_ATTEMPT: cold review argued it IS set, from the absence of the
script's warning in the probe logs. That needs step stderr to reach the log,
and the control offered was an `::error::` this script writes to STDOUT — so
the premise was unestablished in both directions, and I did not adopt it.
Instead `assert` now prints its resolved identity on stdout every run, where
capture is not in question; read that line on this PR's run and promote the
variable if it says "from the runner". Adding that reporting introduced, and
the suite immediately caught, a real bug: marker_path's STDOUT *is* the path,
so the notice printed there landed inside it.
Decisions-Edit: yes
Refs: #756
timothy
52c76d97fb