The two dated log sections had never been split, so every one of their 29 entries sat inline and the startup index had grown to 372 lines — which is the cost the two-tier scheme exists to remove, paid on every session that reads the file. 27 entries were over threshold. All 29 now have a detail file under persistent-memory.d/ and a one-line index entry that routes rather than restates. Index: 372 -> 93 lines. No archival. The soft cap fired, but every entry in this repo is dated 2026-09-21 or later, so the under-14-days guard held all of them back — and the split alone took the index well under the target without moving anything out of the active file. The in-flight section is rewritten for the post-release state: nothing is in flight, no gate is outstanding, and the next unit is explicitly recorded as the operator's undecided call rather than as a plan. The session's recommendation (U4, on three grounds) is written down so it does not have to be re-derived, alongside the two alternatives and why they are alternatives. Two dated predictions are carried forward with their dates and their instruments: the U5 adoption re-measure on 2026-09-29, which already reads 3 of 24 announced and 2 with a why from peers told nothing, and the .forever re-count a fortnight AFTER U4 lands, which is U4's own success criterion and is destroyed by running it early.
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Five mechanisms to get one question beside one artifact
2026-09-21 · booth
Five separate mechanisms to get one question next to one
artifact — .forever, the link board, inline.py's placeholder DSL,
wrap_verbatim_html's six regexes, and the floating amber asks chip plus
/b/<n>/asks. Every one is a correct local fix to the same global
mismatch, which is exactly why they accumulated without anyone making a bad
call. The foot-gun is the sixth one: the next "just add a small thing for
this case" reads as reasonable and is the pattern. The git log carries the
signature — every feature ships, then takes 2–5 patches for cases the single
shape did not anticipate. Check the ROADMAP gate before adding a mechanism.