session 2026-08-25: the beacon fired, Tarbuckle named and voiced, STATE-CLAIM built

Session state, memory index, KG and the Symmetria ledger. Carries the steward's own
placement of REVIEWED-127 off-disk — preservation, not modification: it was found
staged during the wrap by §6.5's own guard, which is exactly the case that clause
exists to catch, and the answer was benign.

Verified rather than assumed at placement: the placed ruling is byte-identical to the
executor's draft, 3,523 bytes both sides. No drift between a ruling's subject and its
artifact — the PENDING-82/86 class, checked because it is cheap and because this record
already notes that class recurring inside a ruling.

The draft file is SUPERSEDED IN PLACE rather than deleted: it is now a parallel version
of a canonical record, and an unmarked parallel version is the context-rot failure. It
points at REVIEWED.md and says not to edit it. Both PENDING items updated from "drafted
for steward placement" to placed — a line that went false the moment the steward acted.

MEMORY.md 22,368 bytes, prior Active Session demoted verbatim into MEMORY-reference.md
on promote. Fool tracker rewritten: it named a superseded workstream (trial 09,
re-aim) and now names Tarbuckle, the sealed artifacts, and the honest state that
NOTHING IS WIRED. N-now 51.

KG +6: three drift-patterns (vigilance did not prevent the failure it was vigilant
about; filed a non-defect as a defect twice in one direction; a control fixture pointing
at a file the session was editing) and two preventions (recusal preserved the only party
able to answer; censusing 24 occurrences stopped a blanket replace from destroying the
distinction the fix existed to create).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01J6hZXNYSxEfZseBGTni4sf

PENDING.md

@@ -5061,7 +5061,7 @@ This is the shape census 01 already found: **decay, not construction, is how gat
 
 **Files affected:** `scripts/governance-drift-check.py` (parser, due-ness, register-integrity lane, selftest); `PENDING.md` — the one existing `DISCHARGED-DECISION` block reverts to `DEFERRED-DECISION` with `resolved:` set, which is also the migration's own test case.
 
-⚖ **AUTHORIZED 2026-08-25, jointly with PENDING-158** (jurist ruling; REVIEWED-127 drafted for steward placement).
+⚖ **AUTHORIZED 2026-08-25, jointly with PENDING-158** — jurist ruling, **placed by the steward as REVIEWED-127** (verified byte-identical to the draft at placement).
 
 ⚠ **This item now carries an obligation it did not have when filed.** PENDING-158's `STATE-CLAIM` **inherits whatever this item settles about `resolved:`**. So the resolution state is no longer a convenience for four deferrals — it is the schema half that stops the same decay reappearing one layer along in state-claims. **If this item ships without addressing `resolved:`, the jurist's ruling names that as "a third patch already visible from here."** Recommendation (1) with its two conditions stands and now also governs `STATE-CLAIM`.
 
@@ -5074,7 +5074,7 @@ This is the shape census 01 already found: **decay, not construction, is how gat
 **Tag:** [HARDENING]
 **Summary:** Governance documents routinely assert *"X has not happened"*; five such claims were found false in a single day, two of them stale for five days across a jurist ruling and multiple working sessions in the same directory. Every one was caught by a person opening the file for an unrelated reason. There is no mechanism that reads them.
 
-⚖ **AUTHORIZED 2026-08-25, jointly with PENDING-157** (jurist ruling; REVIEWED-127 drafted for steward placement). Two conditions, recorded at §C below.
+⚖ **AUTHORIZED 2026-08-25, jointly with PENDING-157** — jurist ruling, **placed by the steward as REVIEWED-127** (verified byte-identical to the draft at placement). Two conditions, recorded at §C below.
 
 ### ⚠ Read this first: the motivating evidence was recovered by luck, and that is the finding