Docs only, extending the entry #2748 landed. Opening it because the
fleet reads the census total as its completion bar, and that total
excludes a whole predicate class — a measurement that should not live in
a chat reply.
## Measured on `origin/main`
- **47** array/Set literals of two or more lifecycle ids, in 35 files.
- **25 are membership predicates against a task's column** —
`SET.has(task.column)` / `ARRAY.includes(task.column)` — in 19 files.
Two are documented fallbacks behind a resolved primary, so **~23 are
unconverted guards**.
- The census scans `===` / `!==` against a column. **None of these is a
comparison, so none is counted.**
| file | constant |
| --- | --- |
| `cli/src/commands/task.ts` (3) | `retryReviewColumns` |
| `dashboard/app/components/TaskCard.tsx` (2) | `TIME_INDICATOR_COLUMNS`
|
| `engine/src/eval-followups.ts` (2) | `OPEN_COLUMNS` |
| `engine/src/merger.ts` (2) | `sourceTerminal` |
| `engine/src/task-revert.ts` (2) | `REVERTABLE_COLUMNS` |
| `core/src/agent-role-policy.ts` (1) | `IMPLEMENTATION_TASK_COLUMNS` |
## One is a proven live defect
`isImplementationTask` is
`IMPLEMENTATION_TASK_COLUMNS.has(task.column)`, and
`evaluateImplementationTaskBind` short-circuits to `allowed: true` when
it returns false. **On a renamed board every agent is bind-compatible
with every task** — the role check that stops a liaison being handed
implementation work (the NEXT-871 loop FN-7851 fixed) does not apply.
It surfaced only because a reviewer questioned a coverage claim in one
of my dispatch tests (#2739). Passing an agent wasn't proof the
evaluator ran, so I asserted a `custom`-role agent must be *refused* —
and that test failed against production. Flagged at the site in #2739,
not fixed: `isImplementationTask` is a sync pure predicate with no
store, and making the routing policy async is a behaviour change to
agent admission.
## What this does and does not argue
The census is the right instrument — AST-based, honest about what it
measures, and it has caught real drift in both directions (it failed on
me in #2724 when merged conversions moved an inventory *down*). This is
not an argument against it.
It is an argument against reading **"backlog: N" as "N guards remain"**.
The same shape already appeared in the archived gate (#2724), where the
rule is additionally encoded in Drizzle predicates and raw `sql`
templates that no comparison scan can see. Two independent classes now,
found the same way — by looking at what the instrument's definition
excludes.
**Extending the census to count membership predicates is deliberately
left to you, not done here.** It would move every worker's number
mid-fleet, and deciding which sets are lifecycle guards versus
board-config definitions or type unions is exactly the judgement
`DELIBERATE-LITERAL` exists for — 47 collections would each need that
call.
## Verification
`pnpm lint` clean · census `--strict` exits 0 · no code changes.
🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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