Five lifecycle-column fixes the census **structurally cannot see**. Each
gate is a `Set` or array literal — a *definition*, not a comparison — so
no backlog entry ever pointed at any of these files. Found by grepping
for lane-shaped list literals after the same shape surfaced in
`duplicate-intake` and `blocker-fanout` (both merged via #2780), then
confirmed by reading each USE site.
**On opening this:** I offered twice to fold these into a PR and kept
them on handoff refs to respect one-open-PR-per-worker. They have now
sat unadopted across several cycles while `main` moved, and two of them
destroy or duplicate work. Opening is the reversible call — **close it
if it breaks queue policy** and I will keep them on the branch.
## What is in it
| commit | defect on a renamed board | severity |
|---|---|---|
| `beb107a7bc` | assignment load-balancing **defeated** —
`assignmentLoad` stays empty, every candidate reads as load 0, the sort
falls through to its stable `createdAt` tiebreak, so **one agent wins
every assignment** while the rest idle | distribution |
| `cf4b59e1cb` | the zombie sweep **deletes LIVE ephemeral workers** |
**destroys work** |
| `5fe004ae64` | eval follow-up dedup sees **zero open tasks**, so every
run re-files follow-ups it already filed | **duplicate cards** |
| `a1021de8b2` | agents keep a **"working on" indicator for finished
cards** | stale UI |
| `86680d1220` | the **Files tab never loads** — the fetch never fires |
silent empty |
### The one that destroys work
`shouldDeleteOnSweep` tested a hard-coded terminal `Set`, then fell
through to `return task.column !== "in-progress"`. On a renamed board
**both halves miss, and they compound in the worst order**: the terminal
test fails, control reaches the fallthrough, and `"building" !==
"in-progress"` is `true`. An ephemeral worker **actively executing a
task** is classified as a zombie and deleted. Nothing logs.
Its fallback is **deliberately asymmetric**, and the comment says why:
an unresolvable workflow keeps the legacy literals rather than guessing.
Failing to reap a dead worker costs a slot; reaping a live one destroys
work in flight. Those are not symmetric, so uncertainty fails toward
keeping the worker.
## Verification
Verified **as a set**, not only per-branch:
- `pnpm test:gate` — **161 / 13 / 487 / 71**
- engine suites (assignment, ephemeral, eval-followups) — **44 passed**
- dashboard suites (agent-task-link, useSessionFiles) — **16 passed**
- `tsc` engine + dashboard server + dashboard app — clean
- `pnpm lint` clean · census `--strict` exits 0
**Revert-proven individually.** Restoring each literal fails its own
case: the renamed-wip zombie case, the renamed-wip assignment case, the
renamed-lane dedup case, the sanitizer ratchet, and both
`useSessionFiles` role cases.
## Two honesty notes, flagged rather than buried
**`a1021de8b2`'s guard is STRUCTURAL, not behavioural.**
`sanitizeAgentTaskLinks` is a closure inside `createApiRoutes`,
reachable only by standing up the full express app. The ratchet asserts
the source — resolver threaded per task, bare literal call gone, cache
shared, fallback retained — and **fails on revert**, verified. It is not
a substitute for a behavioural test; whoever owns the dashboard server
should add one if that seam grows.
**`useSessionFiles`'s negative case passed in isolation and failed in
the suite.** Hooks are not unmounted between cases there, so a prior
case's in-flight fetch landed inside it. That is the classic shape of a
test that gets "fixed" by reordering; it now asserts a **delta** against
the pre-render call count, which is independent of what leaks in.
## Deliberately NOT included
`worktree-pool.ts:1205` — the sixth site from the same sweep. It **fails
safe**: a missed match means the skip does not fire, so the branch is
added to `activeBranches` and *protected* from cleanup. The cost is
stale branches accumulating, not deletion. It also sits in the merger's
branch-reaping path, where the opposite error destroys work, so it
deserves its owner's judgement rather than a drive-by conversion.
Flagged, not guessed.
Also still open and unclaimed: roughly 69 untriaged literal-list sites
across engine/dashboard/cli. The grep is one line and the file list is
on #2775 — with the measured caveat that about half are false positives
on shape alone (`LEGACY_*` names, seeds unioned with resolved values,
and `roles: ["triage"]`, which is an `AgentCapability`, not the deleted
column). Only the use site settles it.
🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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