**Claimed on #2728 before starting.** The merge path:
`merge-queue-ops-2.ts` + `merger.ts` — **10 → 2**, both survivors
flagged with reasons.
## A merged PR never advanced its task on a renamed board
`applyPrMergedTransition` is what moves a card when GitHub reports a PR
merged. Every guard in it was a default-lineage literal, and they all
failed **in the same direction**:
| guard | renamed board |
|---|---|
| `column === "done"` → skip as already-done | never matched, so a
complete card was re-processed |
| `column !== "in-review"` → bail `wrong-column` | always matched, so a
card **sitting in review** bailed |
Net effect: **a PR merged on GitHub never advances its Fusion task.**
The operator sees a merged PR whose card sits in review forever — which
reads as a broken webhook, so it gets debugged in the wrong place
entirely. That is the most expensive property of this defect class: it
does not just fail, it misdirects.
One snapshot now covers the pre-check, the deliberate **re-read** (a
merge can land between checks), and the **move target**. The target is
asserted in the test alongside the guards, because converting guards
alone would admit the card and then move it to a column the board does
not declare.
## merger.ts
- **The orphan-stash liveness guard** classified every finished task as
unfinished on a renamed board, so orphaned stashes were never cleaned
up. Unioned with the legacy ids: too strict here leaves clutter, too
loose **discards a stash whose task is still running**, so
over-inclusion is the safe direction.
- **The worktree-conflict scan** filters by worktree *path* before
resolving lanes. The naive order — resolve, then filter — is exactly
what made the github-tracking reconciler scan proportional to task
history (#2714 review). Lesson transferred rather than re-learned.
- The deprecated `aiMergeTask` already-finalized guard.
## Two flagged, not converted
**`merge-queue-ops-2`'s sync enqueue guard** runs inside
`store.db.transactionImmediate`. A synchronous lane resolution reads
`getTaskWorkflowSelectionImpl`, which returns `undefined`
**unconditionally in PostgreSQL mode** — so a "conversion" there would
drop the census by one and behave exactly as the literal (the finding
from #2703). Converting it properly means making the path async or
pushing the trait read into SQL: store architecture, not a call site.
Left literal **with that note**, so the next worker does not turn it
into a false green.
`merger.ts`'s last comparison is the same class.
## Pre-existing red, reported not folded
**22 failures in
`packages/dashboard/src/__tests__/routes-github.test.ts`** — spec
revise/rebuild and approve/reject-plan, all asserting moves to
**`triage`, the column U11 deleted**. Verified by reverting my diff and
re-running: identical 22. Same stale-literal-in-a-test class as the two
assertions #2720 fixed, and it is 22 tests pinning a column that does
not exist — worth someone owning deliberately rather than as a rider
here.
## Verification
census **10 → 2** · `pnpm test:gate` **487 / 71** · 23/23 across three
merger suites · 4 new cases, **2 red on revert** · `tsc` clean in core
and engine · `pnpm lint` clean.
## Also examined and deliberately left alone
- **`live-agent-count.ts` (6 guards)** — every literal there is the
*documented degradation path* for a task shape that was not enriched,
and both production callers already enrich (`useExecutorStats`, `fn
project`). Converting them converts nothing; deleting them removes the
fallback that fixtures rely on. The invariant that matters is **caller
enrichment**, which is not a literal at all.
- **`task-merge.ts` (6 guards)** — `getTaskMergeBlocker` is a **pure**
function with no store; its callers inject `resolveTask`. Resolving
lanes needs a matching injected resolver, which is an interface change
across every caller. Also worth a decision first: its dependency check
accepts `in-review` as satisfied while the store's `blockedBy`
computation (#2720) does not — **two definitions of "dependency
satisfied" in one codebase**, and I am not settling that one silently
inside a vocabulary sweep.
🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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