#3141 measured this site as unconvertible, and I twice reported the
cause as a production constraint. It was not. This is the instrumented
answer to the probe I recommended there and then ran myself.
## The isolation
| configuration | result |
|---|---|
| flag only, no conversion | **8 passed** → the orphan arm is *not* the
cause |
| flag + conversion | **5 failed** → the conversion is |
| same, with a realistic mock store | **8 passed** → the mock was the
cause |
`triage-stuck-requeue-preserve-draft.test.ts` defined neither
`getTaskWorkflowSelection` nor its async twin — exactly like
`triage.test.ts` did before #3189. Both made
`resolveWorkflowIrForTaskWithProvenance` **throw** and take its catch
branch: the *"could not ask"* shape, which a production store never
presents.
So the 5 failures I deferred as a possible semantics change were the
same harness gap in a second file — confirmed, not argued.
## What changes
**`selectionAbsent`** marks the determinate case: the store *answered*
"no selection", so the workflow is the default and its IR is in hand.
Added as a **separate field, not a third `source` value** — `source ===
"default"` is compared in **31 places** in `self-healing.ts` meaning "be
conservative", and a new enum value would silently stop matching every
one of them while still compiling and still passing on a default board.
**`recoverApprovedTask`** now accepts a legacy `triage` row *explicitly*
(its workflow does not declare that column) instead of depending on
`resolvePlannerLanes` **failing** and falling back to legacy ids.
Correctness resting on a resolver's failure mode is what this removes.
## Measured
| | result |
|---|---|
| broad suite (triage / self-healing / recovery / planning) | **77
files, 1302 tests passed** |
| the three directly affected suites, post-rebase | **245 passed** |
| the flag is load-bearing | conversion **without** it: **18 failed \|
221 passed** |
| `census --strict`, `check-fnxc-future-dates` | exit 0 |
**The inert-sync-lane count is unchanged at 7 for `triage.ts`.** This
site was never among the counted guards, so this is **not** a ratchet
reduction — stating that rather than letting a conversion imply one. It
removes a real inert dependency the ratchet cannot see, which is the
blind-spot class this phase has been mapping.
## Why this took four attempts
I described this blocker at four levels: merged intake/hold, orphan-arm
scoping, identity verification (filed as **#3187**, closed as wrong),
and finally the harness. **The two I instrumented held; the two I
reasoned to did not.** The fix here is the probe I wrote down for
someone else — which is where it should have started.
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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