Two core clusters. 6 converted, 2 flagged.
## Two silent failures
**No card was ever stale.** `task-age-staleness.ts` applies its signal
only to the mid-flight and review lanes — a card in a hold or terminal
lane is waiting or finished, not stale. Both lanes were named by id, so
on a renamed board the signal returned `undefined` for **every** card
and the stale-card warning never appeared anywhere on the board.
**An agent could claim a finished card.** `claimTaskForAgent`'s terminal
guard was `column === "done" || column === "archived"`. On a renamed
board neither matched, so the claim **succeeded** and the agent began
work on completed output.
## The threshold selectors are a separate literal, and half-converting
is worse than neither
`task-age-staleness` has two independent uses of `in-progress`: the
**lane gate** that decides whether the signal applies, and the
**threshold selectors** that pick which warning/critical numbers to
measure against.
Converting only the gate admits a renamed-WIP card and then measures it
against the **review** threshold — a wrong number, silently. Both are
converted, and each is revert-proofed on its own:
| reverted | result |
|---|---|
| the lane gate | 3 of the new cases fail (`expected undefined to be
defined`) |
| the threshold selectors | the threshold case fails — a renamed WIP
card gets the review threshold |
No new seam for either: the staleness signal already took a `context`
object, and its one production caller (`task-store/reads.ts`) already
holds a **per-pass IR cache** for precisely this kind of resolution.
## Cost stated rather than hidden
The `reads.ts` resolution is **unconditional**, where the hold-column
read directly beside it is gated on `task.paused`. That asymmetry is
deliberate: the lanes this needs are exactly what decides whether the
signal applies at all, so there is no cheaper gate available ahead of
it. With the shared per-pass cache that is a struct build per card, not
an IR read.
## Flagged and left counted
`formatCurrentTaskLine` is a pure formatter over `Pick<Task, "column">`
whose output **prints** the column name for a human reader — same class
as `github-tracking-comments.ts:165`. It also degrades gracefully: the
"(not active — X)" wording is lost on a renamed board, but "(X)" is
still accurate, just less specific. Threading a resolution into a string
builder to pick a word is the wrong trade.
## The recurring blind spot, fourth time
**None of the 12 existing staleness cases could have caught this** —
`lifecycle` is optional and they all omit it, so they assert the legacy
fallback. Same for the reconciler's 33 (#2737) and `TaskReviewTab`'s 45
(#2744).
This is now a consistent property of the optional-flags seam: **the
existing suite stays green through the conversion and through a broken
one.** Every file in this program needs at least one case that supplies
flags, or the conversion is untested in both directions. Worth making an
explicit review criterion rather than something each worker rediscovers.
## Verification
`pnpm test:gate` **GREEN** (158 + 10 + 487 + 71) · **31 passed** across
staleness / routing-policy / dispatch suites · core `tsc` clean · `pnpm
lint` clean · census `--strict` exits 0.
🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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