## Census
| | column guards |
|---|---|
| before | **88** |
| after | **87** |
## What
`ephemeral-worker-manager.ts` answers its unresolvable-workflow default
two ways, two lines apart:
```ts
if (TERMINAL_TASK_COLUMNS.has(task.column)) return true; // named set — not counted
return task.column !== "in-progress"; // inline — counted
```
Both are the **same documented fallback** — the block carries one
`DELIBERATE-LITERAL` marker covering both — but only the inline one was
on the backlog, because the census reads comparisons regardless of which
branch they sit in while a set is a definition.
Naming it makes the pair consistent and stops the site reading as
unconverted debt.
## Correction to my own flag in #3064
I listed `ephemeral-worker-manager`, `backlog-pressure-reporter`,
`merge-queue-ops` and `lifecycle-ops` as *"plain unconverted guards with
no resolution in scope."*
**That was wrong for all four.** Each already imports the resolvers — 7,
4, 3 and 2 references respectively. I wrote the flag without checking,
which is the same mistake as an untested deferral rationale, just inside
a PR body instead of an issue.
Re-examined, the other three are genuinely harder rather than unresolved
— and these are the real reasons:
- **`backlog-pressure-reporter:197`** classifies a **dependency**, a
different row from the one the caller resolved. Per-dependency
resolution is needed or it repeats the wrong-row shape that `taskRevert`
is blocked on.
- **`lifecycle-ops:655`** guards an emit whose **target** is also a
literal (`to: "archived"`). Converting the guard alone leaves the pair
inconsistent — the move-target half is invisible to this census.
- **`merge-queue-ops:352`** is an early return on an already-complete
task inside a merge path that resolves lanes elsewhere; the placement
needs its own judgement about which resolution it should share.
They stay flagged, now with the real reason rather than an unchecked
one.
## Measured
| check | result |
|---|---|
| ephemeral-worker suites | green |
| four gates + strict census | green |
| engine `tsc` | clean |
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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