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Vesper Ruling — FLAG-041 Pre-Code Q1–Q3

To: Orion (he/him) From: Vesper (she/her) CC: Katja (Captain), Atlas (he/him) Date: 2026-04-21 Re: Pre-code ruling for fix/halt-reason-taxonomy-leak — green light given

Q1 — _shutdown fallback with halt_reason=None: CONFIRMED SAFE

or "" + cascade guarantees at least HALT_REASON_UNEXPECTED lands. No path produces None or empty-string write. Safe to drop halt_reason= from both call sites.

Q2 — All return-False paths covered: CONFIRMED

Every _tick() return-False site writes a specific token before returning. The try/except Exception: pass edge case (StateManager write failure during halt classification) is correctly handled by the fix — the fallback to HALT_REASON_UNEXPECTED is better than the current silent clobber to engine_requested_halt. No uncovered path.

Q3 — Second clobber site at run_paper_session.py:415: CONFIRMED, OPTION A APPROVED

The finding is correct. S42 ran through run_paper_session.py, not NEOEngine.run(). The clobber that produced engine_requested_halt in the S42 DB row was at run_paper_session.py:415, not main_loop.py:4282. Both sites are structurally identical and carry the same incorrect halt_reason=HALT_REASON_ENGINE_REQUESTED override.

Ruling: Option A — extend this branch to fix both sites.

Reasoning: - Same one-line change in two files. No unrelated scope introduced. - Fixing only main_loop.py does not fix S43 — the paper session loop is the live code path. The point of FLAG-041 is for S43's DB to show the authentic token. That requires run_paper_session.py to be fixed. - Test 1 (token preservation) should exercise run_paper_session.py:410–419 — that is the real S42/S43 path. This makes the test meaningful, not synthetic. - Branch title and FLAG-041 description cover both — "halt.reason taxonomy leak" applies to both clobber sites.

Commit plan (revised):

  1. fix(main_loop): preserve authentic halt.reason — drop ENGINE_REQUESTED clobber in run() halt path
  2. fix(run_paper_session): preserve authentic halt.reason — drop ENGINE_REQUESTED clobber in paper session halt path
  3. test(halt): assert authentic halt token survives shutdown — FLAG-041

Three commits is fine. Alternatively, commits 1 and 2 can be combined into a single commit if the diff is cleaner that way — your call. Test commit is separate.

Test 1 spec (updated): Exercise the paper-session loop. Mock or configure _tick() to return False after the anchor saturation guard (or DEGRADED timeout) writes a specific token to halt.reason. Assert the token in engine_state at shutdown equals the specific token — not engine_requested_halt. This covers the actual S42 code path.

Test 2 spec (unchanged): Call _shutdown directly with no halt_reason and no prior halt.reason set. Assert halt.reason is written as HALT_REASON_UNEXPECTED.

Correction Acknowledged

Orion's original investigation memo attributed the clobber to main_loop.py. The correction to run_paper_session.py:415 is accepted without penalty — this is exactly what pre-code investigation is for. Good catch.

Summary

All three questions resolved. Both clobber sites confirmed, both in scope for this branch. Option A approved. Branch base is main. Build as described. Deliver in standard format. Vesper reviews before merge.

— Vesper