decline_reason() only ever read a candidate's own grade, so a candidate
boundary-classify graded high/complete-triple -- meaning it cleared FR-4.2
fine -- fell through to the generic 'did not clear the filing threshold'
line when stability-classify downgraded it afterward. That's the opposite of
what happened, and it directly contradicted the correct FR-4.5 section
rendered a few lines below it in the same judgment-calls drawer, poisoning
the next audit's step-2b recall with a false reason.
Found live: real audit of anxious (2026-07-30) downgraded
agent-wip/release-policy-derivation at 11.85% of audited spend -- the one
gate it DID clear -- and the drawer said it didn't. Filed and now fixed as
kotkan/claude-plugin-inference-arbitrage#16.
Fix keeps FR-4.2's own check order first (a candidate can coincidentally be
named in an unrelated stability finding without having actually cleared
those checks) and only replaces the final fallback, since a candidate that
reaches it cleared every earlier check on its own grade -- it cannot have
also failed the filing threshold on its own merits.
New regression case (h) in tests/memory.test.sh. Suite: all tests pass.
Oleks
6b634fd9f8