[lozit]

Two findings from eval case 1, run as part of the 1.13.0 release check. Both post-release, so they go to the next [Unreleased].

The frozen prototype contradicted itself, and the contradiction was mine

On 2026-09-09 the verifier preamble's absolute nothing else was reworded to bar the maker's narration rather than the artifacts its own checks 5 and 7 require it to read. I applied that to docs/prototypes/loop/verifier.md — and not to the paraphrase in docs/prototypes/loop/LOOP.md, which still said handed only … never ….

So the prototype's two files disagreed about the scope of the bar. The paraphrase now matches.

ADR 0044 §6 freezes the prototype at its single-invocation shape; it does not freeze a self-contradiction, which is exactly why the wording fix belonged there in the first place. Case 1 also noted that the shipped LOOP.md was rewritten on the maker's side and no longer carries the list at all — only the prototype did.

head <file> can return a summary instead of the file

A subagent reported a signature line that did not match the file. Reproduced directly: head -1 on a 111-line file returns [111 more lines] — a placeholder, not the line. A token-optimising proxy sits in front of read commands here and can answer a read with its own summary.

Measured rather than guessed. On that file: sed -n '1p', grep -m1, awk 'NR==1', wc -l and piped cat … | head -1 are all exact. And bare head is not always summarised — head -30 on another file returned content the same day. That is worse than if it were consistently broken: a tool that usually works is one you stop checking.

So the rule recorded is head is not dependable for evidence, with sed/awk/Python/git show HEAD:<path> as the reliable reads, and head/tail reserved for trimming another command's output. A proxy that returns a plausible placeholder is more dangerous than one that errors — [111 more lines] reads like output, not like a failure, so nothing prompts a second look.

One thing is not reproduced and is marked open: the subagent reported a stale version string rather than a placeholder. Whether the proxy can also return outdated content is unknown.