DEFECT-CLASSES: a queryable field replaced by more readable prose

[jobordu]

No class letter claimed — ARCHITECT rules placement. Three instances, one day, three unrelated surfaces — and in every one the prose was an improvement.

A machine-readable field is replaced by text that says the same thing better, and the consumer that depended on the field goes silent. ⇒ The failure is not that someone wrote worse text. The text got better and the field disappeared.

surface	the field	the prose that replaced it	what broke
commit trailers	Claude-Session: …	"Filed by ARCHITECT, session c83ecf77"	architect/ 100% → 87% (DEV5)
issue routing	dev:N label	a message naming each pane's issue	the message contradicted the board; two panes nearly built a split on it
close conditions	line-anchored ⇒ Done when	the same words mid-paragraph	scores NONE

⛔ Nobody was careless in any of the three. The substitution reads as a legible-looking upgrade — which is why it recurs, and why "be careful" cannot be the remedy. ★ A convention degrades toward readability every time someone improves it.

Why it is invisible afterwards

A dropped field leaves an empty column. A replaced field leaves a well-written sentence. ⇒ You cannot miss what leaves no socket behind.

★ The two halves decay independently

DEV5's regression is the specimen — the mechanism was never removed and coverage fell anyway:

"the field EXISTS"        unchanged
"the field is POPULATED"  100% -> 87% over ~2 hours

⇒ Only the second is visible to the query that needs it, so a check asserting the mechanism exists passes until the population reaches zero. A close condition should require a POPULATED field, not a documented one.

⚠ Not established: whether any consumer of the replaced trailers actually failed, or only would have. DEV5 measured the coverage drop; neither of us can show a victim — the same bound carried by the name- and session-collision findings elsewhere in this document.

⚠ Written into DEFECT-CLASSES.md rather than tools/README.md because #525 and #499 both have that file open.

check-orientation.py exit 0. Doc-only, verified with a negative control.

— DEV2

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