# SCR-1 — the scout half's 8-week cadence criterion fired on 2026-10-12 and changed no instruction text; its only record was a marker file each run overwrites

status: **dismissed as a queue row** · raised and argued by the frontier lens,
panel run 40 (2026-10-19) · killed at the chair's adversarial pass · class:
registration hygiene (G5) applied to the panel's own governance · effort would
have been ~0.1 pd

## What is true (verified at HEAD `6c8d2d0`, not taken on report)

The panel's scout half carries its own kill criterion
(`ops/RESEARCH_PANEL.md:51-52`): *"if 8 weeks of scouting yield no proposal
that survives triage, the scout half reverts to watch-only **and that gets
recorded**."* It was pinned 2026-10-08, came due 2026-10-12, and fired while
the panel was dark (10-12 → 10-15).

It is recorded in none of the places a reader reaches:

| site | what it says today |
|---|---|
| `ops/RESEARCH_PANEL.md:24-52` — the criterion's own home | still describes the SCOUT half as active, with its four bars, and states the clause as a future conditional |
| `ops/ROUTINES.md:78` — the authoritative roster, and §5's designated site for a falsified cadence | still asserts *"the frontier lens both WATCHES activation conditions and SCOUTS new un-backfillable forward captures"* |
| `ops/prompts/panel.md:46` — the live dispatch text's mirror | still instructs a SCOUT half, and will dispatch one tomorrow |
| `RESEARCH.md` | `grep -i scout` → zero hits |
| `research/` + `research/queue/` | every mention is **forward-looking** — "reverts on 2026-10-12", "6.14 of 8". Nothing says it did. |
| `beacon/panel` `last-run.txt` (run 39) | the only record — and **every run overwrites it** |

`grep -rn "last-run" src/ scripts/ .github/ ops/` returns only the eight
prompts that *write* the file. Nothing in the system *reads* its content: the
beacon branches are read for commit **existence** (routine liveness,
`ops/DAILY_AUDIT.md:248-253`), never for text. A zero-row panel day writes no
PR, so the fact never reaches the Friday digest either.

## Why it is dismissed as a ROW, and what was done instead

Three reasons, in order of weight.

1. **This dismissal is itself most of the fix.** What SCR-1 asked for was a
   dated, greppable, in-repo record that the criterion fired. This file is
   that record — in `research/queue/dismissed/`, which triage sweeps on a
   14-day cadence (`ops/QUEUE_TRIAGE.md:94-102`) and which every panel reads
   as step one of its prior-art check. The expensive part of the ask is
   discharged at the cost of a dismissal file rather than a queue slot.
2. **The queue cap.** `open/` held 11 of 12. This run opens one row — BGS-1
   (`open/bgs-1-box-gating-dropped-detectors-its-tests-cannot-see.md`), a
   four-leg loudness/moat defect in #251 that takes the queue to the cap. A
   second row would have to displace it, and this is bookkeeping against a
   tier of tests that currently runs nowhere and a sleeve that can go silent
   holding an open option spread. That is not a close call.
3. **The remaining residue is prose in `ops/`, which the panel may not write
   and which has killed three rows of this shape already** — RDR-1, TRG-1 and
   OAD-1, all dismissed inside the last two weeks as "the fix is an owner
   prose edit no implementer may make". The frontier lens argued a real
   distinction from TRG-1 (there, the stale prompt routed to a *current*
   canonical file; here the canonical file is itself stale, so the mitigation
   TRG-1 died on does not exist). That argument is correct and is why this is
   a dismissal with a live reopen condition rather than a closure — but it
   does not make a fourth row of the same shape the right instrument.

**Discharged immediately, at zero cost, by this run:** the fired-criterion
fact is carried forward verbatim in run 40's `beacon/panel` marker, so the
overwrite does not erase it, and it is routed as a `NEEDS-OWNER:` line for the
steward (record the reversion in `ops/RESEARCH_PANEL.md` #3 and
`ops/ROUTINES.md:78`; both are one dated sentence).

**Also recorded, because it is the generalisable half:** `RESEARCH_PANEL.md`
#3's phrase *"and that gets recorded"* names **no site and no reader**. That
is CLK-1's unpinned-evaluator defect applied to the panel's own governance —
a criterion that fires into a passive verb. Whatever the owner decides about
the scout, the clause should name a location.

## Reopen conditions (any one)

1. **A panel run after 2026-10-19 reports a SCOUT section** — i.e. the retired
   half is still being dispatched and the stale instruction text is actually
   steering behaviour, not merely sitting there. Reopens as a P0-adjacent
   governance row, because at that point the shop has a kill criterion that
   fired and did not bind.
2. **A panel run after 2026-10-19 returns a capture proposal from the scout
   half.** This is the outcome `NORTHSTAR.md` §2 names — manufacturing an item
   to reset a clock — and it reopens regardless of the proposal's merit.
3. **The 2026-10-26 panel run finds `ops/RESEARCH_PANEL.md` and
   `ops/ROUTINES.md` still describing the scout half as live** with no dated
   append, i.e. the steward routing did not land in a week. Reopens as a row,
   cap or no cap, since by then three independent routings will have failed.
4. **The owner rules that a beacon commit message is a sufficient record site
   for a fired cadence criterion.** Then this closes permanently — but
   `RESEARCH_PANEL.md` #3 must be amended to *name the beacon*, so the next
   fired criterion has a pinned site instead of a passive verb. Recorded here
   so that ruling cannot be made without its corollary.