diff --git a/internal/check-zone-census.mjs b/internal/check-zone-census.mjs
index 2b5bd6129..6da27326a 100644
--- a/internal/check-zone-census.mjs
+++ b/internal/check-zone-census.mjs
@@ -17,11 +17,19 @@
 //
 // Usage: node internal/check-zone-census.mjs [postersDir]
 import { readFileSync, existsSync, readdirSync } from 'node:fs'
-import { resolve, join } from 'node:path'
-import { pathToFileURL } from 'node:url'
+import { resolve, join, dirname } from 'node:path'
+import { pathToFileURL, fileURLToPath } from 'node:url'
 
+// DOXA_REPO still wins, unchanged. Only the FALLBACK moved: it was an absolute path to one
+// author's worktree (/home/…/wt-packet), which check:no-abs-paths rejects outright — "a clone must
+// work on any machine" — and that gate is inside build:unlocked, so the whole build went red for
+// every builder, not just for whoever lacked that directory.
+// The replacement is the idiom check-no-absolute-paths.mjs names in its own failure text, and the
+// one every sibling script here uses: resolve from this file. The data it reads
+// (plugin-designs/my-upg-100-list/data) is present in this repo, so the default now resolves for
+// anyone who clones it, and a caller pointing at a different worktree still exports DOXA_REPO.
 const REPO = process.env.DOXA_REPO
-  || resolve('/home/lk10x/Workspace/eco-dx/root-doxa-maps/wt-packet')
+  || resolve(dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url)), '..')
 const DATA = join(REPO, 'plugin-designs', 'my-upg-100-list', 'data')
 const POSTERS = resolve(process.argv[2]
   || join(REPO, 'library', 'scripts', 'posters', 'out', 'posters'))