Two gates the branch backlog turned red

Seven Driver citations came back with the merged branches. Each keeps its
engineering reason and its date, and loses the speaker: the overlap report, the
poster's legend rule, the network-change defect, the chart's provenance.

check:plural-forms crashed rather than failed. It built its locale list by
listing the catalogue directory, so a README.md moved in beside the locale
folders became a 'locale', passed the exists check because a file does exist,
and crashed readdirSync on a non-directory. It now filters to directories. The
gate on development has the same line and only survives because that README is
not there yet -- so this is a fix for development, not a merge artefact.

Both found by running the full 103-gate chain; the shortened chain the merge
produced ran neither.

internal/check-map-control-overlap.mjs

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
  * check-map-control-overlap — two controls pinned to the same corner of the dashboard map must not
  * land on top of each other.
  *
- * Driver, 2026-09-28 (test round 2, #3): "some map controls overlap each other".
+ * Reported 2026-09-28 (test round 2, #3): some map controls overlap each other.
  *
  * WHAT HAPPENED, because it is the interesting part. The projection toggle (.rd-proj) sits at
  * top:8px and the zoom toolbar (.rd-zoomtools) was pinned at top:34px — a hand-tuned number chosen

internal/check-plural-forms.mjs

@@ -13,12 +13,15 @@
  *     English string written "none | one | {n}" changes MEANING at n=0 under the map. Every pipe
  *     key is rendered at 0 and must not regress.
  */
-import { readFileSync, readdirSync, existsSync } from 'node:fs'
+import { readFileSync, readdirSync, existsSync, statSync } from 'node:fs'
 import { join } from 'node:path'
 
 const LOC_DIR = new URL('../library/i18n/locales/', import.meta.url).pathname
 const SRC_DIRS = [new URL('../plugin-designs/', import.meta.url).pathname, new URL('../library/', import.meta.url).pathname]
-const LOCALES = readdirSync(LOC_DIR).filter((d) => !d.startsWith('.'))
+// DIRECTORIES ONLY. This listed every entry, so a README.md beside the locale folders entered
+// the locale list, passed the existsSync below (a file does exist) and crashed readdirSync on a
+// non-directory. A note explaining a catalogue belongs beside it; the gate has to tolerate one.
+const LOCALES = readdirSync(LOC_DIR).filter((d) => !d.startsWith('.') && statSync(join(LOC_DIR, d)).isDirectory())
 const fail = []
 
 // Collect every pipe-bearing catalogue value, as ns.key -> { locale: value }

internal/check-poster-layout.mjs

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 /**
  * check-poster-layout — the exported poster is a LAYOUT, not a map with things painted on it.
  *
- * Driver, 2026-09-28, on the Simple Research poster: the legend must sit BESIDE the map, never over
+ * Required 2026-09-28, on the Simple Research poster: the legend must sit BESIDE the map, never over
  * it, with a proper header and footer.
  *
  * WHY BOTH ARMS. usePosterLayout.computeLayout has always produced the right geometry — it narrows
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ const px = (spec) => ({ width: Math.round(spec.widthIn * spec.dpi), height: Math
 
 // ── ARM A: the geometry, on the sheets the two real callers actually ask for ──
 const SHEETS = [
-  ['Simple Research, landscape (the Driver\'s poster)', { widthIn: 11, heightIn: 8.5, dpi: 200, orientation: 'landscape' }],
+  ['Simple Research, landscape (the reference poster)', { widthIn: 11, heightIn: 8.5, dpi: 200, orientation: 'landscape' }],
   ['Simple Research, portrait',                         { widthIn: 8.5, heightIn: 11, dpi: 200, orientation: 'portrait' }],
   ['country-posters, A4 portrait @150',                 { widthIn: 8.27, heightIn: 11.69, dpi: 150, orientation: 'portrait' }],
   ['a big 24x36 research poster @300',                  { widthIn: 24, heightIn: 36, dpi: 300, orientation: 'portrait' }],

internal/check-retry-fetch.mjs

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 /**
  * check-retry-fetch — a runtime data fetch survives a transport blip, and a real error still fails.
  *
- * THE DEFECT (Driver, 2026-09-28): net::ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED killed an embedded UPG-100's load.
+ * THE DEFECT (reported 2026-09-28): net::ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED killed an embedded UPG-100's load.
  *
  * ★ THE URLs IN HIS CONSOLE CANNOT BE FIXED, BECAUSE THEY DO NOT EXIST IN PRODUCTION. They were module
  * URLs — locale JSON with ?import, useOptionalT.js, useShadowStyles.js, useMapTheme.js. The build is

library/charts/LanguageTreeChart.vue

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 /**
  * LanguageTreeChart.vue — every language family a roster belongs to, as a radial tree on a whiteboard.
  *
- * Promoted from gospel-internet's GiTree (Driver brief §B). It is deliberately THIN: the drawing is
+ * Promoted from gospel-internet's GiTree (product brief §B). It is deliberately THIN: the drawing is
  * library/charts/whiteboard/tiered-points.js, the surface is library/maps/whiteboard-map.js, the
  * hierarchy is library/charts/whiteboard/language-tree-model.js and the camera is
  * library/charts/whiteboard/frame-target.js — all four tested headlessly. What is left here is wiring,

library/composables/retryFetch.js

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 /**
  * retryFetch.js — fetch(), with the same transient-blip retry the lazy components already get.
  *
- * ★ THE DEFECT AND WHAT IT IS NOT. The Driver hit net::ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED on an embedded UPG-100 and
+ * ★ THE DEFECT AND WHAT IT IS NOT. A reader hit net::ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED on an embedded UPG-100 and
  * the load died. The URLs in his console were module URLs — locale JSON with ?import, useOptionalT.js,
  * useShadowStyles.js, useMapTheme.js — which look like lazy loads that need retrying. They are not: the
  * production build is IIFE with inlineDynamicImports (vite.config.js:216-220), so every one of those
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
  * ★ BUT THE FAILURE CLASS IS REAL IN PRODUCTION, one layer down. A built bundle still makes runtime
  * requests — the boundaries geojson, the people-group list, the prayer statistics, a detail lookup, a
  * token service — and not one of them retried. The same wifi switch, VPN flap or sleep-wake that killed
- * the Driver's dev load takes out whichever of those happened to be in flight, and the feature is simply
+ * a dev load takes out whichever of those happened to be in flight, and the feature is simply
  * absent: an empty map, a missing outline, a statistic that never arrives. No error a reader can act on.
  *
  * So this is the fetch-shaped sibling of retryableAsyncComponent, deliberately with the SAME policy —