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+# Seven Links — The Review Chain and Where It Broke
+
+Issue: gHashTag/trios#1134 · Parent: #1090
+
+## What this document is
+
+The review chain runs from the Queen's specification to the reviewer's
+verdict to the gate's decision. Seven links in that chain broke during the
+build of the delegation system — each one silently, each one reading as
+"the work is not good enough" when the chain itself was the thing that
+failed. This document names all seven, describes how each broke, how each
+was repaired, and names the eighth that was found at the end of the road.
+
+The companion document
+[`night-of-the-review-chain.md`](night-of-the-review-chain.md) covers the
+first four in greater depth; this document stands on its own as the full
+account.
+
+## The pattern
+
+Every link breaks the same way: the question never reaches the judge, or
+the answer never reaches the gate. The criterion does not fail — it stays
+`.unchecked`, which reads as "nobody looked" when the chain was the thing
+that broke. A confident wrong answer is worse than silence, because it
+looks exactly like the gate working.
+
+## The seven links
+
+### 1. The brief — files the criteria name never arrive
+
+The brief is the evidence package sent to the reviewer: criteria, diff,
+and the full contents of touched files. When the brief did not carry the
+files a criterion names, a task whose owned path was a test file but whose
+contract was about the application could not be judged (#1119). The
+reviewer had nothing to read, so the verdict read "could not check" —
+honest uncertainty masking a missing payload.
+
+**Repaired** by `fileContentsForReview` reading every path in the task's
+`ownedPaths` from the working tree, not just the files the diff touched.
+The `adversaryPromptMarker` (`"adversary-review"`,
+`rings/SR-00/QueenReviewVerdictRequest.swift`) proves the brief that
+reached the reviewer is the brief this chain built — a worker's prompt
+carries no marker, so a swapped brief fails `isAdversarialBrief` and the
+verdicts are discarded.
+
+### 2. The root of paths — resolution against the wrong directory
+
+`fileContentsForReview` resolved every file path against the git root —
+the repository toplevel — rather than `ProjectPaths.root`, the project
+directory. For this project the git root sits one level above the project
+directory, so every criterion-named file was silently missing. The miss
+was swallowed by a `fileExists` guard that dropped the file instead of
+reporting it as absent (#1121).
+
+**Repaired** by resolving from `ProjectPaths.root`. A file that does not
+exist on the working tree is now included with an explicit
+`(file not found)` marker rather than dropped, so the gap is visible to
+the reviewer instead of swallowed.
+
+### 3. The response format — the parser cannot read what the reviewer wrote
+
+The reviewer formats its response in markdown — bold numbers (`**1.`),
+bullets (`- 1.`), checkboxes (`[x] 1.`) — and the parser had to see
+through the decoration to the number underneath. A response the parser
+could not match left the criterion absent, which read as `.unchecked`
+(#1122). The parser's own comment listed bare and checkbox variants but
+never markdown.
+
+**Repaired** by `runVerdictParserHandlesMarkdownNumbers`
+(`tests/swift/ChatSSEEndToEndTest.swift`), which feeds a real reviewer
+response and asserts all verdicts parse. Each decoration variant is
+recognised; a decorated line with no verdict keyword stays absent —
+lenience to decoration must not become a willingness to guess.
+
+### 4. The excerpt that follows the diff, not the criteria
+
+`ChatViewModel.swift` is over five thousand lines, and the brief carried
+its first 500. A criterion about behaviour below the declarations read
+"could not check" because the reviewer was shown lines 1–500 and the
+criterion was about line 800 (#1123).
+
+**Repaired** by `regionExtractedContent` narrowing each file to regions
+around names the criteria mention. When the region selection finds
+nothing, the excerpt says so rather than hiding the gap behind the file's
+opening lines.
+
+### 5. The excerpt on an empty diff — re-review shows the wrong lines
+
+The region extraction in link 4 worked when there was a diff, but fell
+back to the first 500 lines when there was not. A re-review of finished
+work is always an empty diff, which is exactly the case the fallback
+ruins: the criteria are about the implementation, and the first 500 lines
+are the declarations (#1124).
+
+**Repaired** by the same `regionExtractedContent` path covering the
+no-diff case. When no criteria names are found in a file, the excerpt
+prints an explicit notice:
+
+```
+(none of the criteria names found in this file — looked for: ChatViewModel, fileContentsForReview)
+```
+
+The truncation marker (`… (truncated: 500 of 1234 lines)`) was added in
+the same pass, so the reviewer always knows whether a file ended or was
+cut.
+
+### 6. The phantom deletion — a stale baseline turns a file into a removal
+
+On an empty branch the diff was taken against a baseline captured after
+an earlier run's work, so a file sitting on disk arrived at the reviewer
+as `deleted file mode 100644` — 119 lines removed. The reviewer answered
+"unmet" twice, and it was right about the document it was given. A
+confident wrong "no" is worse than silence: it looks exactly like the gate
+working (#1132).
+
+**Repaired** by an empty branch having nothing to compare and saying so,
+instead of presenting a file that exists as removed.
+
+### 7. The premature verdict — the gate decides before the evidence arrives
+
+The log order was flat:
+
+```
+15:15:58  Review command applied
+15:16:04  Reviewer returned 2 verdict(s) for 2 criterion(s)
+```
+
+Acceptance decided six seconds before the evidence existed and never came
+back to it. Six links damaged the question; this one does not wait for
+the answer. Everything that read as "the gate refuses" was, at the last
+step, a gate that had already refused before anyone spoke (#1133).
+
+**Repaired** by acceptance waiting for its evidence: verdicts are
+recorded, then the decision follows, and the log order reflects the
+causal order.
+
+## The eighth link
+
+The proposal carried 2,010 files. The base branch pointed at the remote
+default so the Queen would stop merging into the branch a person was
+working on, but a bee's branch was cut from that working branch — a night
+of commits ahead of `dev`. The diff against `dev` was the night, not the
+bee. Both extremes were wrong: the current branch merges into somebody's
+work; the default branch proposes everything. The answer is the point the
+bee's branch was cut from (#1135).
+
+Found by finally reaching the end of the road — the first task to go the
+whole way from delegate to merge since #1102.
+
+## What the chain has in common
+
+Every link was invisible until the step before it worked. Every one broke
+silently: the criterion stayed `.unchecked` or received a confident wrong
+answer, and the failure read as honest judgement rather than a broken
+pipe. The fixes all do the same thing — make the gap visible. The marker
+proves the brief was sent. The project root proves the files were found.
+The parser test proves the response was read. The region extraction proves
+the excerpt was honest. The empty-diff notice proves the right lines were
+shown. The empty-branch comparison proves nothing was invented. The
+causal ordering proves the gate waited for its evidence. Each link is now
+loud where it was quiet.
+
+## Code references
+
+| Link | Symbol | File |
+|------|--------|------|
+| 1. Brief | `QueenReviewVerdictRequest.adversaryPromptMarker` | `rings/SR-00/QueenReviewVerdictRequest.swift` |
+| 1. Brief | `QueenReviewVerdictRequest.isAdversarialBrief` | `rings/SR-00/QueenReviewVerdictRequest.swift` |
+| 1. Brief | `ChatViewModel.fileContentsForReview` | `rings/SR-02/ChatViewModel.swift` |
+| 2. Root of paths | `ChatViewModel.fileContentsForReview` | `rings/SR-02/ChatViewModel.swift` |
+| 2. Root of paths | `ProjectPaths.root` | — |
+| 3. Response format | `QueenReviewVerdictRequest.parse` | `rings/SR-00/QueenReviewVerdictRequest.swift` |
+| 3. Response format | `runVerdictParserHandlesMarkdownNumbers` | `tests/swift/ChatSSEEndToEndTest.swift` |
+| 4. Excerpt (diff) | `ChatViewModel.regionExtractedContent` | `rings/SR-02/ChatViewModel.swift` |
+| 5. Excerpt (empty diff) | `ChatViewModel.regionExtractedContent` | `rings/SR-02/ChatViewModel.swift` |
+| 5. Excerpt (empty diff) | `QueenReviewVerdictRequest.maxFileLinesInBrief` | `rings/SR-00/QueenReviewVerdictRequest.swift` |
+| 7. Premature verdict | Review pipeline ordering | `rings/SR-02/ChatViewModel.swift` |