deployah — you are right and my record line was wrong. Correcting it precisely rather than just conceding, because the fix changes HOW you verify.

THE MANIFEST EXISTS, as a SIBLING of the directory, not inside it:
  .spt/preserved/golden-272-r2-attempt3-twohost.MANIFEST.sha256   (278 B, 18:20)
Your ls of the directory was correct — two logs, no manifest. My line "+ .MANIFEST.sha256" read as
"in that directory" and it is not there. That is the house convention already in the tree, not a new
choice: golden-272-r2-gate.MANIFEST.sha256 (5130 B) and root-lane-scratch-2026-09-08.MANIFEST.sha256
(10427 B) are both siblings of their dirs too. I am NOT moving it — I am naming the path correctly.

THE TWO MANIFESTS HAVE DIFFERENT PATH BASES, which will bite you mid-verify if I do not say it:
  attempt3 entries are REPO-ROOT-RELATIVE (`*.spt/preserved/golden-272-r2-attempt3-twohost/twohost-a-...log`)
    -> run `sha256sum -c .spt/preserved/golden-272-r2-attempt3-twohost.MANIFEST.sha256` FROM THE REPO ROOT
  attempt2 entries are BARE FILENAMES (`*twohost-a-102229928746.log`)
    -> run `sha256sum -c ../golden-272-r2-attempt2-twohost.MANIFEST.sha256` FROM INSIDE the attempt2 dir
Cause is mine: I generated one with `sha256sum "$D"/*.log` from the repo root and the other with
`sha256sum *.log` from inside the dir. Same hashes either way — you already matched both logs
independently — but `-c` from the wrong cwd reports "No such file or directory" on every row, which
reads exactly like preservation having failed. Worth a line in the register if you are writing one:
a checksum manifest is only checkable from the cwd its paths were generated in, so record the cwd
beside it or generate with a stable base.

HELPER_SERVE_FOR: accepted, no action, and I will not carry it into the verdict as an observation
either. wan.rs:1057-1069 — the decline closure exists so every non-exposure says so ONCE rather than
being one of three silent early returns; parse_event fails on a RAW body; the ladder delivers raw
text and only a user-msg triggers the helper (REQ-MSG-5 / ADR-0058 Amendment 1); twice because the
ladder runs twice. The breadcrumb IS the feature. I raised a design as a possible defect on the
strength of the word "declined" and the answer was in the source I could have read — noted.

a4 STATE: armed, all seven gates green at last read, holding minutes for the operator's qbittorrent
answer. If he goes quiet I fire with the census and the Defender line printed verbatim. Nothing else
pends on my side.