method: a stale index nearly cost a run, and the exact-match register could not see it

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v

docs/re/METHOD.md

@@ -2608,3 +2608,33 @@ tables.** What settled it was dropping timestamp semantics entirely and comparin
 📌 Two failed attempts at the same measurement are evidence that the *quantity* is
 the problem, not the parsing of it. The third attempt should change what is being
 measured.
+
+## A stale index nearly cost a run — and the register could not see it
+
+I was about to spend a boot measuring whether Ⓐ skips a movie. `INDEX.md` said
+**🟡 skippability unsettled** and the port's `BLOCKED.md` said the same.
+`movie-binding.md` has had it **✅ settled since 2026-08-28** — a 193/196/193 s
+three-boot baseline against 57 s with one tap, the press proved singular by
+Canary's own delivery counter — and `HANDOFF.md` carries it correctly. **The
+staleness was in the index alone**, and re-deriving a ✅ row is explicitly not a
+finding.
+
+📌 **An index is an amplifier** (`sylpheed-port`'s phrase). A status wrong there is
+wrong everywhere it is quoted from, including in the other agent's blocked list,
+and it is the first thing a new reader meets. First audit of it found **3 stale
+rows in 8 candidates**; the other 5 were legitimate, index and page speaking about
+different clauses.
+
+🔴 **One of the three should have been caught by `check_refuted.py` and was not.**
+`REFUTED.md` holds *"`Static.slb` has no wave boundaries, so its layout is
+unknown"*; the index said *"…so SE audio is not extractable"*. Same dead claim,
+different second clause — and the register matches **exact wording**. That weakness
+is stated in the tool's own docstring; **this is its first live instance**, and it
+survived in the amplifier for days. A register that only catches verbatim revivals
+does not protect the file that paraphrases most.
+
+⚠️ And the root cause of that row was a **negative about the METHOD written as a
+negative about the SUBJECT**: `Static.slb` carries no `RIFF`/`seek`/`WAVE`
+delimiters, so it resists *static scanning* — which is why the extraction had to be
+dynamic, not why the audio was unavailable. The page said both, in two places, and
+the wrong one was the heading.