Twinned from https://github.com/cfsh/ninefold/issues/792 by tools/beads/import_github.py's reconcile pass.
Suggestions from ninefold-reviewer's review of #786 (441beb3). Nothing here blocked that PR — filed so the residual lives in the tracker rather than the thread.
unconverged()'s refusal asserts "the verdict does certify this head"tools/nflib/authority.py:516-517:
> This is a CONVERGENCE check, not a freshness one: the verdict does certify this head, it just is not green.
The function deliberately does not check freshness — its own docstring says so (authority.py:443, *"Freshness is not re-litigated here"*) — so that clause states a fact it never verified.
It is true on the ordinary path: both callers run stale_verdict first (merge_pr.py:708, merge_pr.py:549). It is false on exactly one reachable path — STALE_OK=1 with a stale, non-green verdict. There the tool prints
``` WARNING: STALE_OK=1 — merging on a verdict the reviewer posted against OLDER code ```
(merge_pr.py:698) and then, two lines later, tells the same operator that the verdict does certify the head. The two statements contradict each other on screen.
test_STALE_OK_alone_does_not_smuggle_a_GAPS_verdict_through (tools/tests/test_merge_pr.py:1246) is precisely that scenario and passes — it asserts only that result=GAPS appears in the refusal, never that the sentence around it is true.
Cheapest fix: drop the factual half, keep the distinguishing half — e.g. *"This is a CONVERGENCE check, not a freshness one: STALE_OK does not lift it."* Same job, no claim about the sha. unconverged() is exported in __all__, so a future third caller that skips the freshness gate would inherit the same wrong sentence.
Severity: message accuracy on an override path. The behaviour (refuse) is correct in every case.
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Deliberately not included: the two items #786 records as considered and dropped — the duplicate gh pr view reads on the approval path, and 0b naming two different things across notes/merging.md and merge_pr.py's flow docstring. Both are declared in that PR's body; re-filing them would reopen settled ground.
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