[finding] check-dispatch-gates.mjs's header still says hint extraction "does not skip comments" — maskComments retired that a while ago, and the header is the authority a future author reads #8604

Observation-class, found while implementing #8551 (PR #8603). Unassigned and unqueued for triage. Not fixed there — out of that card's scope.

The disagreement

scripts/pm/check-dispatch-gates.mjs opens with a warning and closes with a section justifying it:

⚠️ This header names repo paths UNQUOTED on purpose — see the last section.

Why the paths above are unquoted

Watch-hint extraction reads any quoted-looking span, backticks included, and does not skip comments. …

The second sentence is no longer true. extractWatchHints in scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs now opens with maskComments(scriptSource), and that function's own docblock says so in as many words — naming this very file as the specimen:

It ships today with its paths deliberately unquoted, a workaround this function retires.

So one file records the workaround as retired while the file carrying the workaround still explains it as live behaviour.

Why it is worth a card rather than a shrug

The stale half is the one a future author actually reads. Someone editing check-dispatch-gates.mjs — or writing a new gate and copying its conventions, which the header invites by explaining itself so carefully — is told the extractor reads comments. Acting on that, they either keep paying an unquoting tax that buys nothing, or they propagate the belief into a new gate's header. The measured incident in the header (ten fabricated hints from one header) is real history and worth keeping; what is stale is the present-tense claim about the extractor.

Neither direction is a gate failure, which is why nothing catches it: the unquoted paths still work, and comment masking still works. It is purely a correctness-of-the-record problem.

Possible dispositions, not chosen here

• Rewrite the last section in the past tense — keep the incident, state that comment masking retired the need, and say whether the unquoted convention is being kept as belt-and-braces or is now free to drop.
• Drop the ⚠️ line if the convention is no longer load-bearing.

Either way this is a comment-only edit in a file whose behaviour does not change. No gate is asked to move.

Related

• [finding] dispatch-gates watch hints are read from self-test fixtures and comments, so gates are printed as MATCHED for paths they never read #8478 — the narrowing that added maskComments / maskSelfTests. This is its documentation residue, not a defect in it.
• dispatch-gates classifies check:type-check-coverage as SILENT (known-irrelevant) for a card editing check-test-typecheck.mts, though the coupling is real and the path literal is in the gate's own source — it sits inside a prose sentence, so extractWatchHints discards it #8551 / PR fix(pm): declare the type-check ledger's root-program coupling so dispatch-gates can derive it (#8551) #8603 — where this was noticed; that PR touches the constant declaration and the self-test only. dispatch-gates classifies check:type-check-coverage as SILENT (known-irrelevant) for a card editing check-test-typecheck.mts, though the coupling is real and the path literal is in the gate's own source — it sits inside a prose sentence, so extractWatchHints discards it #8551 is not addressed by this card, and this card does not address it.

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