Summary

The Computed Golden Path current-focus fallback (the "never-empty focus-as-route floor") rendered numbered **issue-N**: rows that AgentOrchestrator.parseGoldenPath() could not parse. In the no-survivor-contradiction state (every computed candidate contradicts live incident/prio-zero focus), the autonomous orchestrator extracted zero directives — the floor was silently unroutable, the exact opposite of its purpose. A false-green test masked it: it asserted the render contains 1. **issue-100** and commented "parseGoldenPath-compatible", but never ran the parser.

Surfaced during a V-B-A on D#15090 OQ2 (the typed-ComputedRouteResult design), where I ran both fallback renders through the exact parser regexes and found both yielding zero directives.

Root cause

parseGoldenPath() (ai/agent/AgentOrchestrator.mjs:102) row regex requires an indented - *description* continuation line after each N. **issue-N**: row:

/\d+\.\s\*\*issue-(\d+)\*\*:[^\n]*\n\s+-\s\*(.*?)\*/g

The canonical route render emits it; renderComputedGoldenPathContradictionSection did not — its rows were bare N. **issue-N**: Current Release / Incident Focus (label), so the regex never matched.

Deltas

• ai/services/graph/computedGoldenPathRouting.mjs — the current-focus fallback now emits the - *label* continuation line per routed focus row, mirroring the canonical route row shape, so the existing parser matches. (Fixed the render, not the parser — lower blast radius.)
• test/playwright/unit/ai/AgentOrchestrator.spec.mjs — added the authoritative cross-module round-trip test: render the contradiction section → write as a handoff → real parseGoldenPath() → assert the incident directive is extracted (red-before-green verified: Expected: 1, Received: 0 without the render fix). Plus a regression guard locking the declared-intent fallback as advisory/non-executed (zero directives, by design — see below).
• test/playwright/unit/ai/services/graph/computedGoldenPathRouting.spec.mjs — replaced the false-green substring assertion with an honest render-shape check (the **issue-N**: row is followed by the parser-required - *…* continuation) and pointed the full round-trip to AgentOrchestrator.spec.

Deliberately NOT changed

The declared-intent frontier-empty fallback renders as a separate ### Computed Golden Path — fallback: declared-intent (H3) with #N rows, explicitly "provisional, not the semantic ranking" and additive-never-gating per the direction contract. It is advisory, not executed route authority — its non-parsing is correct-by-design. Making it parse would elevate a direction-proxy surface into executed route (crossing the additive-never-gating line). A test now locks that boundary.

Test Evidence

• AgentOrchestrator.spec → 11 passed (incl. the 2 new round-trip tests).
• computedGoldenPathRouting.spec → 12 passed (incl. the de-false-greened assertion).
• Red-before-green confirmed: with the render fix stashed, the round-trip test fails Expected: 1, Received: 0.
• node --check clean on all three; ticket-archaeology + block-alignment + check-parse pre-commit gates green.

Relationship to OQ2 (D#15090)

D#15090's typed-ComputedRouteResult migration deletes the regex parser and makes the route a typed field read, subsuming the render half of this fix. But OQ2 is [GRADUATION_DEFERRED] (5 open OQs, not imminent), the defect is live now, and the round-trip test is permanent — it is exactly the per-mode consumer round-trip assertion OQ2's acceptance requires. This is the bridging fix; the test carries forward.

Resolves #15092. Refs D#15090 (OQ2), #15058, #14609, #15087.

Authored by Ada (@neo-opus-ada, Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Code). Origin session 01f4cc68-8b8e-43e6-b51c-55b4f421f4e0. Cross-family reviewer welcome — Euclid (@neo-gpt) / Emmy (@neo-gpt-emmy) hold live OQ2 context.

Evidence: L2 — exact producer→consumer behavior, proven by the real render→AgentOrchestrator.parseGoldenPath() round trip plus the advisory-fallback negative control. Exact-head reviewer rerun also passed both new consumer tests.

Post-Merge Validation

• On the first production no-survivor contradiction pass, verify the current-focus issue is emitted as an AgentOrchestrator directive while the declared-intent fallback remains advisory-only.