docs: plan for closing the 26 open evidence markers

[TheMeinerLP]

A worklist for the TODO(maintainer) markers in the wiki, written so a fresh session can execute it
without the context of the one that produced it.

Why it is phased rather than a list

The 26 markers are not one kind of problem:

Phase	What	How many
1	Closes with one CI benchmark run each	5
2	Arithmetic that contradicts the rows beside it — no run will fix	4
3	Two pages disagree; the source decides	2
4	Needs a -prof gc run	2
5	Unrecoverable — the correct outcome is an explicit statement	4 groups
6	Decisions for a maintainer, not for an agent	5

Phase 1 first because the evidence is merely missing and the tool now exists. Phase 2 next because
those numbers are wrong: 97 % and 63 % against published rows that give 98.0 % and 65.3 %, and a
ratio column that does not follow from its own operands. A reader who checks those finds the error,
and every other figure on the page loses credit with it.

The constraints are the interesting part

Five rules, each learned by breaking it in the round that produced this plan:

• After changing a page, grep its name and read every hit in context. Anchored links redirect
  mechanically; the danger is the sentence without an anchor whose prose asserts what the page
  holds. Eighteen survived one split, on nine pages, four of which were on no change list. This
  failed five times in one session and no tool reports it.
• Never publish a single-fork measurement. A one-fork run showed an ordering two forks did not
  confirm.
• Bind every count to a commit. The benchmark class count went 14 → 16 → 17 in one day and broke
  seven sentences across three files. A count in a heading is worse — prefer removing it.
• Never compare figures from different machines. A ratio is no more portable than an absolute
  number: 1.35× on a CI runner against 1.13× on the machine behind the published tables.
• A checker that has never failed proves nothing. Inject bad targets first.

Note on the line numbers

Verified against the wiki at 662e4db — all fourteen spot-checked references hit their marker. They
will drift, the plan says so, and it names grep -rn 'TODO(maintainer)' as the authority instead.
Following its own rule about counts bound to a commit.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01QzEdy5fN5JKGxJo8gwtNeu