[erikreinert]

Fixes for 31 verified findings from a full review of #43. The five commits sit directly on top of fix/run-postmordem (82e5959), so this merges as a fast-forward. Each commit builds and vets on its own.

What changed

Hardened git runner (internal/engine/integrate_git.go, internal/config/gitctx.go)

• Drop GIT_EXEC_PATH, GIT_TEMPLATE_DIR, GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL, GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM and the pathspec/attr-source variables from both scrubbed environments; resolve the git binary once per process instead of through the inherited PATH on every call. Tests now assert the variables that matter.
• integrateGit (the one git write) is built on gitCommandHooksOff and adds -c commit.gpgsign=false, so a signing program named in the executor-writable repository config no longer runs during the conductor's pick.
• --config-env support is probed once; a git older than 2.31 gets no hook flags instead of failing every command.
• Hook-flag listing is memoized per directory, so each git read no longer forks a second git.
• cherry-pick passes --keep-redundant-commits, so a chain whose first commit already landed by hand integrates instead of aborting.
• core.quotePath, diff.noprefix and diff.mnemonicPrefix are pinned so diff headers keep the a/ b/ shape.
• The eight sequencer/grafts/shallow paths are read with one rev-parse over one table.

Diff recording and elision (internal/engine/diff_elide.go, saga.go)

• An oversize section is judged binary by probing the first 8000 bytes of both blobs (or the worktree file when the after side is unstored) for a NUL, so a binary changed below its header is capped instead of recorded whole into issue.diff and every packet.
• The diff --git header is parsed with C-unquoting and a same-path split, so quoted, noprefix and ' b/'-containing paths still reach generated-file elision; an already-capped section reports the counts from its marker.

Recorded head and gate stages (recorded_head.go, saga.go, pregate_scratch.go)

• --worktree is compared against the run's exec root after resolving symlinks, so a symlinked spelling of the shared checkout is not bound as a separate live worktree; the exec root is read once per completion.
• A recorded-head read error is returned from the gate and diff stages instead of silently measuring the live worktree.
• One scratch checkout per resume is shared across the completion gates (the diff stage keeps its own fresh tree): 6 worktree add/remove per completion becomes 2.
• The saga patch-id helpers are projections of the integration-range ones; engine-reserved artifact kinds are named in one place.

step integrate / annotate (step_integrate.go, annotate_integration.go, CLI help)

• planIntegration refuses an unanswerable carriage probe before any write, with the same refusal the annotation would give afterwards, so the shared branch never moves for a step that could not then be annotated.
• AnnotateIntegration shape-checks the recorded writer chain before building a git command from it.
• Step definitions are loaded once across the planning loop.
• The annotate help, file header and --skip-integration-check help state the three accepted forms for an integrated sha and route everything else to the waiver.

Dispatch close and retry advisories (dispatch.go, dispatch_conditions.go, retry_eligible.go, unexpanded.go, hold.go, saga_detached.go, cli/run_status.go)

• The --no-conditions waiver note is written inside the close transaction, so a close on a run that already rolled up to done no longer commits and then reports failure.
• Every error other than no-open-dispatch is propagated from the open-dispatch read, so the unfiled-conditions check refuses instead of silently passing.
• Condition voters are assembled from rows, so a name with a comma stays one voter.
• A park is compared against its own activity_ms rather than the row's last write; rows.Err is checked on the dedupe read.
• Steps and relations are loaded once and shared between the retry, unexpanded and held advisories; missing retry-eligible events are recorded in one transaction after one read.
• The stranded-saga sweep keeps going when one step's lock cannot be taken; the hold attribution refusal names the right verb.

Comments, rendering, QA (step_comment.go, render/detail.go, scripts/qa/helpers.sh)

• Control bytes and ANSI escape sequences are stripped from comment bodies on both render paths, so a body cannot forge a header at column 0.
• ZWNJ, ZWJ, soft hyphen, word joiner and variation selectors are accepted in step comments when they follow a visible character (Persian, Hindi conjuncts, emoji sequences, text-presentation glyphs); they stay refused in blank-rendering positions.
• The QA detached-saga wait is scoped to the suite's binary, fails loudly without pgrep or on timeout, and run_stdin gets the same hook.

Not applied

• The dispatch-conditions time window (proposals.updated_at >= dispatch open): the inter-dispatch gap is the contract the feature's own test asserts, and closing it needs a seal timestamp the schema does not have. Left as a design question.

Notes

• The annotate-side sha check is hex-only rather than strict 40-hex because shared test fixtures record abbreviated heads; it still rejects anything option-shaped.
• The planning pass still runs the shared-checkout check per step; hoisting it needs a chain-only seam in the git runner.
• Dropping GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL from the scrubbed environment means engine git now reads the host's global config. The -c commit.gpgsign=false is what keeps the suite green on a host that sets commit.gpgsign, so those two changes should stay together.

Validation

gofmt, go build ./..., go vet ./..., staticcheck v0.7.0 clean. go test ./... passes on every package; internal/workflow passes with DOCKET_SWEEP_WORKFLOWS_DIR pointed at the CI corpus as the workflow does. scripts/qa.sh through section ZG: 1380/1380.