check-agent-record: prose inside `## Owed` counts as owed, so a sentence saying an issue is NOT owed makes it owed

[localai-bot]

Found while re-running the gate on PR #1038 as operator, and confirmed by executing the checker's own function rather than inferring from its message.

The defect

scripts/check-agent-record.py:1354-1369:

body = text.split("\n## Owed", 1)[1].split("\n## ", 1)[0]
owed |= set(re.findall(r"#(\d+)", body))
owed |= set(re.findall(r"issues/(\d+)", body))

The section body is scraped for any #NNNN. There is no requirement that the number appear in the table, in a list item, or in any position implying the issue is actually owed. The count site at :1443 is:

if row_id is None and number not in owed:
    unowned.append(number)

So mentioning an issue anywhere in a ## Owed section exempts it from the unowned ratchet.

Demonstrated, not argued

.agents/specs/ltx25-decode-speed.md on row/LTX25-DECODE-SPEED-R2 deliberately excludes #1008 from its ## Owed table and follows the table with a paragraph beginning:

#1008 is NOT owed here. It landed.

That paragraph contains three occurrences of 1008. Executing owed_issues() directly against that tree returns #1008 owed: True.

The consequence is inverted semantics: a spec that carefully documents why an issue is not owed thereby registers it as owed.

I verified the direction by mutation. Reverting the row's owner column to — alone leaves the checker green — the prose is carrying it. Neutralising the three prose references as well produces:

ERROR: .agents/issue-index.md: 34 rows name no owner, above the recorded 33: #1008.

exit 1. So the instrument does fire; it is simply pointed at the wrong text. Tree restored byte-identically after each arm (sha256 verified, git status empty).

Why it matters

The unowned ratchet is the mechanism AGENTS.md relies on to keep "filing without fixing" a gate failure rather than a habit. This defect makes it satisfiable by prose. A row can name — as its owner and stay green merely by mentioning the issue number in a ## Owed section — including in a sentence that disclaims ownership, or in an unrelated aside, or in a link to a different issue that happens to sit in that section.

It is a false negative only: it can excuse a row that should be counted, never red a row that should not be. Nothing currently on main is wrong because of it, and PR #1038 is not affected — row #1008 there names LTX25-DECODE-DTYPE, which is correct on its own merits and is what the column is for. The double protection is harmless there; the general hole is not.

What a fix owes

• Parse the ## Owed table (or an explicit list form) rather than scraping the whole section, so a number's position carries meaning.
• A red-before test: a spec whose ## Owed section mentions an issue only in prose must leave that issue counted as unowned.
• A control in the other direction: an issue genuinely listed in the table must still be exempt, so the fix does not simply tighten into false positives.
• Consider whether issues/(\d+) should be scraped at all — a markdown link to an unrelated issue inside the section has the same effect.

Per AGENTS.md this changes checker semantics, so it needs its own row, spec, and fresh review rather than an in-flow repair. Unowned as filed — it needs a row ID before its index entry can be appended without raising the ratchet, which is itself an instance of the thing being reported.

Related: #632 (ENG-RECORD-ANCHOR-RATCHET, the sibling gap where no gate protects a records anchor at all), #1022, #1031.

FOLLOWING_AGENTS_PROTOCOL

Following-Agents-Protocol: true
AI-Assisted: true
Assisted-by: AGENT:claude-opus-5 [claude-code]

[localai-bot]

Second defect in the same function, found while repairing PR #1041. One fix should close both — filing here rather than separately.

owed_issues() cannot find a NUMBERED ## Owed heading

scripts/check-agent-record.py:1365 locates the section with a literal split:

if "\n## Owed" not in text:
    continue
body = text.split("\n## Owed", 1)[1].split("\n## ", 1)[0]

A spec whose heading is ## 7. Owed therefore matches nothing, continue fires, and the entire spec is skipped — every issue it lists as owed is invisible to the ratchet.

Measured at a clean tree based on d1b0ea3a8 (not in the shared checkout, which is stale and dirty):

specs total:                                    337
visible to owed_issues() (plain "## Owed"):      23
INVISIBLE (numbered heading, no plain one):       4
    .agents/specs/ltx25-decode-dtype.md               -> "## 7. Owed"
    .agents/specs/ltx25-token-append.md               -> "## 8. Owed"
    .agents/specs/nemotron-h-a2q1-fp8-mamba.md        -> "## 11. Owed"
    .agents/specs/nemotron-h-a2q2-nvfp4-moe-lmhead.md -> "## 11. Owed"

PR #1041 adds a fifth (ltx25-decode-threads.md, ## 7. Owed), which is how this surfaced: the row had to name an owning row ID in its index entry because listing the issue under ## 7. Owed would not have counted.

Why this is the more dangerous half

The two defects fail in opposite directions, which is why they read as one bug with two faces:

• The prose scrape (this issue as filed) is too permissive — an issue merely mentioned in a ## Owed section is exempted, including by a sentence disclaiming ownership.
• The numbered heading is too strict, and worse, it is silent. An author writes a correct ## 7. Owed entry, believing they have discharged the AGENTS.md obligation to "name an owning row ID, or list the issue under ## Owed". The checker never sees it. The escape hatch the error message explicitly offers does not work for those specs, and nothing says so.

Note the current unowned count is 33 against UNOWNED_HIGH_WATER = 33 — exactly at the mark — so any spec that starts relying on a numbered ## Owed entry reds the gate for reasons its author cannot see from the message.

What the fix owes, updated

• Match the heading by structure (^## (\d+\.\s*)?Owed\s*$) rather than by a literal, and decide deliberately whether other numbered headings elsewhere need the same treatment.
• Parse the ## Owed table rather than scraping the section body, so a number's position carries meaning (the original half of this issue).
• Red-before tests for both directions: a spec whose ## Owed mentions an issue only in prose must leave it counted as unowned; a spec with ## 7. Owed must have its listed issues counted as owed.
• A control that a genuinely-listed issue in a plain ## Owed stays exempt, so the fix does not tighten into false positives.
• Consider normalising the five existing numbered headings in the same change — but note that renaming a heading is a records edit to five specs and may itself move the ratchet, so measure before and after.

Still unowned as filed, which remains an instance of the thing being reported.