diff --git a/docs/active-work.md b/docs/active-work.md
index fc91e78..08f1198 100644
--- a/docs/active-work.md
+++ b/docs/active-work.md
@@ -265,6 +265,43 @@ also removed: this branch's "R8 NEEDS A LANE" investigation block, and
durable facts are in the retired registry row and the handoff §6
census.
+## Git integration Stage 1 — BRANCHED, pre-implementation
+
+**Written with the lane's first commit, before the PR exists** — the
+standing correction from #171 and #215. This session it was missed on
+#224 and again on #225, both caught by review; writing it now is the
+only thing that stops a third.
+
+**Branch `git-status-stage1`**, base `githubsucks/main` @ `4bc55e8`
+(the #225 merge). **`githubsucks/git-status-stage1` is the
+authoritative tip** — the ref, not a SHA. Recover with
+`git fetch githubsucks && git checkout git-status-stage1`.
+
+- **Framing `docs/git-integration-framing.md`, revision 5, APPROVED
+ 2026-08-09** after four review rounds. Every round found something
+ the previous one had asserted without reading; the doc records which.
+- **Scope:** `*git-status*` (a `listview` panel over
+ `git --no-optional-locks -C
status --porcelain=v2 --branch -z`)
+ and `*git-diff*` (plain generated text, file-level, no hunk model).
+ Plus **one additive `listview` change**: an optional `keys` table,
+ install-once with match-on-reopen, because `Keymap::bind` refuses
+ duplicates and the refresh path re-opens.
+- **NO WIRE CHANGE**, and that is load-bearing for scheduling:
+ `PROTOCOL_VERSION` is a strict serialization point, so this lane can
+ run concurrently with other work. **Stage 2 (gutter markers) needs
+ new `DecorationKind` variants and must be scheduled alone.**
+- **Known negative coherence impact (§9):** git runs as a spawned
+ process, and spawned processes do not appear in `*workers*` — that is
+ `async.lua`'s job list. This adds a fifth unattributable background
+ thing. Labelled honestly; a label is not attribution.
+- **Verification plan** in framing §6. The load-bearing cases: an `AM`
+ unborn fixture (two labelled patches), untracked diff rendering on
+ **exit 1** (`--no-index` implies `--exit-code`), two successive
+ refreshes not raising `DuplicateBinding`, and a non-UTF-8 path that
+ parses and displays but **refuses** its gestures at the
+ `String`-typed binding boundary.
+- **Gates:** `scripts/gate --acceptance `.
+
## QoL arc retirement — PR #224 OPEN (docs only)
**PR #224** — https://github.com/levineuwirth/pmacs/pull/224. Written
diff --git a/docs/git-integration-framing.md b/docs/git-integration-framing.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0d7925
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/git-integration-framing.md
@@ -0,0 +1,684 @@
+# Git integration — Stage 1: seeing what changed
+
+**Status: framing pass, revision 5. Pre-implementation. Awaiting
+approval.**
+
+**Revision 5 completes the unborn-repository policy, which revision 4
+wrote as three disjoint rows when a single file can be in two states at
+once.** `AM` — staged, then edited again — is not exotic; it is what a
+first commit looks like halfway through. The states below were
+**enumerated from a real unborn repository**, not reasoned about, and
+one of them settles a case by ruling it out entirely.
+
+**Revision 4 fixes two contracts that would have failed in ordinary
+use, both verified against real behaviour rather than reasoned about:**
+re-binding `d` on every refresh (keymap binds refuse duplicates, so
+*every successful refresh* would have errored), and two git exit states
+the failure predicate got wrong. Measured, not assumed — the exit codes
+below were produced in a scratch repository.
+
+**Revision 3 pins four Stage 1 contracts revision 2 left loose, and two
+of those were again claims I made without reading the code I was
+crediting.** I attributed selection preservation to `listview` and
+`d` to its key surface; neither is true, and both were checkable in the
+file I had already cited. The pattern is worth naming since it has now
+recurred across three revisions: **I cite a file, then describe what I
+expect it to contain.**
+
+**Revision 2 answers four blockers, two of which were factual errors in
+revision 1 that scouting should have caught and did not.** I read
+`ProjectKind::Git`'s name instead of its doc comment, and I quoted
+`COHERENCE.md` §15's "no Git integration anywhere in the tree" without
+checking whether it was still true of the tree. It is not.
+
+---
+
+## 1. Why this, and why now
+
+`COHERENCE.md` §15 is blunt about it:
+
+> **There is no Git integration at all** — no status, stage, diff,
+> blame, or gutter markers anywhere in the tree (gutter git riders and
+> the `ResourceOffer` diff/blame family are named deferrals). The Git
+> affordance list above has nothing to attach to yet.
+
+**That sentence is literally false about the tree, and revision 1
+repeated it without checking.** `tests/fixtures/pmacs-magit/` is a
+tracked, installable package — 1,914 lines across four modules, with
+`status.lua` spawning git through `pmacs.process.spawn` and parsing
+**`--porcelain=v2 --branch`** into structured sections, plus a 662-line
+acceptance suite (`tests/m8_6_acceptance.rs`, 32 tests) covering
+status, refresh, staging, commit, push and branch behaviour.
+
+**The PRODUCT gap is real and unchanged** — none of that is bundled
+runtime, so a user who installs pmacs gets no git integration. But
+"nothing to attach to" understates what exists to *learn from*, and
+§15's wording should be corrected when this lands.
+
+For a **daily driver**, this is the largest remaining gap. Not because
+git is the most architecturally interesting thing missing — §7
+workspaces and §9 worker identity are both deeper — but because it is
+the one a user touches *every working hour*, and pmacs currently makes
+them leave the editor to answer "what have I changed?".
+
+That is the criterion this lane is chosen against: **frequency of use
+per day**, not depth of model.
+
+## 2. Ground truth — what already exists
+
+Scouted, not assumed:
+
+- **`ProjectKind::Git` is NOT general repository detection**, and
+ revision 1 said it was. Its doc comment is explicit: *"A bare git
+ repository (no language marker found inside)"* (`src/project.rs:89`).
+ Markers are ordered and a language marker beside `.git` **wins**
+ (`src/project.rs:10`), so a normal Rust repository reports
+ `kind = "rust"` and would have been invisible to a lane that gated on
+ `kind == "git"`. That gate would have failed on this very repository.
+
+ **The rule this lane uses instead: never ask pmacs whether it is a
+ git repo.** Run git in the **active file's directory** and let git
+ resolve its own worktree — `git -C rev-parse --show-toplevel`
+ establishes the root, and a non-zero exit *is* the "not a repository"
+ answer. Git's own resolution handles submodules, worktrees, `GIT_DIR`
+ and `.git` files; a marker walk reimplements a subset of that and
+ gets it subtly wrong.
+- **`pmacs.process.spawn` / `events_take` / `terminate` / `forget`**
+ is the working model for running an external tool asynchronously;
+ `builtin/runtime/compile.lua` is a full worked example, including
+ spawn-failure handling and exit markers.
+- **`pmacs.listview.open`** is a real primitive with existing adopters
+ (`*references*`, `*lsp*`), carrying optional `depth`/`id`,
+ primitive-owned collapse, and selection re-seated by id. `COHERENCE.md`
+ P5 says the remaining work there is **adoption, not construction** —
+ a `*git-status*` panel is exactly that.
+- **Gutter signs exist in both frontends** — the TUI's leading-column
+ glyph (`src/diag.rs`) and the GPU's `GUTTER_SIGN_X` bars
+ (`pmacs-gpu/src/main.rs:420`).
+- **A tested porcelain-v2 parser exists as a package fixture** (above).
+ Its `status.lua` deliberately separates **pure `parse_*` functions
+ that take a string and return structure** from the spawning around
+ them — which is the shape that makes a parser testable without a
+ repository, and it is already proven by 32 tests.
+
+And the constraint that shapes the staging:
+
+- **`DecorationKind` is a CLOSED enum on the wire**
+ (`pmacs-protocol/src/message.rs:1472`): four diagnostic severities,
+ `Selection`, `SearchMatch`, `SearchMatchActive`, `CurrentLine`.
+ **Gutter markers for git hunks therefore require new variants, which
+ is a protocol version bump.** The gutter signs that exist are keyed
+ on `diagnostic_severity_rank` and have no notion of anything else.
+
+## 3. The staging, and why the line falls where it does
+
+**Stage 1 (this lane): read-only, panel-based, NO WIRE CHANGE.**
+
+- `*git-status*` — a `listview` panel over
+ `git status --porcelain=v2 --branch -z` (Q#G-6), rows visiting the
+ file at RET, refreshed by `g` under the completion model in Q#G-1.
+- `*git-diff*` — the diff for the **file** under point (Q#G-7), in a
+ generated buffer rendered as **plain text** (no `diff` grammar
+ exists). **No hunk model** — hunks are Stage 2's concern.
+
+**Stage 2 (separate lane): gutter markers.** Needs new
+`DecorationKind` variants and a `PROTOCOL_VERSION` bump, plus both
+frontends' gutter renderers learning a second rider family.
+
+**Stage 3+ (unscheduled): staging, commit, blame.** Staging and commit
+are where an editor becomes a git *client*; blame is a lower-frequency
+read. Neither belongs in front of the two above.
+
+**The line is drawn at the wire on purpose, and it is a scheduling
+decision as much as a design one.** Parallel lanes are about to start,
+and `PROTOCOL_VERSION` is a strict serialization point — two lanes
+bumping it collide, and this session already recorded what that costs
+(eight broken version assertions on CI from a single bump). Stage 1
+touching no wire is what lets it run **concurrently** with other work.
+Stage 2 must be scheduled alone.
+
+## 4. Coherence impact (§20)
+
+Required by `CLAUDE.md` for coherence-affecting work, and this is
+coherence-affecting — it is §15's named gap.
+
+- **Journey steps touched:** none directly. Git is not currently a
+ journey step; the golden journey runs open → edit → build → test →
+ navigate. This lane does **not** add a step, and I would rather say
+ so than inflate the claim.
+- **§15 contextual affordances — the direct target.** The audit's git
+ affordance list ("a Git change stage/revert/diff") has *nothing to
+ attach to*. Stage 1 creates the thing to attach to; the affordances
+ themselves follow it, and the menu's context vocabulary
+ (`src/menu.rs:44`) would need a `git` context to host them — **out of
+ scope here**, named so it is not forgotten.
+- **§14 workbench primitives — adoption, which is the stated need.**
+ `*git-status*` becomes the **fifth** `listview` call site and the
+ first outside the LSP panels, which is the concrete evidence P5 asks
+ for that the primitive generalizes past its first consumer.
+- **Interaction islands (§6): none added, and this is a real
+ constraint.** The panel gets no hardcoded key interception; it uses
+ `listview`'s existing key handling. §6 records six such shadows and
+ calls them "weak, and growing" — this lane must not make it seven.
+- **Config registry adoption:** at least one setting
+ (`git.enabled`, Q#G-4), defined through `pmacs.config.define` like
+ `ui.line-wrap` and the zoom settings, not a bare Lua global.
+- **Background-work attribution (§9): NEGATIVE, and named as such.**
+ Git runs as a spawned process, and spawned processes do **not** appear
+ in `*workers*` — that view is `async.lua`'s job list; processes live
+ under `pmacs.process.list` (Q#G-5). This lane therefore adds a fifth
+ thing running in the background with no single place to see it. The
+ process is labelled honestly, which is better than anonymous, but
+ **a label is not attribution and this document does not pretend
+ otherwise.** Accepted because these are short-lived reads; it would
+ not be acceptable for Stage 3's push/pull.
+
+## 5. Open questions
+
+### Q#G-1 — is the status panel a snapshot or a live view?
+
+A snapshot is a command that opens a panel; a live view refreshes on
+buffer save, on focus, or on a filesystem watch.
+
+*My vote: **snapshot, refreshed explicitly***, with `g` re-running
+inside the panel. Live refresh needs a watch mechanism, an invalidation
+rule, and a §9 story for the recurring work — all real arcs. A snapshot
+is honest, useful the first day, and does not pretend to a currency it
+cannot maintain.
+
+**But "explicit refresh" does not fit `listview` unmodified, and
+revision 1 missed that.** `listview.refresh` is synchronous:
+
+```lua
+local rows = check_ids(p.on_refresh() or {}) -- listview.lua:402
+```
+
+The result is consumed immediately. `pmacs.process.spawn` cannot return
+rows there — it returns a process id whose output is drained later. So
+revision 1's "adopt `listview`" would have produced exactly one of the
+two failures the reviewer named: a reimplemented list, or a `g` that
+silently does nothing. The primitive's own docs already call a dead `g`
+out as a defect it must not repeat (`listview.lua:416`).
+
+**The completion model, specified.** `on_refresh` stays synchronous and
+honest:
+
+1. **`on_refresh` returns the CURRENT rows immediately**, with a
+ `refreshing…` marker row appended, and *kicks off* the spawn. `g` is
+ therefore never a no-op — it always re-renders and always shows that
+ work started.
+2. **On exit, the completion handler re-opens the panel** via
+ `listview.open` with the same `name` — **and re-seats the selection
+ itself.**
+
+ Revision 2 credited that to the primitive and was wrong.
+ `listview.open` **resets collapse** (`p.collapsed = {}`) and
+ **always seats line 1** (`seat_cursor(p, 1)`,
+ `builtin/runtime/listview.lua:337-378`). The `listview.lua:82` note
+ I cited is about **name** disambiguation to `<2>`, not selection.
+ Only `listview.refresh` preserves a selection, and that is the
+ synchronous path this model cannot use.
+
+ So the contract is explicit and owned here: **capture the selected
+ row's git id (its current path) before re-opening, and after
+ re-opening move to the line whose row carries that id**, computed
+ from the handler's own rows array via `pmacs.editor.move_to_line`.
+ If the id is gone from the new status — the commonest case, since a
+ file that stopped being modified drops out — seat line 1 and say
+ nothing; that is the correct answer, not a failure.
+
+ **Collapse state is moot in Stage 1** because the rows are flat: no
+ `depth`, so nothing to collapse. Stage 2 or a sectioned view would
+ have to revisit this, and would then face the same reset.
+3. **Concurrent refresh is suppressed by a generation counter.** A
+ second `g` while one is in flight bumps the generation; the older
+ completion sees a stale generation and **discards its rows** rather
+ than racing. It does not terminate the first process — reaping is
+ `pmacs.process.forget`'s job and killing git mid-read buys nothing.
+4. **Failure is a row, not a silence.** Non-zero exit or spawn failure
+ renders a row carrying the exit code and the first stderr line, plus
+ a status message. §1.2's silence asymmetry.
+5. **Panel lifetime.** If the panel's buffer is gone when the process
+ exits, the handler drops the result. `compile.lua:252` already
+ handles the buffer-killed case for its own slot; the same shape.
+
+**The alternative — extending `listview` with an async contract — is
+the more correct long-term answer** and is deliberately not taken here:
+it changes a primitive with four existing adopters, and doing that from
+inside its fifth adopter's lane is how a primitive acquires a consumer's
+idiosyncrasies. **If review prefers it, it belongs in its own lane
+before this one.**
+
+### Q#G-0 — what is the relationship to `pmacs-magit`? **(new in rev 2)**
+
+The reviewer's framing of the choice is right: adopt, replace, or
+declare it out-of-product precedent. Doing none of those and quietly
+writing a second parser is the option that must not happen.
+
+*My vote: **port its pure `parse_*` functions and its test corpus into
+the bundled runtime; leave the fixture itself untouched.***
+
+- **The record TOKENIZER is deliberately rewritten, not ported.** The
+ fixture parses **newline-delimited** v2; Stage 1 reads **`-z`**, and
+ those are different grammars — under `-z` a record's fields are
+ NUL-terminated and a rename carries its two paths as separate fields
+ rather than tab-joined. Saying "port the parser" would have been
+ wrong; what ports is the **separation** (pure `parse_*` functions
+ over a string, testable with no repository) and the **case coverage**
+ its 32 tests encode. The tokenizer underneath is new, and its
+ correctness rests on this lane's own corpus.
+- **Port, not import.** The fixture's purpose is to prove the *package
+ system* can host this. If bundled code became its dependency, it
+ would stop demonstrating an independent package and `m8_6` would test
+ less than it claims.
+- **The duplication is therefore deliberate**, and it is the one place
+ this framing accepts two copies of a rule after a session spent
+ removing them. The justification is that they answer different
+ questions — one is product behaviour, one is package-system
+ capability — and coupling them weakens the second. **If review
+ prefers the coupling, that is a defensible call and I will take it**;
+ what I will not do is leave the duplication unstated.
+- **It also settles Q#G-2's format**: the existing, tested parser is
+ **porcelain v2**, so Stage 1 is v2. Revision 1 said v1 for no reason
+ beyond familiarity.
+
+### Q#G-2 — `git` the binary, or a library?
+
+*My vote: **the binary**, via `pmacs.process.spawn`. `compile.lua` is
+the worked precedent, the daemon already spawns external tools, and a
+git library is a dependency with a much larger surface than "run one
+command and parse porcelain". `--porcelain=v2` is explicitly a stable
+machine format; that is what it is for.
+
+**Named risk:** no `git` on `PATH`. §1.2's *silence asymmetry* says the
+failure must be **surfaced with guidance**, not swallowed — the same
+lesson #204 landed for a missing language server.
+
+### Q#G-6 — the status data contract **(new in rev 2)**
+
+Revision 1 said "`--porcelain=v1`" and proposed "a path with a space"
+as the parsing witness. **Both were inadequate.** Porcelain without
+`-z` emits paths in git's **C quoting** for anything non-ASCII or
+containing special characters, and rename/copy records carry *two*
+paths whose separation is positional. A single space-in-path fixture
+proves none of that.
+
+*My vote: the exact invocation*
+
+```
+git --no-optional-locks -C status --porcelain=v2 --branch -z
+```
+
+**`--no-optional-locks` is part of the contract, not a nicety.**
+`git status` is **not strictly read-only**: it may refresh and write
+the index, and git's own documentation recommends this flag for
+background scripts precisely so a background reader does not contend
+for `index.lock` with the user's real git commands
+(). This lane runs status
+*asynchronously, from an editor, while the user may be running git in a
+terminal* — the exact scenario the flag exists for. Revision 2 called
+the lane "read-only" and that was wrong about the mechanism.
+
+It is **witnessed structurally** — the assembled argv is asserted to
+carry the flag — because observing a lock that was *not* taken is not
+something a test can do directly. Verified accepted by the git in use
+here.
+
+The rest: `--porcelain=v2 --branch -z`, also verified accepted. NUL delimiting removes C quoting from
+the problem **entirely** rather than obliging a hand-written unquoter,
+and it makes the two-path rename record unambiguous: the paths are
+separate NUL-terminated fields rather than tab-joined inside one.
+
+The rename/copy identity rule to pin: a `2` record carries the current
+path **and** its origin, and the panel must show which file it is now
+while remembering where it came from — a row whose id is the current
+path, since that is what RET visits.
+
+**Witness corpus, not one case:** modified, added, deleted, untracked,
+**renamed (both paths)**, **copied**, a path with a space, a path with
+a newline, and a non-UTF-8 path. The last two are exactly what `-z`
+buys and what a quoted parser gets wrong.
+
+### Q#G-7 — the diff gesture **(new in rev 2)**
+
+Revision 1 wrote "the diff for the file or hunk under point" while also
+committing RET to visiting the file. **RET cannot do both, there is no
+second binding proposed, and no hunk model exists anywhere in the
+tree.**
+
+*My vote:*
+
+- **RET visits the file** — unchanged, and the behaviour a list of
+ files should have.
+- **A named command, `git.diff-file`, bound to `d` inside the panel.**
+
+ **`d` is not on `listview`'s key surface**, and revision 2 said it
+ was. The bound set is exactly `RET SPC n p TAB g q`
+ (`builtin/runtime/listview.lua:266-279`), bound buffer-locally inside
+ the primitive, which is the only place the panel's buffer handle is
+ known. **Looking the buffer up by name from outside is unsafe** —
+ `listview` deliberately disambiguates a collision to `<2>`, so the
+ name a consumer passed is not necessarily the buffer it got.
+
+ *My vote: **a `keys` table on the open spec***, e.g.
+ `keys = { d = "git.diff-file" }`, bound through the same
+ `bind_local_keymap` that already binds the fixed set. It is additive,
+ general to any adopter, keeps binding where the buffer is known, and
+ adds **no** interception — the §6 constraint holds.
+
+ **The registration lifecycle, which revision 3 omitted and which
+ would have broken the refresh path it depends on.** `Keymap::bind`
+ **refuses duplicates** — `KeymapError::DuplicateBinding`, *"Refuse
+ rather than silently overwrite"* (`src/keymap_tree.rs:75`) — and the
+ completion model calls `listview.open` again on **every** refresh. A
+ naive `keys` implementation therefore errors on the second open, so
+ **every successful refresh would have failed while re-binding `d`.**
+
+ The contract:
+
+ 1. **Keys are installed once, when the panel's buffer is created**,
+ and stored on the panel.
+ 2. **A later `open` for a live panel does not re-bind.** It
+ **compares** the supplied `keys` against the stored table and
+ **errors on divergence** rather than ignoring it. Silently keeping
+ the old binding would give the consumer a key that does something
+ other than what it just asked for — a dead or lying key, which is
+ the defect `listview` already condemns for `g`.
+ 3. **Collisions are rejected at install time**, against both the
+ fixed set (`RET SPC n p TAB g q`) and any
+ **prefix conflict** — `Keymap` has a separate error for turning a
+ leaf into a submap, and a `keys` table must not be able to reach
+ it.
+
+ (The alternative, idempotent re-registration, is tolerable but
+ strictly weaker: it makes a consumer that changes its keys mid-session
+ silently wrong instead of loudly wrong.)
+
+ **This IS a `listview` modification, and revision 2's "no listview
+ modification" was false.** I distinguish it from the async-contract
+ change I deferred: that one alters *when* an existing callback's
+ result is consumed for four existing adopters; this adds an optional
+ field that changes nothing for a spec that omits it. **If review
+ judges any primitive change out of an adopter's lane, the alternative
+ is `listview.open` returning the panel buffer** so the consumer binds
+ its own key — smaller still, but it pushes binding to every adopter.
+- **No hunk model in Stage 1.** Hunks are precisely what gutter markers
+ need, and that is Stage 2's protocol work. Introducing a half hunk
+ model here to serve one gesture would prejudge Stage 2's design from
+ the wrong side.
+
+**And what `d` actually SHOWS, which revision 2 left unstated.** "File,
+not hunk" is a scope, not a contract. A porcelain-v2 row carries an
+**XY** pair — X staged (index vs HEAD), Y unstaged (worktree vs index)
+— and the three plausible diffs answer three different questions:
+`git diff` shows only Y, `--cached` only X, and neither shows an
+untracked file at all.
+
+*My vote: **`d` answers the lane's own question — "what have I
+changed?" — against `HEAD`:***
+
+| row | `d` runs | why |
+|---|---|---|
+| staged, unstaged, or both | `git diff HEAD -- ` | one view of the total change; splitting X from Y is a staging UI, which is Stage 3 |
+| deleted | `git diff HEAD -- ` | shows the deletion; no special case needed |
+| renamed / copied | `git diff HEAD -- ` | v2 gives both paths; passing both is what lets rename detection render it as a rename rather than an unrelated add+delete |
+| **untracked** | `git diff --no-index -- /dev/null ` | **a normal diff shows nothing at all** for an untracked file. Without this case `d` is silently dead on the rows a user is most likely to press it on |
+| non-UTF-8 path | *refuses, with a message* | see Q#G-8 |
+
+The `HEAD` choice is deliberate and is the one thing here I would most
+expect review to push back on: it is the right default for *reading*
+what changed, and the wrong one for *staging*, which is why it is
+correct for Stage 1 and will need revisiting when Stage 3 arrives.
+
+**The exit-state contract, which revision 3 got wrong in two ways.**
+"Non-zero exit renders a failure row" is not correct for `git diff`.
+Both cases below were measured in a scratch repository, not inferred:
+
+**(a) `--no-index` implies `--exit-code`.** It exits **1 when it
+successfully finds differences** — measured: `exit=1` for an untracked
+file against `/dev/null`. Under revision 3's predicate, *every*
+untracked diff — the case `--no-index` exists to serve — would have
+rendered a failure row instead of the diff it just produced.
+
+So for the untracked path the success predicate is **exit ∈ {0, 1}**,
+rendering whatever came out; **exit ≥ 2 is a real failure**. That
+asymmetry is confined to the `--no-index` invocation and does not leak
+to the others, where non-zero still means failure.
+
+**(b) An unborn repository has no `HEAD`.** Measured:
+`git diff HEAD -- ` exits **128** with `fatal: bad revision
+'HEAD'`. This is not an edge case — it is a freshly `git init`-ed
+repository with the first files staged, which is exactly when someone
+opens a status panel to see what they are about to commit.
+
+*Policy: **detect once, then split**.*
+
+**Detection needs no extra subprocess.** `--branch` already reports
+`# branch.oid (initial)` when `HEAD` is unborn — observed in the
+output this lane already parses. Revision 4 proposed a separate
+`git rev-parse --verify --quiet HEAD`; that is a second process for a
+fact the first one hands over.
+
+**The reachable states, enumerated from a real unborn repository** —
+`git init`, stage three files, then edit one, delete one, and `git mv`
+one:
+
+```
+# branch.oid (initial)
+1 AD ... ad.txt
+1 AM ... am.txt
+1 A. ... r_new.txt <- the `git mv`
+? untracked.txt
+```
+
+Two findings fall straight out:
+
+- **`AM` and `AD` are ordinary and carry BOTH states**, which is
+ exactly the gap: `--cached` alone loses the worktree delta, plain
+ `git diff` alone loses the staged base.
+- **Rename and copy CANNOT occur under an unborn `HEAD`.** The
+ `git mv` produced `1 A. … r_new.txt` — an ordinary add of the new
+ path, **not** a `2` record. With no `HEAD` there is nothing to
+ rename *from*, so the rename/copy row class is unreachable here and
+ needs no unborn policy. That is a case closed by evidence rather than
+ handled speculatively.
+
+| unborn row | `d` renders |
+|---|---|
+| `A.` staged only | one patch: `git diff --cached -- ` |
+| **`AM` staged + edited** | **two labelled patches** — *staged* `git diff --cached -- `, then *unstaged* `git diff -- ` |
+| **`AD` staged + deleted** | **two labelled patches**, same pair; the second renders the deletion |
+| `.M` / `.D` unstaged only | one patch: `git diff -- ` |
+| `?` untracked | `git diff --no-index -- /dev/null ` (exit ∈ {0,1}) |
+| rename / copy | **unreachable** — see above |
+
+All four `--cached` / plain invocations above were run against that
+repository and render the expected patches.
+
+**The split is unborn-only, and that asymmetry is deliberate.** Once
+`HEAD` exists, `git diff HEAD` gives one total — which is the lane's
+question — and splitting it would be a staging UI (Stage 3). The split
+appears here only because there is no `HEAD` to total *against*.
+
+The generated buffer carries a **header naming what it is showing**:
+*"no commits yet — split view: staged (index) above, unstaged
+(worktree) below"*. Revision 4's wording ("showing staged changes")
+would have described a single total-against-`HEAD` diff, which is
+precisely what this is not. A diff that silently answers a different
+question than the one asked is worse than one that says so — and a
+header that misdescribes a split view is the same failure in smaller
+type.
+
+### Q#G-8 — non-UTF-8 paths: an honest boundary **(new in rev 3)**
+
+Revision 2 listed a non-UTF-8 path in the witness corpus as though it
+were an end-to-end case. **It cannot be**, and the boundary is in the
+bindings: `pmacs.process.spawn` takes `args: Vec`
+(`src/lua_bindings/mod.rs:8683`) and `pmacs.buffer.find_or_open` takes
+`path: String` (`:3564`). Both are Rust `String`, i.e. UTF-8 by
+construction. A path that is valid bytes but not valid UTF-8 can be
+*read* from git's `-z` output and *displayed*, but it cannot be passed
+back to `spawn` for a diff, nor opened.
+
+*My vote: **parse it, show it, and refuse the gesture with a
+message***:
+
+- the row **appears** in the panel, so the user is not lied to about
+ what is modified;
+- **RET and `d` on that row report** that the path is not representable
+ and do nothing else — a witnessed refusal, not a stack trace or a
+ silent no-op;
+- **it is removed from the end-to-end promise.** The witness is
+ parser-and-display **plus the refusal**, and the framing does not
+ claim visiting works.
+
+Making it work end-to-end means `OsString`/bytes through two binding
+boundaries — a real change to the Lua API surface, and not this lane's.
+
+### Q#G-3 — what does the diff view render into?
+
+*My vote: **a generated buffer**, reusing the generated-buffer
+immutability work (Stage 1 merged; that lane's Stage 2 is queued).
+Diff output is read-only text and that machinery exists.
+
+**RESOLVED in rev 2 — there is no bundled `diff` grammar.**
+`BUILTIN_LANGUAGES` (`src/syntax.rs`) has no `diff` entry; checked, not
+assumed. **Stage 1 renders plain generated text**, and diff
+highlighting is later work needing a grammar first.
+
+### Q#G-4 — what is configurable?
+
+*My vote: **one setting to start** — `git.enabled` (boolean, default
+`true`), through the config registry. Resist more until there is use
+evidence; §11's grade is "partial (foundation only)" and adding five
+speculative settings is how a registry becomes noise.
+
+### Q#G-5 — §9 attribution — **RESOLVED, and the answer is negative**
+
+Revision 1 deferred this to implementation. That was wrong: it is
+answerable by reading, and deferring it would have meant discovering a
+known coherence cost *after* committing to the design.
+
+**A spawned git process does not appear in `*workers*` at all.** That
+buffer is `builtin/runtime/async.lua`'s (`:490`) and lists **async
+jobs**; spawned processes live separately under `pmacs.process.list`.
+They are two of the four disjoint activity views §9 grades as
+"mechanism without identity".
+
+So, stated plainly rather than dressed up:
+
+- **This lane adds a fifth thing that runs in the background and is not
+ attributable from one place.** That is a **negative** coherence impact
+ against §9, and it is the honest cost of shipping git status before
+ worker identity exists.
+- **Labelling the process is still required** — a clear label under
+ `pmacs.process.list` is strictly better than an anonymous `git`. But
+ **a label does not solve attribution**, and this document does not
+ claim it does. The claim is only: do not make it worse than it has to
+ be.
+- **The mitigation is bounded in time, not in kind.** These are
+ short-lived reads, not long-running jobs; a `git status` that has not
+ finished is a bug, not a background task a user needs to supervise.
+ That is why the cost is acceptable *now* and would not be for
+ Stage 3's push/pull.
+
+## 6. Verification
+
+- **Parsing, against a corpus rather than a case (Q#G-6):** modified,
+ added, deleted, untracked, **renamed with both paths**, **copied**, a
+ path with a space, and **a path with a newline** — the last is what
+ `-z` buys, and a parser that passes only the space case is the one
+ that ships broken.
+- **A non-UTF-8 path is parsed and displayed, and its gestures refuse
+ with a message** (Q#G-8) — a witnessed refusal at the binding
+ boundary, **not** an end-to-end visit.
+- **The argv carries `--no-optional-locks`** (Q#G-6), asserted
+ structurally. A lock not taken cannot be observed directly, so the
+ invocation is what gets pinned.
+- **`d` is witnessed on every row class** (Q#G-7): staged, unstaged,
+ both, deleted, renamed, and **untracked** — the last because a normal
+ `git diff` shows nothing there, so a missing `--no-index` case makes
+ `d` silently dead exactly where it is most used.
+- **The untracked diff renders on exit 1**, not a failure row (Q#G-7a)
+ — the case `--exit-code` semantics would otherwise break, and the
+ one most likely to be "fixed" later by someone who reads exit 1 as an
+ error.
+- **An unborn repository is witnessed end to end**, and the fixture is
+ **`AM`** specifically — staged then edited again, the shape a first
+ commit actually has partway through. `git init`, stage, edit, open
+ the panel, press `d`, and get **two labelled patches** with the
+ split-view header — not `fatal: bad revision 'HEAD'`, and not a
+ single `--cached` patch that silently drops the worktree edit.
+ **`AD` rides the same fixture**, since one repository can hold both.
+- **Unborn detection reads `# branch.oid (initial)`** from the status
+ output already being parsed — asserted, so nobody later reintroduces
+ a second `rev-parse` process for a fact already in hand.
+- **Rename/copy under an unborn `HEAD` is asserted UNREACHABLE**: the
+ fixture `git mv`s a staged-but-uncommitted file and the parser sees a
+ `1 A.` record, never a `2`. Pinned so a future reader does not
+ "fix" the missing unborn rename policy by inventing one.
+- **Re-binding across a refresh does not error** (Q#G-7): two
+ successive refreshes on a live panel, asserting `d` still works and
+ no `DuplicateBinding` surfaced. This is the one that would have
+ broken on every refresh.
+- **A `keys` table colliding with the fixed set is rejected at install
+ time**, as is a prefix conflict.
+- **Selection is re-seated by the completion handler** (Q#G-1), across
+ a refresh that reorders rows, and **falls back to line 1 without
+ complaint when the selected path drops out of status** — the common
+ case, not an error.
+- **The pure `parse_*` functions are tested without a repository**,
+ which is the shape `pmacs-magit/status.lua` already proves works and
+ the reason to port that separation rather than invent one.
+- **A repository fixture built with real `git`**, in a tempdir, and
+ **bounded with `set_search_boundary`** — R8 was retired two commits
+ ago and is precisely what happens when a fixture lets project
+ detection escape into the developer's environment.
+- **The root rule is witnessed on a repository whose `ProjectKind` is
+ NOT `Git`** — i.e. an ordinary language project with a `.git` beside
+ its manifest. That is the case revision 1's `kind == "git"` gate
+ would have failed, and this repository is one.
+- **Missing `git` on `PATH` is witnessed**, not assumed (Q#G-2), and
+ surfaces guidance rather than silence.
+- **`g` is never a no-op** (Q#G-1): it re-renders and marks that work
+ started, even mid-flight. A dead `g` is a defect `listview` already
+ names.
+- **Concurrent refresh discards the stale generation** rather than
+ racing — asserted by driving two refreshes and completing them out of
+ order.
+- **Failure renders a row**, carrying exit code and stderr.
+- **The panel is a `listview` adopter**, asserted structurally, so a
+ future re-implementation of list behaviour inside git code fails the
+ test rather than passing review.
+- **No new interaction island** — `d` is bound buffer-locally through
+ `listview`'s own binding path (Q#G-7), not a hardcoded interception.
+ §6 stays at six shadows.
+
+Gates via `scripts/gate --acceptance `.
+
+**What this will NOT prove:** that background git work is attributable
+(Q#G-5 — it is not, by construction), or that the parser handles
+porcelain versions other than v2.
+
+## 7. Not in scope
+
+Gutter markers and any `DecorationKind`/`PROTOCOL_VERSION` change
+(Stage 2 — must be scheduled alone). Staging, commit, push, pull,
+branch operations, merge-conflict resolution. Blame. A `git` context in
+the menu vocabulary. Any git *library* dependency. Live refresh
+(Q#G-1). Fixing §9's worker identity — this lane makes it marginally
+worse and says so (Q#G-5). Any hunk model (Q#G-7). Modifying the
+`listview` primitive to carry an async contract — the better long-term
+answer, but it belongs in its own lane before this one, not inside its
+fifth adopter (Q#G-1). Changing `tests/fixtures/pmacs-magit/` or
+`tests/m8_6_acceptance.rs` (Q#G-0).
+
+**A `listview` change IS in scope after all** (Q#G-7): an optional
+`keys` table on the open spec. Revision 2 said no primitive
+modification; that was false, because `d` cannot be bound from outside
+the primitive safely. The async-contract change stays out.
+
+**One correction this lane should carry when it lands:** `COHERENCE.md`
+§15's "no Git integration anywhere in the tree" is literally false —
+`tests/fixtures/pmacs-magit/` exists. The *product* gap it describes is
+real; the sentence needs narrowing to say so.