Numeric lane grades and weighted candidate rankings duplicate model
judgment without adding a qualification invariant. Keep explicit completion,
residuals, evidence, assertions and ownership availability as the current
state contract. Remove duplicated prose catalogs and stale retired-surface
obligations while retaining their canonical owners.
Every candidate_lanes record now carries demand_evidence: dated pointers
to the demand signals justifying the proposed lane (issues, discussions,
support threads, telemetry findings, or a demand-ledger entry in
pulse-pro/FEATURE_REQUESTS.md), or an explicit named-bet declaration for
maintainer-originated lanes with no external signal yet. The schema
requires the field, status_audit rejects missing or empty lists and
surfaces the evidence in the candidate_lanes and candidate_lane_queue
pretty blocks, and the canonical development protocol documents the
rule. No data migration needed; candidate_lanes is currently empty.
rcourtman