[gibbsie]

Problem

Two bugs in the intake post-fabrication status flow:

1. Dangerous default. When the live registry lookup failed (e.g. UnknownServiceError because the container's botocore predated the agent-registry-control service model) AND the job row had no registryApprovalStatus snapshot, _plain_state defaulted to "built and approved" — the worst possible fallback, presenting an unverified agent as governance-cleared.

2. Missing SDK service model. The container's requirements.txt used boto3>=1.43.56 (a floor, not a pin). A cached image layer could resolve to a boto3/botocore release that predates agent-registry-control, causing _get_registry_client() to raise UnknownServiceError at runtime and forcing every status check into the snapshot fallback path — which hit bug 1.

3. Fabricator snapshot gap. _write_fabrication_status in the fabricator only wrote registryApprovalStatus when run_state.pending_approval was non-empty. Auto-approved jobs got no snapshot at all, so even a working snapshot fallback in postfab had nothing to read.

Changes

service/agent_intake_single (container stack)

• tools/postfab.py: Changed _plain_state fallback from "built and approved" to "built; approval status could not be confirmed" when the snapshot field is absent or unrecognised. Upgraded _resolve_registry_status logging from logger.warning to logger.error with a structured metric-friendly message so CloudWatch metric filters can alert on registry-client unavailability.
• requirements.txt: Pinned boto3==1.43.116 (matching the fabricator pin) to guarantee agent-registry-control is present in the container image. botocore 1.43.116 includes the service model; the old >=1.43.56 floor could resolve to a release without it.
• tests/test_botocore_registry_service.py: New container-level smoke test that asserts 'agent-registry-control' in botocore.session.get_session().get_available_services(). Fails in any env with an old botocore — must be run with the pinned deps.
• tests/test_postfab_approval_status.py, tests/test_postfab_live_registry.py: Updated three test assertions from "built and approved" to "built; approval status could not be confirmed" to match the new safe default.

arbiter/fabricator (arbiter stack)

• index.py: _write_fabrication_status now writes registryApprovalStatus='approved' on every COMPLETED job (when run_state.pending_approval is empty), instead of omitting the field. This ensures the snapshot fallback path in postfab always has a value to read.

Testing

• 467/467 service tests pass (including the new botocore smoke test)
• 2523/2523 arbiter tests pass (1 skipped, pre-existing)
• Verified botocore 1.43.116 includes agent-registry-control: True
• Verified the old floor boto3>=1.43.56 resolves to botocore 1.43.118 on a fresh pip install (also True), but this is not guaranteed for cached Docker layers — the pin eliminates that variable.