[joshyorko]

Addresses #238 Packet A and fixture P14. Depends on #261's bounded command scheduler repair.

With a manual apply watermark but no scheduled watermark, the first scheduled command incorrectly inherited the manual cutoff, returned an empty success, and advanced past scheduler-unprocessed evidence. The private scheduled invocation now keeps its own empty or persisted cutoff. Manual omitted-cutoff defaults and explicit manual replay retain their behavior; the scheduler does not gain archive replay authority.

A file-backed service regression establishes the two independent watermarks through real operations, checks a failed command and persisted error receipt, reopens the database, retries the same first record, continues a capped equal-timestamp source tail across another restart and a later manual watermark, and verifies no archived evidence or unchanged-tick model call. Separate compatibility checks retain manual default and explicit-empty behavior.

Base: 4972855, the published #261 head.
Tested local checkpoint: f1cb612bda4769bbd64d2796f2e37b680abcfc9e.
Published head: 5b1da23. The published and tested trees are identical: 73482fc775544b638809e5220969d06c7eaaff82.

Validation:

• Genuine pre-fix first-scan failure was observed. The unchanged base reported zero selected evidence and advanced its scheduled watermark without invoking the configured failing command.
• 17 focused scheduler, command policy, no-fallback and configuration tests passed, zero failed or ignored.
• Formatting and whitespace checks passed.
• Full canonical release gate completed under the owned Linux child reaper with an exit-zero receipt at the tested head: 583 Rust tests across 47 result groups passed, zero failed, ignored or filtered. Five launcher checks, synthetic doctor/evaluations/performance, dry runs and required-file checks passed. The published source tree is identical. Operator dogfood was excluded.

This bounded repair does not close #238 or claim governed automatic model adoption, semantic validation, real consumer learning acceptance, or live activation. No provider/model/auth ownership, budgets, proposal identity, schema, storage policy, or adoption mode changes are included. Latest-head automatic connector review and required checks remain merge gates; no additional GitHub review was requested.

Independent local Sol review found no actionable bounded finding. The completed full synthetic gate covers the identical published tree 73482fc775544b638809e5220969d06c7eaaff82. This remains a draft stacked on #261. Latest-head GitHub CI and automatic connector review remain pending; complete #238 adoption and consumer gates remain open.