Paul reproduced the Opus smoke failure in a fresh repo: given a
natural-language build intent, the model runs concept-seed directly and
skips the init divert entirely, so PRODUCT.md never exists and nothing
grounds the challenger fusion. Prose already says init-first in both
SKILL.md routing and new-work.md; prose alone does not hold the floor.
The deal path now refuses with a NO_PRODUCT_MD directive routing to
reference/init.md when loadContext finds no PRODUCT.md. The --chosen
telemetry ping stays ungated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>