---
name: authored-unlanded-text-lives-in-the-lane-index
description: "An \"authored but unlanded\" artifact a peer says they read the diff of is most likely STAGED in the lane worktree — check git status/diff --cached there before searching docs, issues, or asking."
metadata: 
  node_type: memory
  type: feedback
  originSessionId: 3fad1fb4-a590-4c06-b037-6acdff5510c8
  modified: 2026-08-19T10:18:59.724Z
---

When a peer reports text as **authored but not landed** and says they *read its diff*, the diff had a
source: the lane worktree's own index. Hunt order is `git -C <lane-worktree> status --porcelain` then
`git diff --cached <file>` — BEFORE reading root JIT docs, before `gh issue view` comment archaeology,
and long before asking the peer where they read it.

Measured 2026-08-19 (#182 W3 post-gate doc-only preamble commit): my resume brief named three
candidate sources (untracked `ER-SKELETON-DRAFT.md`, `KEYSTONE-182-JIT.md`, #165 comment 5338815273)
and a fallback of asking doyle. None was the answer — the sentence was sitting STAGED as
`M docs/ER-SKELETON.md` in `.worktrees/keystone-w1`, one `git status` away. The issue comment held the
*ruling and the prose* but not the diff; the draft file held the ratified skeleton, not the amendment.

**Why:** a lane that authored a change and deliberately did NOT commit it (to keep a gate pinned to a
sha) parks it in the index. That is exactly the state "authored, unlanded, diff readable" describes —
the phrase is a description of a staged working tree, not a hint that the text is filed as prose
somewhere. Re-composing it from a ruling's prose would have shipped bytes nobody ratified.

**How to apply:** on any "land the owed X" wake, first command is a status/diff of the lane worktree.
If it is staged, commit exactly those bytes with `git commit --only <path>` — do not retype, do not
tidy. Say so in the report ("I did not compose this; it was staged, that staged diff is what you
read") so the gater can price the provenance. Related: [[resumed-session-reground-before-acting]] —
the brief's candidate list was a hypothesis and all of it was wrong while the answer was cheap;
[[commune-is-testimony-not-an-artifact]].