make context a budget the harness enforces

Adopts ideas/token-conservation.md, parked 2026-07-28, plus the disciplines
the human added: read the compressed form first, discover by mechanism,
shrink output at the source, never pay twice for the same bytes.

docs/context-economy.md owns all of it and leads with a floor, because
every cheap failure mode is also a token saving — skipping the owning doc,
guessing a signature, reporting from a diff, thinning a test — and each has
already cost this repo a defect. Frugality is for presentation and
discovery, never for the artifact or the evidence.

Mechanical, not remembered:

- scripts/surface.sh generates docs/surface.md — every top-level
  declaration with its line, 261 lines standing for 3757 of source. The
  pre-commit hook regenerates and stages it, so it cannot be stale, and
  verify.sh compares independently for a clone that never set
  core.hooksPath. The hook refuses a commit with unstaged .go changes,
  since what it generated describes the working tree, not the commit.
- verify.sh --quiet: 48 lines of gate output become 1. The hook uses it.
- CLAUDE_LOC_MAX=150, the only budget billed per turn rather than per read.

Both new gates were watched failing before being kept: a doctored
surface.md, and CLAUDE_LOC_MAX temporarily set to 5.

state.md's inventory loses its LOC column. It had already drifted on six
files (content.go 381→450, render.go 447→454, web.go 206→217, check
216→223, watch 129→137, chrome 105→110) which is what a number written in
two places does; the generated file owns sizes now, the table owns purpose.
The subagent question is recorded there as the one open decision, with the
case for and against written out in the idea file.

.claude/skills/khosra-feature-loop/SKILL.md

@@ -29,6 +29,8 @@ a layout or markup decision dressed as an engine feature. |
 ## 1. Clarify
 
 Read `docs/state.md`, then `docs/README.md` — the map, always, before deciding what else to open.
+For code, read the compressed form before the source: `docs/surface.md` locates every declaration,
+`go doc` gives a package's surface, a test states its contract. Disciplines: `docs/context-economy.md`.
 Use its topic-ownership table to list the docs owning anything this change asserts a rule about,
 and read those. That list is a floor: skipping it is how a rule gets written twice and the second
 copy contradicts the first.
@@ -96,7 +98,9 @@ If the plan reveals a trunk, say so instead of planning and offer the leaf.
 
 ## 4. Verify
 
-Run `./scripts/verify.sh` — doc coupling, format, vet, build, test, dependency allowlist, budgets.
+Run `./scripts/verify.sh --quiet` — doc coupling, format, vet, build, test, dependency allowlist,
+budgets. Quiet prints only failures, warnings and the verdict; use the loud form when a gate fails and
+you want its neighbours, or when auditing the gates themselves.
 
 Then **at least one piece of feature-specific evidence you actually executed**: the new test name
 and its output, `curl -s localhost:PORT/path | head`, a golden-file diff, the before/after fragment
@@ -207,5 +211,8 @@ Swept:      the old form you grepped for after a rename, or "n/a"
 | Treated a one-sentence request as a narrow change | Articulation size is not blast radius | Walk the propagation table |
 | Splitting the difference between request and policy | A compromise nobody chose | Surface it; the human picks |
 | Ending a turn with the work only in the working tree | The one copy is the one that gets lost | Commit before reporting |
+| Opening a file to find out what is in it | The generated surface already answers it | `docs/surface.md`, then read the range |
+| Grepping for callers before changing a signature | The compiler enumerates them exactly | Change it, then `go build ./...` |
+| A shorter report that dropped a caveat, case or number | Truncation wearing compression's clothes | Restore it; cut words, never findings |
 | One commit per file, or per doc touched | Shredding a single revertible unit | Bundle what would be undone together |
 | Committing without ever saying you would | Consent assumed, not given | The notice, once, before the first one |