Evidence: the tests test something, and everything is green

Red→green record for issue-177 (M1–M9). Commands run from the repository root; the suite runs from cli/ via uv.

The red — before the implementation existed

cli/tests/test_graph_skips.py was written first and run against the unchanged runtime:

$ uv run --directory cli pytest -q tests/test_graph_skips.py
ImportError while importing test module '…/cli/tests/test_graph_skips.py'.
tests/test_graph_skips.py:33: in <module>
    from the_loop.graph.runtime import Runtime, declare_skips
E   ImportError: cannot import name 'declare_skips' from 'the_loop.graph.runtime'
1 error in 0.39s

Mid-implementation, with the runtime built but the shipped graph not yet touched, the vocabulary assertions were still red — proving M2 reads the real YAML rather than the test's miniature graph:

FAILED tests/test_graph_skips.py::test_shipped_outer_loop_marks_exactly_the_spec_chain_skippable
2 failed, 25 passed in 0.26s

After the owner's review replaced the declaration channel, the nine selection tests were written against the label implementation and were red there — four of them structurally (there was no gate to answer at all), and the rest once the gate existed but before the two bugs self-review found were fixed:

FAILED tests/test_graph_skips.py::test_entry_posts_the_checklist_naming_the_selectable_phases
FAILED tests/test_graph_skips.py::test_the_checklist_is_posted_once - IndexError
FAILED tests/test_graph_skips.py::test_unticked_phases_become_declared_skips_and_the_loop_starts
FAILED tests/test_graph_skips.py::test_unticking_a_protected_phase_is_refused_and_said_so
4 failed, 29 passed in 8.32s

Both reds were real defects, not fixture noise: the hook was re-loading the shipped graph instead of the one the runtime was executing (so tasks resolved to nothing in a test graph — and would have listed the wrong phases for the inner PR loop), and its module-level from ..integrations import resolve bound the name locally, bypassing the seam every other caller patches.

The green

$ uv run --directory cli pytest -q tests/test_graph_skips.py
34 passed in 0.34s

$ uv run --directory cli pytest -q tests/test_core_graphs.py tests/test_graph_skips.py tests/test_api_contract_parity.py
39 passed in 1.6s

Nothing else moved (M9)

Baseline before this work item: 1423 passed, 1 skipped (issue-172's record at 25a885d). After:

$ uv run --directory cli pytest -q
1459 passed, 1 skipped in 45.83s

The +36 are this work item's tests (34 in test_graph_skips.py, 2 in test_core_graphs.py). Six pre-existing tests changed rather than grew: they asserted the outer loop starts at brainstorming and that a spawn delivers a claim command, both of which the new first node deliberately changes — a session is now told it is waiting at a human gate, not told to claim it.

The API contract parity test passes with the authored POST /graph/skip entry, and the graph/manifest/template parity suite (test_graph_parity.py), including P4's config↔graph phase-order check, passes with phase-selection added to both configs' workflow.phases.