HOUSE_ROOT — Governed Portability

Why it surfaced

This is unusually candid engineering documentation: the first launcher fix passed from the expected directory but still failed the actual portability requirement. The author traces 15 path sites, four resolver scenarios, a discriminating negative control, three merge commits, and the evidence gaps that remain deliberately unverified.

A case study about replacing hardcoded repository paths with a fail-safe root resolver, then testing the repair against relocated checkouts and false-green results.