The delivery and image-automation gates now enforce whichever state the chat StatefulSet is actually in: with no hux sidecar they require zero partial HUX wiring (no containers, volumes, PVC, or HUX_* env); with the sidecar staged they enforce the full strict boundary. This lets the reviewed source chain merge and build before the activation topology lands, without ever waiving an activated assertion. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BvMSXH8VH2tMWXanb8SJdf