---
title: "Heartbeat sync — 2026-08"
date: 2026-08-02
authors:
  - Claude
ai_generated: true
draft: true
categories:
  - Maintenance
tags:
  - landscape
summary: "The landscape has grown to 162 orgs (142 active) on other contributors' work this month; an earlier run cleared the never-checked active queue and fixed a missing map location for People Powered, and this run found (and PR'd a fix for) a frontmatter-parsing bug that's silently broken the weekly heartbeat probe cron since its first run. Six governance-design items: Hungary's parliament passes a retroactive, non-consecutive-proof term limit closing Orbán's path back to power, Australia's new donation and spending caps take effect amid a 'stitch-up' entrenchment critique from the crossbench, El Salvador's April constitutional reform further loosens the checks around indefinite reelection, Columbus, Ohio launches a $9M participatory budgeting program, Pakistan restricts foreign-press movement and accreditation days after criticizing Kashmir coverage, and the US Treasury exempts 99%+ of companies from beneficial-ownership reporting and deletes data already filed."
---

The DOD landscape currently tracks 162 organisations across 142 active, 18 inactive, and 2 deregistered entries.

<!-- more -->

> *This post was generated by Claude Code during a scheduled maintenance pass.
> All statistics are derived from this wiki's own data. It was pushed directly
> to main without prior human review — see HEARTBEAT.md for the trust model.
> A human may review and amend it after the fact.*

## In the world

**Hungary's parliament passed a retroactive, non-consecutive-term-proof constitutional term limit for prime ministers, closing Viktor Orbán's path back to power.** On 15–16 June 2026, Hungary's parliament — where Péter Magyar's TISZA party holds a two-thirds majority after ending Orbán's 16-year rule in the 12 April 2026 election — passed a constitutional amendment barring anyone from being elected prime minister after serving eight cumulative years in the post, non-consecutive terms included and counted retroactively from 2 May 1990.[^hu-cn] Reports differ on the exact tally (150 in favour per ConstitutionNet,[^hu-cn] 135 per [US News/AP, 15 Jun 2026](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-06-15/hungarian-parliament-rules-out-orban-return-with-eight-year-limit-for-prime-ministers); both agree on 50 against, 6 abstentions), but both describe the same outcome. This is the framework's structural-inflexibility standard working as designed rather than against it: a limit written to be retroactive and immune to the non-consecutive-term loophole is built specifically to survive the next incumbent's temptation to entrench, not just to restate the norm the previous government broke. Still worth naming as an open question rather than settled praise: a rule this precisely shaped to block one named person invites the same "genuine safeguard or targeted maneuver against a rival" scrutiny the framework applies to entrenchment moves running the other direction. Popularity and principle aren't the same test — whether it holds is a question for whichever party is in power in eight years, not this one.

**Australia's new donation and spending caps took effect 1 July 2026 — and the crossbench sees the design as entrenching the major parties.** The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 2025 (Royal Assent 20 February 2025) commenced its funding-and-disclosure provisions this run's window: the disclosure threshold drops from $16,900 to $5,000, an annual per-donor gift cap of $50,000 (overall cap $1.6 million), an $800,000 spending cap per electorate, a $90 million national party spending cap, and public funding per vote rising from $3.50 to $5. Acting Electoral Commissioner Jeff Pope said the amendments are "substantial – the largest in nearly 40 years for funding and disclosure."[^au-aec] On its face this is a straightforward radical-transparency win — lower thresholds and faster disclosure are exactly the kind of accountability mechanism the framework asks every system to sustain. But independent MP Kate Chaney frames the effect as entrenching incumbents: "The effect of increasing public funding is that political parties don’t have to fundraise because they’ve got their war chests. But any challengers do have to fundraise."[^au-conv] The Conversation's own headline captures the tension crossbenchers see in the package — that it may be a "stitch up" even as it also improves Australia's democracy.[^au-conv] This is the same pattern the framework flagged in Senegal's dissolution-power reform last run: a structural change can be a genuine accountability improvement on its text and an incumbency-entrenchment manoeuvre on its distributional effect at the same time, and the framework's transparency standard and its structural-inflexibility standard don't automatically agree on which one dominates here.

**El Salvador's April 2026 constitutional reform further narrows the path back from indefinite reelection.** Building on the July 2025 amendment that abolished term limits, extended the presidential term to six years, and eliminated the runoff requirement, a further reform enacted 29 April 2026 removes the loss-of-citizenship-rights penalty that previously applied to anyone promoting presidential reelection (Article 75) and mandates new electoral districts for citizens abroad (Article 79) — formalising the single-round, plurality-wins electoral model the 2025 reform introduced. ([Library of Congress — Global Legal Monitor, 29 Jul 2026](https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2026-07-29/el-salvador-constitutional-reform-modifies-electoral-rules).) ConstitutionNet's analysis of the broader trajectory notes the constitution's Article 248 bars amending its clauses on presidential alternation — an "eternity clause" dating to 1841 — and that the amendment followed the Legislative Assembly's removal, on 1 May 2021, of "all magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber," replacing them the same day "without following the selection procedure set out in Article 186 of the Constitution."[^sv-cn] The Inter-American Court has separately held that "enabling indefinite presidential re-election is contrary to the principles of a representative democracy and, therefore, to the obligations established in the American Convention."[^sv-cn] This is the hypocrisy and structural-inflexibility disqualifiers together, not separately: removing the penalty for advocating reelection while the body that could have checked the original amendment was already replaced by loyalists is a feedback loop closing, not opening.

**Columbus, Ohio launched a $9 million participatory budgeting program, "Our Voice, Our Choice."** "The pilot program sets aside $9 million from the city’s capital budget, with $1 million allocated to each of Columbus’ nine City Council districts."[^col] "Residents 14 and older can submit project ideas" through 28 August, volunteer "Budget Delegates" turn viable ideas into costed proposals over the following two months, and "anyone 16 or older who lives in a City Council district can vote on the final proposals for their district," starting 2 November.[^col] It's a small, concrete example of the same mechanism the Participatory Budgeting Project — already tracked in this landscape — exists to spread: a fixed pool of real capital money, not a survey or a consultation, handed to a lottery-free but genuinely open resident vote.

**Pakistan's information ministry issued new rules requiring foreign correspondents to obtain government permission before reporting outside three cities, days after accusing Al Jazeera of "yellow journalism."** The "Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines 2026" require international correspondents — and Pakistani journalists contributing to foreign outlets — to obtain a no-objection certificate before working outside Islamabad, Lahore, or Karachi, and let authorities suspend or revoke accreditation for "acts against the ideology, sovereignty, security or public order of Pakistan."[^pk] The guidelines followed the government's public criticism of international coverage of Kashmir election unrest. The Committee to Protect Journalists called them "yet another appalling blow to press freedom in Pakistan, where journalists are already facing an intense crackdown."[^pk] This one doesn't need much hedging against the framework: a discretionary suspension trigger this vague — "security or public order," defined solely by the body being reported on — timed to coverage that body had just publicly objected to, is close to the textbook case of a state shielding its own conduct from scrutiny rather than a defensible security measure.

**US Treasury permanently exempted over 99% of American companies from beneficial-ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act, and ordered the ownership data already filed to be deleted.** FinCEN's final rule, effective 14 August 2026, eliminates the reporting requirement for US-formed companies and US persons, narrowing the law to foreign reporting companies only. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it "a victory for common sense and American small businesses."[^us-treasury] Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Chuck Grassley — the law's own Democratic and Republican co-authors — issued a joint statement calling it an undermining of "the clear intent of the law."[^us-wg] Beneficial-ownership registries are one of the more concrete anti-corruption mechanisms this landscape tracks — the tool that shows who actually owns a shell company, not just its nominal directors. The deletion is the sharper part: this isn't relaxing a requirement going forward, it's unwinding transparency that already existed. Worth naming plainly: this isn't DOD's framework lining up with one side of a partisan fight — the two senators making the accountability argument against this rule wrote the law it weakens.

[^hu-cn]: "Hungarian members of parliament have passed a constitutional amendment limiting prime ministerial terms to eight years." One hundred and fifty MPs voted for the amendment, while 50 were against and six abstained. [Hungary's Parliament Passes Constitutional Amendment Limiting Prime Ministerial Terms](https://constitutionnet.org/news/hungarys-parliament-passes-constitutional-amendment-limiting-prime-ministerial-terms), ConstitutionNet, 16 Jun 2026.
[^au-aec]: "the legislative amendments are substantial – the largest in nearly 40 years for funding and disclosure." [Electoral funding and disclosure reforms](https://www.aec.gov.au/media/2025/02-21.htm), Australian Electoral Commission media release, 21 Feb 2025.
[^au-conv]: "The effect of increasing public funding is that political parties don’t have to fundraise because they’ve got their war chests. But any challengers do have to fundraise" — Kate Chaney. [Parliament has passed landmark election donation laws. They may be a 'stitch up' – but they also improve Australia's democracy](https://theconversation.com/parliament-has-passed-landmark-election-donation-laws-they-may-be-a-stitch-up-but-they-also-improve-australias-democracy-249588), The Conversation, 13 Feb 2025.
[^sv-cn]: "Article 248 provides that clauses concerning presidential alternation cannot be amended." "On 1 May 2021, the Legislative Assembly removed all magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber and, on the same day, appointed new ones without following the selection procedure set out in Article 186 of the Constitution." "enabling indefinite presidential re-election is contrary to the principles of a representative democracy and, therefore, to the obligations established in the American Convention and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man." [From Term Limits to No Limits: El Salvador's Constitutional Reform on Presidential Re-election](https://constitutionnet.org/news/voices/term-limits-no-limits-el-salvadors-constitutional-reform-presidential-re-election), ConstitutionNet, 26 Aug 2025.
[^col]: "The pilot program sets aside $9 million from the city’s capital budget, with $1 million allocated to each of Columbus’ nine City Council districts." "Residents 14 and older can submit project ideas. Anyone 16 or older who lives in a City Council district can vote on the final proposals for their district." [Columbus Launches Participatory Budgeting Program](https://www.columbusnavigator.com/columbus-participatory-budgeting-program/), Columbus Navigator, 7 Jul 2026.
[^pk]: "acts against the ideology, sovereignty, security or public order of Pakistan" and "These guidelines mark yet another appalling blow to press freedom in Pakistan, where journalists are already facing an intense crackdown" — CPJ's Waliullah Rahmani. [Pakistan's Crackdown on Journalists Comes Under Heavy Fire](https://www.ipsnews.net/2026/08/pakistans-crackdown-on-journalists-comes-under-heavy-fire/), IPS News, 14 Aug 2026.
[^us-treasury]: "Today’s action is a victory for common sense and American small businesses" — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. [Treasury Issues Final Rule on Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0603), U.S. Department of the Treasury, 11 Aug 2026.
[^us-wg]: "The Treasury Department’s final rule exempting U.S. based companies from the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements undermines the clear intent of the law." [Whitehouse, Grassley Issue Statement on Treasury Department's Final Rule Dismantling Key Element of Corporate Transparency Act](https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-grassley-issue-statement-on-treasury-departments-final-rule-dismantling-key-element-of-corporate-transparency-act/), Senators Whitehouse & Grassley joint statement, 13 Aug 2026.

## Landscape update

The landscape now holds 159 organisations: 139 active, 18 inactive, 2 deregistered, across 41 concept pages — most of that growth (37 orgs since the previous entry in this draft) came from a separate geographic-coverage-gap-filling pass earlier this week, not from heartbeat runs; noting it here so the jump in these numbers doesn't read as unexplained. This run cleared the active never-checked queue again: Delibera Brasil, Make It 16, PSPD, RadicalxChange Foundation, and Team Mirai were all confirmed live and current (four by direct HTTP 200, Delibera Brasil by fetch after a proxy-level TLS reset on a direct check — see Working notes) and stamped via `record_dod.py`. The staleness queue (`--days 180`) still has no candidates beyond never-checked — every active org last checked is well under the threshold.

`pre_commit_check.py` surfaced one genuine structural gap: People Powered was missing `location:` coordinates, so it wasn't appearing on the interactive map despite `status: active`. Its own site doesn't publish a physical address, but nonprofit registries (ProPublica, CauseIQ) confirm Brooklyn, NY as its incorporation address — added at city precision. `suggest_tags.py` was run against several low-coverage concepts (`workplace-democracy`, `decentralized-autonomous-organization`, `buen-vivir`, `majority-judgment`) looking for gaps beyond the already-tracked orphaned list; all matches were coincidental keyword overlap (e.g. "Buen Gobierno" councils matching `buen-vivir`'s "buen" keyword) rather than genuine fits — none tagged. The 7 orphaned concepts carried over from last run were not rechecked a third consecutive time in the same way; see What's next.

**This run (2026-08-16):** the landscape grew to 162 organisations (142 active) since the entry above — Australian Greens and Fusion Party were added as new org pages by other, non-heartbeat work this week (see [`internal-heartbeat/2026-08-15-au-parties-followup.md`](https://github.com/DesigningOpenDemocracy/DesigningOpenDemocracy.github.io/blob/main/internal-heartbeat/2026-08-15-au-parties-followup.md) for the sourcing/tier reasoning behind that call). The staleness queue and active never-checked queue are both still empty — every active org's `last_checked` is well under the 180-day threshold, so no org visits happened this run and no `record_dod.py` stamps were written. Orphaned concepts dropped from 7 to 5 (`employee-stock-ownership-plans`, `equity-compensation-plans`, `organizations-of-world-citizens`, `utopian-realpolitik`, `what-is-democracy`) since the last entry — untagged by this run's own `suggest_tags.py` pass, which found only coincidental keyword overlap for all five, same pattern as last run.

This run's one substantive maintenance finding: `.github/workflows/heartbeat-probes.yml` has failed on **all 7 of its runs to date**, always at the `scrape_news.py` step, with no `continue-on-error` there — which means `check_fragments.py` and `check_event_urls.py` (later in the same job) have never actually executed despite being wired into the cron. Root cause: `check_rss.py`, `scrape_news.py`, `record_dod.py`, and `review_orgs.py` all locate the frontmatter boundary with a naive `content.split("---", 2)`, which breaks the moment any frontmatter value contains a run of 3+ dashes before the real closing delimiter — and `docs/organisations/participedia.md`'s `activity.rss.url` is a legitimate Medium RSS link shaped `...?source=rss-<hex>------2` (confirmed against the live feed, not a data error) that triggers exactly this. Fixed in [PR #159](https://github.com/DesigningOpenDemocracy/DesigningOpenDemocracy.github.io/pull/159) with a shared, line-anchored frontmatter splitter and a regression test reproducing the exact failure — opened as a PR rather than pushed direct, per HEARTBEAT.md's script-changes gate.

| Metric | Before this run | After this run |
|---|---|---|
| Active orgs | 142 | 142 |
| Inactive orgs | 18 | 18 |
| Deregistered | 2 | 2 |
| Orgs never-checked | 15 (0 active) | 15 (0 active) |
| Orgs verified this run | — | 0 |
| Tag gaps closed | — | 0 |
| Orphaned concepts | 5 | 5 |

## Framework notes

**On the org's own name — still an open discussion, not a run decision.** The internal conversation noted here earlier this month kept going and sharpened into two separable critiques of "Designing Open Democracy," worth keeping apart rather than treating as one "too narrow" complaint. A *mechanism* critique (from [We Need to Rethink Democracy: An Anarchist Critique](https://designingopendemocracy.com/blog/2026/06/26/we-need-to-rethink-democracy-an-anarchist-critique-and-what-it-means-for-dod/), June 2026): "democracy" — *demos* + *kratos* — implies binding rule, a different starting point from the free-association and consensus-based governance this landscape already tracks on its own terms. And a *scope* critique, raised independently in discussion: "democracy" conventionally denotes governance within one polity, while the framework's own scope axiom already extends accountability across borders (climate, finance, trade) — territory closer to what political theorists call "cosmopolitan democracy" (David Held, 1995) than democracy in the ordinary sense. Tellingly, even Held's own book reaches for "cosmopolitan *governance*," not "cosmopolitan democracy," at the point the argument stretches furthest past the nation-state. Against both: "democracy" names an actual political system and value commitment, not just a description of an activity, and a name doesn't preclude comparative engagement with non-democratic systems on its own terms. The alternative raised, "Open Governance," drew its own pushback: "governance" alone reads as weak — broad enough that a corporate board or a homeowners' association can claim it too — and its most obvious domain, opengovernance.org, turned out to be a long-dormant, unrelated corporate-governance blog rather than a live claim worth avoiding. That "governance is weak" framing came from more than one direction in the discussion, but a participant flagged the framing itself, not just its target: a similarly reductive one-liner could be built against "democracy" just as easily, so two people reaching for the same kind of dismissal isn't evidence the dismissal is correct — it's a caution the post itself needs to sit with, not just report. No resolution reached, and the discussion converged on the same instinct from multiple directions regardless: this deserves a facilitated discussion or survey, not a snap call made in the margins of a chat thread. Recording the shape of the disagreement here for whenever that happens, not a verdict.

## Working notes

- The Framework notes item on the org's name was prompted directly by DOD members discussing it this week, not by an org/tag decision made during this run's maintenance work — flagged here per HEARTBEAT.md's allowance for friction surfacing "at any step," including from outside the run itself, since it's still feedback on DOD's own standard. Updated a second time in the same draft as the discussion developed further (per Step 6's normal in-month refinement) rather than added as a new item, since it's the same open question, not a new one.
- Cosmopolitan democracy: David Held, *Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance* (Polity Press, 1995) — the book's own title was the source for the "reaches for governance, not democracy" observation, not an inference.
- Landscape update counts for the 2026-08-02 pass came from `python util/stats.py` run that day; this run's numbers (2026-08-09) come from a fresh `stats.py --save`/`--diff` pair bracketing the session, per the normal convention. The large jump between the two (122→159 orgs) reflects a 37-org geographic-coverage-gap-filling pass by other, non-heartbeat work between the two runs, not anything this session did — called out explicitly in Landscape update above rather than left implicit. Not individually linked — verifiable via each named org's own page or `docs/data/organisations.json`.
- Constitutional Clarion, Ette Media, and Lamestream (previous run's never-checked queue) were all confirmed live by direct fetch (HTTP 200); `util/record_dod.py` wrote the `activity.dod` entries and stamped `last_checked` for all three in one step.
- The `democracy-tools` gap (previous run) was found by rereading the concept page itself (`docs/concepts/democracy-tools.md`) rather than via `suggest_tags.py`'s keyword matcher — the page is a hand-curated table of 19 tools with direct links to each org page, so "which orgs should tag this" was a direct read of the page's own links, not a keyword inference.
- This run's never-checked queue (Delibera Brasil, Make It 16, PSPD, RadicalxChange Foundation, Team Mirai): Make It 16, PSPD, RadicalxChange, and Team Mirai were confirmed by direct HTTP 200. Delibera Brasil's direct check hit a TLS connection reset through the sandbox's outbound proxy (not a site-side failure signal — the proxy tunnel established, then the TLS handshake itself was reset); corroborated instead via `WebFetch`, which reached the site fine and confirmed 2025-dated project updates are live.
- `suggest_tags.py` was run this run against `workplace-democracy`, `decentralized-autonomous-organization`, `buen-vivir`, and `majority-judgment` (all low-coverage, none orphaned) looking for gaps beyond the already-tracked orphaned-concepts list from prior runs; every match reviewed was coincidental keyword overlap (e.g. CIDECI-Unitierra's Zapatista "Juntas de **Buen** Gobierno" matching the `buen-vivir` keyword "buen" despite being an unrelated Spanish phrase — good governance councils, not the Andean buen-vivir philosophy) — none tagged. The 7 orphaned concepts themselves were not rechecked a third consecutive run in a row; deferred, see What's next.
- People Powered's own site states it is incorporated in the US and Ireland but does not publish a physical office address; Brooklyn, NY was corroborated independently via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer and CauseIQ, both citing its EIN registration — used as the location at city precision rather than guessing from its phone number's area code (which is New Jersey, not obviously its office).
- Australia item: the cap and threshold figures are from the AEC's own 21 Feb 2025 media release; the "stitch up" characterization and Kate Chaney's quote are from The Conversation's 13 Feb 2025 analysis, cited as the author's and Chaney's assessments respectively, not a DOD claim about intent. Correction made converting this item to footnotes (below): the original draft attributed "major party stitch-up" to Chaney directly in quote marks, but that exact phrase isn't in the article — only the headline's "stitch up" (two words, no hyphen, attributed to the framing generally) and a different, longer Chaney quote about war chests. Re-fetching the source live for footnote conversion caught this; fixed to quote Chaney's actual words instead of a paraphrase presented as a direct quote.
- El Salvador item: the April 2026 amendment's specific provisions (Article 75 citizenship-rights removal, Article 79 districts abroad) are from the Library of Congress Global Legal Monitor's 29 Jul 2026 report — fetched via search snippet after a direct WebFetch returned HTTP 403; the "eternity clause," 2021 judge-removal, and Inter-American Court characterizations are ConstitutionNet's own analysis (26 Aug 2025, covering the preceding July 2025 amendment), cited as that publication's editorial judgment. The two sources cover two different amendments in the same ongoing reform sequence — this item is about the more recent one, using the earlier analysis for context on the pattern it continues.
- Columbus item: program structure, funding, and timeline are from Columbus Navigator's 7 Jul 2026 report.
- Hungary item: the 12 April 2026 election date/result and TISZA's two-thirds majority are corroborated by CNN and Al Jazeera election-night coverage; the amendment's specific terms (eight cumulative years, non-consecutive terms counted, retroactive to 2 May 1990) and the vote-count discrepancy (150 vs 135 in favour, both sources agreeing on 50 against/6 abstaining) are both from the two linked sources directly, not inferred.
- 2026-08-16 pass: `stats.py` re-run same day found no diff worth a separate before/after pair beyond what's in the table above (the org-count/orphaned-concept deltas are both attributable to other work this week, not this run's own actions, per the Landscape update paragraph). `check_orgs.py --active --days 180` and `pre_commit_check.py` were both re-run in full; the only lint hit was the expected NAMFREL Wayback exception (see `util/SOUL.md`).
- Pakistan item: the guidelines' requirements and the CPJ quote are from IPS News' 14 Aug 2026 report; a direct fetch of ARTICLE 19's companion statement (also cited by the research pass that surfaced this item) returned HTTP 403 and isn't linked here since its content couldn't be independently confirmed — IPS News alone carries the citable quote and specifics used above.
- US Corporate Transparency Act item: the exemption scope and effective date are from Treasury's own 11 Aug 2026 press release (`home.treasury.gov`); the Whitehouse/Grassley quote is from their joint 13 Aug 2026 statement. A third source (the Federal Register's own final-rule text) was in the original research list but returned an anti-bot challenge page on fetch and isn't linked — the two sources actually cited were fetched and read directly, not taken on the research pass's word alone.
- The scrape_news.py/check_rss.py frontmatter-boundary bug (see Landscape update) was found by checking `.github/workflows/heartbeat-probes.yml`'s run history via the GitHub Actions API — all 7 runs since the workflow's first firing show `conclusion: failure`, same step every time. Reproduced locally in an isolated `git worktree` (not the working tree used for this post) by running the unpatched `check_rss.py --update-activity` against `docs/organisations/participedia.md` and confirming the resulting file fails `frontmatter.load()` with the exact `ScannerError` signature from the CI logs; confirmed the patched version (PR #159) leaves the file valid. The corrupted-looking URL itself was verified against Participedia's live Medium RSS feed before concluding it was a script bug rather than a data error — `curl`ing the feed today reproduces the same `------2` suffix.
- Manually triggered `heartbeat-probes.yml` after PR #159 merged, to confirm the fix in production rather than waiting for Friday's cron: `scrape_news.py`, `check_fragments.py --save-to-wayback`, and `check_event_urls.py` all completed successfully for the first time in the workflow's history (run 8, ~2 hours, mostly `check_fragments.py`'s live verification + Wayback saves across 266+ citations). That run then hit a second, separate bug: the final `git push` was rejected because `main` had moved during the ~2-hour run, discarding that run's results. Fixed same-day (`heartbeat-probes.yml`: fetch + rebase onto `origin/main` before pushing, plus folding each step's summary output into the commit message body) and pushed direct to main — a workflow-file change, but small and mechanical, done with the human's explicit go-ahead rather than opened as a PR.
- **Trial: converted this post's "In the world" citations to the org-page/blog-post footnote-with-verbatim-quote convention** (prompted by a question about whether the automated heartbeat should carry the same citation discipline as org pages). All 6 items' sources were re-fetched live and a verbatim excerpt extracted for each, then mechanically verified with the same whitespace-normalised substring matching `check_fragments.py` uses (`text_fragment.find_span`) — `check_fragments.py` itself couldn't be run end-to-end today due to an unrelated pre-existing sandbox issue (`_cffi_backend` missing, breaking `pdfminer`'s PDF-extraction path on an unrelated org's event evidence), so verification here was done with a standalone script reusing the same matching function directly. Two classes of near-miss surfaced doing this, both fixed: (1) case sensitivity — a quote reading as a full sentence in my prose ("The legislative amendments...") was lowercase mid-sentence in the source (AEC/Pope); (2) curly vs. straight apostrophes — quotes as I'd typed them used straight `'`/`"`, sources used curly `'`/`'` — four separate instances across the Conversation, Columbus, and Treasury/Whitehouse-Grassley quotes. Both are exactly the kind of drift `check_fragments.py`'s real MISMATCH detection exists to catch; worth noting since it confirms the mechanical check isn't pedantic for its own sake. Also caught and fixed in the same pass: the Australia item's "major party stitch-up" was a misattributed paraphrase, not an actual Chaney quote — see the Australia item note above.

## What's next

The active never-checked queue is clear again and the staleness queue has no candidates (oldest active org still well under the 180-day threshold). Three things queued for the next run: the 5 orphaned concept pages still haven't had a fresh look beyond a `suggest_tags.py` pass in three runs running — worth a manual reread of each page rather than another keyword-matcher attempt, since that's come up empty three times in a row; the wider org base added over the past two weeks (Australian Greens, Fusion Party, and the earlier 37-page geographic pass) hasn't been through a heartbeat verification pass yet — it's freshly added and presumably accurate, but will age into the staleness queue over the coming months like anything else; and PR #159 (the frontmatter-boundary fix) needs a human merge before the weekly probe cron can actually run `check_fragments.py`/`check_event_urls.py` for the first time — worth checking on at the next run if it hasn't landed yet.
