chore(todo): file four backlog tasks from the inbox pass

Filed as [#B] work items with their origin proposals preserved under docs/design/: the todo-cleanup dated-seal archiving model, the dated-log planning-line strip plus its lint backstop, a hook to enforce the task-boundary inbox check, and home's colloquialisms / "the list" before-close-queue convention. The first two both touch todo-cleanup.el and are cross-linked to build as one batch. The last two carry the design worked out this session so they start warm.

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diff --git a/docs/design/2026-07-17-dated-log-planning-line-strip-proposal.md b/docs/design/2026-07-17-dated-log-planning-line-strip-proposal.md
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+Proposal: two linked gaps that let a closed sub-task keep polluting the org agenda.
+
+WHAT HAPPENED (home, 2026-07-17)
+Six completed sub-tasks under a DONE parent (a finished trip) had each been closed correctly to the dated event-log form per todo-format.org's depth-based completion rule — keyword, priority, and tags dropped, heading rewritten to "YYYY-MM-DD Day @ HH:MM:SS -ZZZZ <past-tense>". But every one kept its old active SCHEDULED: <date> planning line. A dated-log heading has no TODO keyword, and org-agenda renders ANY headline carrying an active SCHEDULED, so all six showed on the daily agenda as weeks-overdue ("Sched.31x") long after the work and the parent were done. They're invisible to a keyword scan (no TODO) and survive archive-done (parent isn't level-2 CANCELLED), so nothing catches them.
+
+ROOT CAUSE
+The completion rewrite strips keyword/priority/tags but nothing strips the planning line, and an interactive org close (org-log-done) only stamps CLOSED — it never removes a pre-existing SCHEDULED/DEADLINE. So the stale timestamp lingers and pins the entry to the agenda permanently.
+
+TWO FIXES, both rulesets-owned:
+
+1. todo-format.org — the sub-task completion rule (the "*** and deeper — rewrite to a dated event-log entry" section). Add an explicit step: remove any SCHEDULED:/DEADLINE: planning line when rewriting to the dated form. The completion time already lives in the heading; an active planning date on a historical log entry is always wrong. The VERIFY dated-completion path and todo-cleanup.el --convert-subtasks want the same treatment (the batch converter pulls the timestamp from CLOSED and keeps heading text — it should also drop the planning line).
+
+2. lint-org.el — add a checker (proposed name: dated-log-heading-active-timestamp). Flag any dated-log heading (a heading matching the YYYY-MM-DD ... @ ... form, no TODO keyword) that still carries an active <...> SCHEDULED or DEADLINE. This is the mechanical backstop for #1, the same way subtask-done-not-dated backstops the depth rule. It would have caught all six here.
+
+Local fix already applied in home (stripped the six lines by hand); this is about the durable convention + lint so the next instance is prevented and caught. No home-specific detail needs to travel — the gap is general to any project using the dated-log completion form.
diff --git a/docs/design/2026-07-17-todo-cleanup-dated-seal-proposal.md b/docs/design/2026-07-17-todo-cleanup-dated-seal-proposal.md
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+Proposal: change todo-cleanup.el's --archive-done aging to a dated-seal model
+
+Origin: work project, 2026-07-17. Reconciling a stale rotation convention with the tool's actual behavior. Craig ratified the design in-session.
+
+## The problem
+
+`--archive-done` today does two things: move level-2 DONE/CANCELLED out of Open Work into Resolved, then age Resolved by moving subtrees older than `tc-archive-retain-days` (default 7) into one rolling file `tc-archive-file` (default archive/task-archive.org).
+
+Two mismatches with the intended convention:
+
+1. Retention is 7 days; the convention wants the last month kept inline in Resolved.
+2. One rolling file forever; the convention wants periodic dated files so todo.org's archive is browsable by seal date.
+
+An earlier attempt to name files by calendar quarter (resolved-YYYY-QN.org) hit a seam: with a one-month retention window, a task closed in the last month of a quarter isn't archived until after the quarter boundary, so a quarter-named file can't hold it without mislabeling.
+
+## The design (ratified)
+
+Redefine the sealed file by a predicate that's always true of its contents, and date it by the seal run rather than by calendar quarter:
+
+- A level-2 DONE/CANCELLED subtree is archived when its CLOSED date is older than one month, OR its CLOSED date can't be parsed (archive regardless — a keyword-complete task with no readable close date is cruft, not live work).
+- The working (open) file keeps the existing name task-archive.org. A seal renames it to resolved-YYYY-MM-DD.org (the seal date) and starts a fresh working file.
+- The dated file means "everything sealed as of that date," not a quarter — so a late-quarter close archived after a boundary is never mislabeled. Cadence (quarterly) becomes independent of correctness; slip is harmless.
+
+## Concrete changes to todo-cleanup.el
+
+1. `tc-archive-retain-days` default 7 → 31 (or expose it; the value should reflect "one month"). Reconcile the test at test-todo-cleanup.el:362 that asserts 7-day aging.
+2. Aging predicate: archive when `closed < now - retain-days` OR `closed` is unparseable. Today an unparseable-CLOSED subtree is already moved out in aging per the docstring ("those with no parseable CLOSED date are moved out") — keep that, and make it explicit in the contract.
+3. Add a seal step (new flag, e.g. `--seal`, or fold into a boundary check): when invoked, rename the current `tc-archive-file` (task-archive.org) → `resolved-<today>.org` beside it and let the next aging recreate a fresh working file. Whether the seal fires automatically at a quarter boundary or stays a manual flag is your call — the manual quarterly rotation task covers it until then.
+4. Tests: update the file-aging tests (test-todo-cleanup.el:362, :378, :491, :513, :518) for the new retain default and the seal/rename behavior. The gitignore-inheritance logic (tc--ensure-archive-gitignored) applies unchanged to both the working and sealed names.
+
+## Companion state already applied in the work project (for reference, not to sync)
+
+- todo.org grew a `* Work Resolved` section; 30 level-2 DONE/CANCELLED moved there.
+- archive/task-archive.org renamed to archive/resolved-2026-07-17.org (grandfathered H1 seal), inbound link updated.
+- archive/README.org rewritten to the dated-seal contract above.
+- The rotation task rewritten to the new procedure.
+
+The rulesets change is only the todo-cleanup.el behavior + its tests. The README lives per-project (this one is already updated); if rulesets ships a canonical archive README template, align it to the dated-seal contract too.
diff --git a/docs/design/2026-07-18-colloquialisms-and-the-list-proposal.md b/docs/design/2026-07-18-colloquialisms-and-the-list-proposal.md
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+#+TITLE: PROPOSAL: a "Colloquialisms and Expansions" convention + the
+#+SOURCE: from home
+#+DATE: 2026-07-18 18:04:42 -0500
+
+PROPOSAL: a "Colloquialisms and Expansions" convention + the "the list" before-close-queue norm. Craig recommends other projects adopt both. Home has implemented it locally as the reference; sending it up so rulesets can decide whether to make it a shared norm.
+
+THE NORM: "the list" = a before-close FIFO queue
+When Craig says "put X on the list" / "add X to the list", X is appended to a Before-Close Queue: a FIFO queue of tasks and actions to finish before the session closes (wrap-up). Work oldest-first. Process the queue at wrap-up before teardown, surfacing anything unfinished rather than dropping it. Session-scoped: resets when the session anchor is archived at wrap. Anything that must outlive the session is a todo.org task instead.
+
+Home implementation (reference):
+- The norm is documented in home .ai/notes.org under a new "* Colloquialisms and Expansions" section (notes.org is read every startup, so the agent honors it without a workflow change).
+- The queue itself lives in the session anchor (session-context.org) under a "* Before-Close Queue" heading, seeded empty.
+
+THE BROADER IDEA: a "Colloquialisms and Expansions" shorthand dictionary
+A per-project (or shared) reference mapping Craig shorthand phrases to their expansion, so the agent applies them without asking. Seed entries Craig named:
+1. "the list" -> append to the Before-Close Queue (above).
+2. "tell <project> <message>" -> drop the message in that project inbox via inbox-send (python3 .ai/scripts/inbox-send.py <project> --text "..."), the sanctioned cross-project handoff, never a direct write.
+
+WHY RULESETS SHOULD CARE
+Both are cross-project by nature. "tell <project>" already rides inbox-send, which every project has. The before-close queue is a session-lifecycle concept that wrap-it-up owns, and wrap-it-up is a rulesets-owned synced workflow. If this becomes a shared norm, the durable wiring is: (a) a colloquialisms reference shipped in the template (or a protocols.org section), and (b) a wrap-it-up step that processes the Before-Close Queue before teardown. Home cannot wire (b) durably from downstream because wrap-it-up.org is synced, so it is stubbed via the notes.org norm for now and needs the canonical change to stick.
+
+RECOMMENDATION FROM CRAIG: roll this shorthand out to the other projects.