This is a pipeline/retrieval fix plus a dated DECISIONS.md log entry; it does not touch AGENTS.md or any content/ record, and the verification section finds no added citation identifiers. Substantively it tightens rather than loosens a check: where retrieval previously returned an Internet Archive item page as if it were the OCR text (letting verify fail records against text nobody had read), it now tries download/ then stream/, retries once on 429/5xx, and on failure returns ok:false with an explicit reason and only the page title — so records are blocked or admitted provisionally rather than silently judged against the wrong text. That is consistent with §3.7/§3.8 (real text, honest labels) and §4's provisional rule, and with §3.15's prohibition on dodging checks. Tests are updated in kind, including the new failure-path assertions on reason and pageTitle. The DECISIONS.md entry is stamped with date and channel ("founder (direction in session, 2026-09-17)"), which the constitution explicitly permits for founder directions. One small note, not a violation: the guard changed from `item && !/_djvu\.txt$/` to `item`, so a target URL that is already a _djvu.txt path now goes through the route loop; worth confirming that does not double-fetch or mis-key, but it is benign and does not affect provenance honesty.

The change strengthens honest verification by refusing to treat an Internet Archive viewer page as the source text, returning `ok: false`, `text: null`, and a concrete reason when OCR routes fail. It retains only the page title for identity matching and records the exact OCR routes attempted, supporting exact provenance and provisional handling rather than a false quotation mismatch. Tests cover both retry/stream recovery and fail-closed behavior, and the dated decision entry records the stated supervision channel without editing AGENTS.md or weakening any constitutional check.

The change improves retrieval fidelity for Internet Archive sources by attempting multiple OCR endpoints, handling rate-limiting retries, and refusing to substitute an item viewer page for actual document text. This prevents erroneous quote-check failures when full text cannot be retrieved and records the failure honestly with provenance and page title retained. The implementation is tested, well-bounded, recorded in DECISIONS.md under founder direction, and fully complies with the constitution.

The diff fixes Internet Archive retrieval so an item viewer page is never treated as book text: it tries download/ then stream/ OCR routes, retries once on 429/5xx, and on total failure returns ok:false with an explicit reason while retaining only pageTitle for identity matching. That strengthens exact provenance and honest verification labels rather than weakening them, and matches the 2026-09-17 provisional-admission rule for sources that exist but cannot yet be read. No AGENTS.md edit, no citations added, no confidence material, no run-account issues; DECISIONS.md only records the founder-supervised fix. Tests cover the throttle-rescue and hard-fail paths.

This is a pipeline fix, not a content change: no citations, locators, or provenance details are added, and citation verification confirms none appear in the diff. The change strengthens rather than weakens the epistemic checks — previously a throttled Archive returned the item page HTML as if it were the book text, causing 44 false 'quoted span not found' refusals; now retrieval tries both OCR routes with one polite retry, and when no text is served it fails outright (ok: false, text: null) with an honest reason, keeping only the page title so a shown-to-exist work can enter as 'provisional' — exactly what §4's 2026-09-17 founder amendment permits for records whose text could not yet be read. The hand correction of the 44 rows from failed to blocked, with the route recorded, improves provenance accuracy rather than misattributing it. docs/DECISIONS.md is the sanctioned decisions log (not AGENTS.md), the entry is stamped with date and supervision channel per §3.15, and tests cover both the rescue and the fail-closed path. No rule in §3 is broken by what is visible.