docs: R-299 — check-figures, the twenty-first guard

Records the blind spot (check-cited can only resolve markers that exist), why
the net is narrow (an earlier draft found 282 candidates, nearly all prose),
the opt-in rule and ratchet, and the two things it found before being wired in
— 74.9% printed bare twice, and 'the longest fight is 120 rounds' where 120 is
the exact field check-cited refuses to let anybody cite.

Two rules each right, and together a hole: refusing the citation while the
document printed the number left the least stable figure in the suite as the
only one nothing held.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/REVIEW_LOG.md

@@ -7149,3 +7149,70 @@ And it lands on the one character whose sheet already says *you have come back t
 
 **State:** CLEAN GROUND v0.22, twenty guards green, every desk-reachable branch reached. The
 only untested thing left is a run with human beings.
+
+---
+
+## R-299 — check-figures, the twenty-first guard
+
+**The claim R-298 left standing.** `check-cited` resolves every citation marker against the
+artifact it names, and has exactly one blind spot, structural rather than a bug: **it can only
+resolve the markers that exist.** A measured figure written into prose with no marker beside it
+is not a failed citation. It is not a citation at all, and nothing looks at it again.
+
+**This reads the figures instead of the markers** — the fifth asymmetric counter in the repo,
+and the first to run in the opposite direction to the reader it covers:
+
+```
+check-cited     reads MARKERS  ->  is the figure beside this marker right?
+check-figures   reads FIGURES  ->  does this figure have a marker at all?
+```
+
+**Narrow by design, and the first draft proves why.** Matching any number within forty-five
+characters of a measurement word found **282 candidates**, nearly all of them ordinary prose:
+*down 140 steps*, *an engineer on his rounds*, *01:06*. A guard that cries wolf 282 times is a
+guard somebody switches off. The eight shapes it ships with are the phrasings the documents
+actually use when quoting the simulator, **each one read off a figure that is already cited
+somewhere** — so the guard learns its vocabulary from the marked figures and applies it to the
+unmarked.
+
+**The opt-in rule.** A document that uses citations has joined the regime and every measurement
+figure in it must carry a marker. A document with no markers anywhere has not, and its figures
+are held by a **ratchet** — countable, unable to rise. Turning three unguarded scenarios red is
+how a guard gets switched off on the day it is written, and the ratchet still means they cannot
+get worse. The moment such a document gains its first citation it joins the strict regime whole.
+
+### What it found before it was wired in
+
+1. **74.9% printed bare twice** while the same figure is cited correctly four times in the same
+   document — and that is the number that was published at **58.7%** for three versions until
+   R-295 found the truncated sweep. The two prints nothing held were prints of the figure with
+   the worst history in the case.
+2. ⚠ **"the longest fight is 120 rounds"** — and 120 is exactly `packs cut.hollow6.longest`,
+   **the field `check-cited` refuses to let anybody cite**, because a sample maximum moves by a
+   third of its value on a re-seed. **Refusing the citation while the document printed the
+   number left the least stable figure in the suite as the only one nothing held.** The two
+   rules were each right and together they were a hole. The sentence now leans on the guarantee
+   that is actually strong — `check-packs` refuses to record a sweep in which anything reached
+   the cap — which is a better sentence as well as a held one.
+
+**So the guard has a third verdict**, beyond marked and bare: *bare, and the value matches a
+field nothing may cite*. It names the field and says **do not cite it — stop printing it.**
+
+### Proved by breaking it
+
+Four ways, every restore byte-identical:
+
+| Break | Result |
+|---|---|
+| Strip the marker off a cited prose figure | fails, names the line |
+| Plant *"a median 24 rounds"* — the original defect | fails, at its own line |
+| Add a bare figure to a document that cites nothing | trips the ratchet, 8 → 10 |
+| A threshold column header, *"Past 15 rounds"* | **does not fire** |
+
+**The last row is the one worth keeping.** It *did* fire in the first draft, because the
+exclusion tested the matched text while the word that excuses the figure — *Past* — sits
+outside the match. A guard whose first output includes a table header is a guard nobody trusts
+by its third run, and the fix is in the file next to the rule it fixes.
+
+**State:** CLEAN GROUND v0.23, **21 guards**, 162 cited figures. Still the only untested thing
+is a run with human beings.