ship-the-correction-to-every-rendered-surface

name	ship-the-correction-to-every-rendered-surface
description	The LAST MILE of a de-stale (protocol step 9): a corrected observational finding is not shipped until every RENDERED surface matches the ledger. Use AFTER the honest ledger (step 8) whenever a figure or a marker-vs-lever / causal verdict changes and that number already appears on a live surface — a served/baked HTML page, an embedded chart image, a client+dashboard "twin" pair, a dashboard payload or cache table. The trap: you correct the TEXT/captions and believe you shipped, but the baked chart image still renders the retired number (and its old causal title), a twin doc still asserts the retired claim, or a cached payload still serves the old value — so a corrected caption sits next to a chart that contradicts it. Also covers HOW to draw a retired-causal / marker-not-lever finding honestly. Trigger when you edit a figure that is displayed anywhere, or review a de-stale PR for completeness.
author	wan-huiyan + Claude Code
version	1.0.0

Ship the correction to every rendered surface

Step 8 gets the ledger right — the verdict and the replacement value. This step gets the delivery right. A de-stale fails its whole purpose if the corrected number never reaches the eyes it was meant to correct: the analysis is right, the stakeholder still sees the wrong chart. Editing the sentence that quotes a number does not touch the other places that number is rendered — and those other places are exactly where a stale figure keeps doing damage.

The rendered surfaces a figure hides in (enumerate before you call it shipped)

1. The served / baked copy of the doc. Many client surfaces serve a built artifact (an assembler inlines fragments, base64-embeds assets, applies neutralizations), not the source you edited. Editing the source without re-baking ships nothing. Re-bake, and confirm the deploy actually re-baked — a content change may be date-gated or read from a cache table (the baked-payload-stale-after-merge trap).
2. Embedded / baked CHART images — the biggest blind spot. A caption edit does not regenerate the chart. If charts come from generators (e.g. matplotlib make_*.py → PNG, base64-inlined), the image still renders the OLD number and any retired causal framing baked into the title/annotation. Grep every generator for the stale figure AND the retired phrasing, regenerate the affected ones, re-bake, and view the rendered image (source shows presence; render shows what ships). Do not conclude "there is no chart pipeline" without grepping for generators first — that false assumption is what ships a text-only de-stale.
3. Twin / mirrored copies. Client copy + dashboard copy, an appendix bundle, an embed + its source. A partially-swept twin becomes internally self-contradictory (a corrected "confirmed leak" row beside an uncorrected "✅ real segment" callout citing the same retired figure). Sweep each twin spot-by-spot; scan each file for a claim that contradicts a SIBLING claim in the same file.
4. Dashboard payloads / cache tables. A separate baker/job may hold the number; the serving service reads the bake, not your edit. Trigger the bake (or confirm the schedule) and verify the live value.

Match the corrected value to the TARGET cell's construct (don't cross constructs)

The same numeral can be a different metric construct in different cells — in-window@Nd share vs cumulative/ever share vs enroll@120d vs full-cycle rate — with different by-level splits. When you swap a stale figure for its "corrected cousin", confirm the target cell's definition matches the replacement's construct, or you relabel an in-window cell with a cumulative number: a silent, plausible-looking error that survives grep because the numeral "looks right". A @Nd / "in-window" qualifier ⇒ windowed; no qualifier ⇒ usually cumulative. Re-derive on the source-of-truth cohort and compare by-level splits to identify a cell's construct before swapping. (This sharpens the step-8 "Z% — as-of when?" red flag: it's not only as-of date, it's the whole metric definition.)

How to DRAW a retired-causal / marker-not-lever finding honestly

When step 4/5 retires a "lift" to an adjusted null (or downgrades it to a selection marker), the CHART must say so — a bar chart still showing a hot 4× bar is a stronger residual than any text tooltip.

• Lead with the adjusted estimate as the visual headline — the point estimate with its CI whisker straddling the no-lift line (1×), so "null" is the thing the eye lands on.
• Keep the raw gradient but subordinate it — muted color, below/behind the headline, explicitly labelled raw · self-selected · uncontrolled. Keeping it is honest (it is the descriptive layer the caption still cites); leading with it is not.
• Kill causal language in the title/annotations — no "X convert far more", no "the gap peaks in the decision zone" arrow. The title states the finding ("adjust for level + program and the 'lift' vanishes").
• The chart's numbers and words must match its caption verbatim so chart and text cannot drift.

Verify

• Diff the served/baked artifact against the pre-edit base with asset payloads stripped — the text-stripped diff is identical except the intended change; the only binary blobs that change are the charts you meant to regenerate. Re-bake on a branch based on the CURRENT merged base (the one carrying the text de-stale), never a stale feature branch, or you clobber/re-bundle merged work.
• View every regenerated chart as an image and read its numbers + title against the corrected caption.
• No file contains two sibling claims that contradict each other (grep the verdict badge and the raw figure in the same file, across every twin).
• The live surface (not just the repo) shows the corrected value after deploy/bake.

Example

A client dashboard's insights-page de-stale (figures below are illustrative). A first PR corrected the page TEXT — the headline cumulative rate revised upward (~15%→~19%); a card's in-window rate re-derived (~13%); an event-attendance ~4× "lift" retired to an adjusted null (OR ≈ 1.0, n.s.) — and shipped. But the two baked chart PNGs still rendered the retired figures: one still titled with the causal "attendees convert far more" claim over the old ~4×/~2× bars plus a "gap peaks" annotation; the other's trendline still anchored at the old headline value. The corrected captions sat next to charts that contradicted them. The claim "there is no chart-generation pipeline" was false — dozens of make_*.py generators existed. A follow-up PR regenerated them (the event chart now leads with ≈1× · null + a CI whisker on the no-lift line, raw ratios muted + "self-selected, uncontrolled"; the trendline re-anchored to the corrected baseline), re-baked on a branch off current main, and proved the served-copy diff was image-stripped-identical except the 2 intended PNG blobs. A separate near-miss: the card's in-window rate was almost "corrected" to the headline's cumulative value — interchangeable-looking numerals, different constructs.

Notes

• This is the delivery counterpart to the analysis steps: steps 1–8 make the finding true; this step makes the shipped surfaces true. A de-stale PR review should check it explicitly.
• Companion traps in this bundle: the step-7 re-derivation skills (a re-bake is a fresh construction to verify) and step-8 framing. External companion: a dedicated construct-swap skill (verify-metric-construct-before-swapping-a-stale-figure) covers the in-window-vs-cumulative trap in full.