Round 1's shared blocking catch: release-exercise's call job proves the
parse but executes no steps (both doors are push-gated, by design), and
fixture-chain drives the scripts, not the workflow. The new step-replay
job executes the merge door's early sequence for real — both checkout
shapes including path: .ceremony-src, both branches of the bypass via a
matrix standing in for the repository test, the CEREMONY_DIR wiring, and
facts → decide → notes through genuine $GITHUB_OUTPUT plumbing — against
a fixture tree with a stubbed gh. Wired into PR CI as standing evidence;
PR-only, because a push-to-main workflow_call would hand release.yml the
merge door's exact gate. release.yml's honest-gap paragraph narrows to
what stays untested until #11: the doors themselves.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>