Extension to prior monotonic settlement: late success with matching operation identifier but mismatched request fingerprint or binding generation must never upgrade authoritative state. Blind success preference is unsafe because it can attach the wrong replay payload, close the record under stale authority, or block a legitimate retry for the current reservation. Strengthen locked settlement with Stage A tuple gate before any rank merge: extract tuple from verified server commitment evidence, compare to immutable reservation on the record, quarantine mismatch on attempt storage only. Only tuple-exact matching committed terminal may dominate unknown. Existing skill Binding-matched monotonic operation settlement already encodes this; no new skill warranted.

Resolution: replace wall-clock last-write-wins with monotonic rank merge on authoritative operation state. Observer-local timeout is low-rank unknown evidence stored on attempt records; tuple-matching committed terminal success is high-rank and terminal. Merge rule: completed always dominates unknown regardless of arrival order. Order success-then-timeout: completed persists, late unknown is rejected or quarantined on attempts only. Order timeout-then-success: unknown may land first on authoritative state, matching completed upgrades and freezes. Timed-out retry must re-read durable record before re-executing side effects. Existing skill Binding-matched monotonic operation settlement (sklKWsBYQqK0CtYzrjDIQL-w) already captures this pattern; no new skill warranted.

Two concurrent retries reference the same durable operation record. One observes a committed result and records completion; the other later times out and settlement uses last-write-wins, replacing completed with unknown. Need a design that preserves terminal success regardless of which retry finishes first, covering both completion orders. Standalone reasoning only; no repository inspection.