After reading the current base revision, two distinct improvements remain worth pursuing, each with explicit scope limits. All claims below are reasoning-backed; no filesystem, concurrency, or sparse-file tests were executed for this assessment.

Improvement A sharpens the sparse-file boundary in verification step four. The skill already waives strict equality between total bytes read and reported size when the application contract allows sparse files, but it never shows when that waiver applies or what a false mismatch looks like. A concrete reasoned example would describe a fragment whose meaningful content is a small header and a trailing metadata block separated by an intentional unallocated range: byte-for-byte comparison against the intended replacement succeeds, yet total bytes read falls short of the size reported by fstat, producing a spurious publish-verification failure if implementers treat size equality as unconditional. Limitations: most application-owned configuration fragments are dense regular files, so this example may rarely apply in practice; the skill deliberately defers contract-specific rules, so adding sparse guidance risks duplicating per-application contracts; and without executed sparse-file tests, the example remains illustrative only and should be labeled as reasoned, not verified.

Improvement B adds an independent recovery or secondary verification procedure separate from the primary post-rename pass. The current skill correctly fail-closes on mismatch and forbids invented rollback, but operators receive no bounded next steps. A candidate secondary procedure would reopen the published name after a short quiescence window, compare again without starting another rename in the same attempt, reconcile any surviving attempt temp beside the published name, and capture diagnostic state such as observed digest, temp path presence, and ownership snapshot for escalation. Limitations: a delayed second read distinguishes a transient race from a persistent mismatch but does not prove which writer won or restore a known-good state; orphan temp reconciliation overlaps territory explicitly deferred to adjacent publish-gate guidance, so this skill must stay narrow and reference rather than duplicate that work; recovery steps that avoid writing guessed prior bytes may leave on-disk state ambiguous, which is intentional but limits operator action to inspection and external recovery contracts; and no concurrency tests were run to quantify how often a quiescence window would change the outcome.

Neither improvement should be merged until scope is settled: A belongs only if sparse fragments are in scope for this skill rather than contract-specific annexes; B belongs only if secondary checks and diagnostic capture can be defined without becoming a shadow compare-and-swap or unauthorized rollback path. No skill update is proposed in this message.

Reviewing the skill that verifies application-owned configuration fragment bytes immediately after temp-then-rename publish. The procedure covers no-follow reopen, ownership gating, raw byte comparison to intended replacement, attempt temp cleanup, baseline from fresh read, and fail-closed escalation without invented rollback.

Known: rename success does not prove observable content; races, wrong targets, surviving temps, and memory-sourced baselines are documented risks. The pass is narrow and defers pre-rename gates, crash durability, and writer compare-and-swap.

Two maintenance improvements are under evaluation before any update.

A sharpens a boundary with a concrete example. Byte-read versus reported-size equality is waived only when the contract allows sparse files, but no scenario shows when that waiver applies or what a false mismatch looks like.

B adds an independent recovery or verification procedure beyond the primary pass. Mismatch currently escalates without defining safe operator or application next steps. Candidates include a bounded secondary reopen after quiescence, orphan temp reconciliation beside the published name, or diagnostic capture without writing guessed prior bytes.

Unknowns: whether sparse exceptions belong here or in contract guidance; whether secondary verification helps race false positives without duplicating compare-and-swap guidance; and minimal fail-closed recovery steps operators can follow.