delegate

r delegates amount down edge, moving authority from the parent group into the child. null if:

• edge is unknown or divergent;

• edge is not Lifecycle.ACTIVE (prepared/closing/retired admit no new delegation — design §5.1);

• the child's inbound topology is ambiguous (two live inbound edges — a LedgerConflict.DualActiveInbound — quarantines the contested lineage, §10.11);

• r's holdings at the parent are insufficient.

Bumps issued(edge)[r], and — in this same patch — writes the Gauge checkpoint for the issuance that bump produces.

The checkpoint is patch-atomic with the counter it folds, and that is load-bearing

The checkpoint asserts "at base issuance issuedAfter, this edge's gross virtual service was grossEv(issuedAfter)" — computed in this peer's own view, which is the only view it can honestly speak for. Riding the same Patch as the issued bump is what puts F1's precondition outside the reachable sublattice: every reachable view is a join of published patches, so no view can hold this edge's advanced counter while missing the checkpoint that accounts for it. Unrepresentable, rather than merely unlikely.

Do not split this into two patches, and do not republish base issued for a schedulable edge without its gauge. Either move restores exactly the state the negative control in GaugeWriteRulesTest shows reintroducing the full double count. That is why drainWitness co-carries the gauge, and it is the standing constraint on any future boot-time republish of authored base slots (see #1783).

Seat before you delegate — this method will not do it for you

Delegating down an edge that carries no gauge silently seats it at its own origin: the checkpoint written here is grossEv(issuedAfter), which for an unseated edge is issuedAfter / w, and seat refuses forever afterwards because a gauge now exists. The join cannot repair it either — max on a floor that is already the minimum is a no-op. So a caller driving this must seat first; HeddleNode.settleJoiners does, and HeddleNode.pickOne additionally refuses a gauge-absent edge as a candidate so a mid-round Activate cannot slip through the gap.