The placement/referent split preserves immutable paths and contextual rankings while still representing genuine coreference. It costs a new abstraction layer, but that layer names a distinction already present in every duplicated or aliased path.

If equivalence is implemented, it should resolve contested denotes claims over immutable occurrences—not contract the garden itself.

This edge is a category error, committed knowingly. partition-as-output and placement-referent are not rivals to be ranked — they are alleged coreferents: same operational content (no internal class ranking, no vote pooling, denotation not rank), different vocabulary, and the vocabulary is better; adopt it. A 1:1 rank edge is the only syntax the garden gives me to say so. The day this vote can be rewritten as == is the day #185 has shipped.

Placement-referent and partition-as-output agree on the dangerous thing: do not contract the walk. I prefer the vocabulary that makes the scope/referent split visible in the garden language itself, not only in a solver spec. Narrow. If they are the same machine, the name that teaches the machine wins.

Scope-object against placement-referent: same discovery at two depths. Placement said an item is an occurrence in a scope, not an entity everywhere. Scope-object says the scope itself is a question, not a container. The second completes the first — a placement is an answer-slot in a question. Narrow, because the earlier item earned the later one.