diff --git a/.nexus/anchors/backlog-stub.md b/.nexus/anchors/backlog-stub.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f354e72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.nexus/anchors/backlog-stub.md
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+concept: backlog-stub
+source_sha: 9d42385a3585858bf599987598a214d4daa37968
+generated: 2026-08-02
+---
+
+<!-- DERIVED — regenerated by /nxs.distill on every drain touching this concept.
+     Never hand-edit; stale anchors are rebuilt, not fixed. -->
+
+# Code Anchors: Backlog Stub
+
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-shared/delivery_config.py` — resolves the unplanned label through the shared precedence chain, exposes the cross-feature backlog as one query in its three forms (listing, search fragment, negated filter), and carries the label preflight that upserts every label a filing run will apply and reports the ones it can neither create nor find.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-create-story/scripts/create_gh_issues.py` — the one batch filing path: takes its canonical classification from the caller instead of stamping every issue a story, upserts every declared label before creating anything, refuses a work-item that is both a stub and a sub-issue, and resolves a literal issue-number dependency edge that points outside the batch.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-create-epic/scripts/nxs_gh_create_epic.py` — the promotion path: reads the target's labels, refuses to promote an issue that is not an unplanned epic, and populates that same issue in place while clearing the unplanned label, so no second issue is created and nothing is closed.
+- `libs/epic-resolve/src/classify.ts` — resolves the unplanned label across the process seam and answers whether an epic issue still carries it.
+- `libs/epic-resolve/src/resolve.ts` — refuses to materialize an unplanned epic by name rather than emitting one with an empty story set.
+- `libs/epic-resolve/src/resolve.spec.ts` — pins the refusal and the label resolution against the resolver's fixtures.
+- `.claude/commands/nxs.epic.md` — the decomposition writer: files one stub issue per functional goal behind the right-size gate's consent, and promotes by issue number with no slug lookup.
+- `.claude/commands/nxs.close.md` — the deferred-scope writer: files stub issues as the first step after the closure checkpoint, before the close record naming their numbers is committed.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-shared/test_backlog_stubs.py` — covers stub filing through the batch path: classification from the caller, the unplanned label, and the no-parent refusal.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-shared/test_backlog_query.py` — covers the three query forms and the quoting of a multi-word label.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-shared/test_stub_promotion.py` — covers promotion legality and populating the issue in place.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-shared/test_deferred_scope_stubs.py` — covers the close-side writer and the record naming the filed numbers.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-shared/test_literal_dependency_refs.py` — covers the literal issue-number dependency edge.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-shared/test_migration_dry_run.py` — covers the one-batch migration of the retired committed backlogs.
+- `docs/features/README.md` — the features index carrying the single link to the cross-feature backlog query.
diff --git a/.nexus/anchors/epic-approval-gate.md b/.nexus/anchors/epic-approval-gate.md
index f957c11..9c9fe8a 100644
--- a/.nexus/anchors/epic-approval-gate.md
+++ b/.nexus/anchors/epic-approval-gate.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
 concept: epic-approval-gate
-source_sha: 1e0c90b776f0bd12a70388cb4643cd2bd7831766
-generated: 2026-07-26
+source_sha: 9d42385a3585858bf599987598a214d4daa37968
+generated: 2026-08-02
 ---
 
 <!-- DERIVED — regenerated by /nxs.distill on every drain touching this concept.
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ generated: 2026-07-26
 
 # Code Anchors: Epic Approval Gate
 
-- `.claude/commands/nxs.epic.md` — takes intent directly, right-sizes, presents the decision-grade digest, and on approval files the epic and its story issues together, committing nothing to the queue at planning.
-- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-create-epic/scripts/nxs_gh_create_epic.py` — files the epic GitHub issue from the epic document, embedding the raw planning frontmatter as a hidden machine comment for the resolver, resolving the epic's target repo, classification, and project through the shared resolver, and applying the needs-design label from the complexity rollup (upsert before apply).
-- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-create-story/scripts/create_gh_issues.py` — files one issue per story as children of the epic, resolving the story target repo independently of the epic's.
+- `.claude/commands/nxs.epic.md` — takes intent directly, right-sizes, presents the decision-grade digest, and on approval files the epic and its story issues together, committing nothing to the queue at planning; the oversized branch files one backlog stub issue per functional goal instead, and a promotion re-enters by issue number.
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-create-epic/scripts/nxs_gh_create_epic.py` — files the epic GitHub issue from the epic document, or populates an unplanned epic's own issue in place when promoting one, embedding the raw planning frontmatter as a hidden machine comment for the resolver, resolving the epic's target repo, classification, and project through the shared resolver, and applying the needs-design label from the complexity rollup (upsert before apply).
+- `.claude/skills/nxs-gh-create-story/scripts/create_gh_issues.py` — files one issue per story as children of the epic, resolving the story target repo independently of the epic's, and takes its canonical classification from the caller so the same path can file stubs as epics.
 - `.claude/commands/nxs.close.md` — addresses the epic where it was filed, resolving that target once and threading it onto every issue operation.
diff --git a/.nexus/anchors/workspace-resolution.md b/.nexus/anchors/workspace-resolution.md
index ab3cacb..36d4d37 100644
--- a/.nexus/anchors/workspace-resolution.md
+++ b/.nexus/anchors/workspace-resolution.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
 concept: workspace-resolution
-source_sha: 288906382ecb248dc469d5cb52af2868f97bd5fe
-generated: 2026-07-24
+source_sha: 9d42385a3585858bf599987598a214d4daa37968
+generated: 2026-08-02
 ---
 
 <!-- DERIVED — regenerated by /nxs.distill on every drain touching this concept.
@@ -20,8 +20,8 @@ generated: 2026-07-24
 - `.claude/skills/nxs-workspace-status/SKILL.md` — the workspace status read-out skill; now also documents the companion docs-root read-out and its two vehicles.
 - `.nexus/config/templates/workspace-template.yml` — the hub manifest template leads copy into a real hub; documents the optional docs-root override and the optional workspace-wide publishing-defaults block with its per-key inheritance.
 - `.nexus/config/templates/hub-template.yml` — the member pointer template.
-- `.claude/commands/nxs.epic.md` — resolves the feature container path once under the docs root, records it in the queue entry, and searches the stub-promotion glob across backlogs under the resolved root.
-- `.claude/commands/nxs.close.md` — reads the recorded feature path and writes deferred scope and the process lesson under it, never re-resolving the root.
+- `.claude/commands/nxs.epic.md` — resolves the feature container path once under the docs root, and records it in the queue entry; stub promotion reads issue state only and globs nothing under the resolved root.
+- `.claude/commands/nxs.close.md` — reads the recorded feature path and writes the process lesson under it, never re-resolving the root; deferred scope is filed as stub issues rather than written to the tree.
 - `.claude/commands/nxs.setup.md` — scaffolds the product, system, and delivery docs under the resolved docs root.
 - `.claude/commands/nxs.decision-record.md` — hands the resolved context-doc locations into the design brief in place of fixed paths.
 - `.claude/commands/nxs.council.md` — resolves the docs root once and threads it into the product-manager and architect briefs.
diff --git a/.nexus/concepts/backlog-stub.md b/.nexus/concepts/backlog-stub.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13461da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.nexus/concepts/backlog-stub.md
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: "Backlog Stub"
+aliases: ["backlog stub", "unplanned epic", "stub decomposition", "stub promotion", "unplanned label", "cross-feature backlog", "deferred scope filing"]
+touches: ["epic-approval-gate"]
+last_updated_by: "#185"
+status: active
+verification: verified
+---
+
+# Backlog Stub
+
+A backlog stub is an epic identified but not yet planned — an epic issue carrying the repository's declared epic classification plus exactly one label denoting that unplanned state. Planning populates that same issue in place, so the number scope is deferred under is the number it ships under. The whole cross-feature backlog is therefore one query, and excluding unplanned work one negated filter.
+
+## How It Works
+
+Two writers create stubs: the epic stage when scope exceeds one epic, and the close stage when it defers scope. Both author transient work-items and file them through the one batch filing path, which takes its canonical classification from the caller instead of stamping everything a story. That path upserts every label it will apply before creating anything, and a label it can neither create nor find stops the run with nothing created. A stub is never a sub-issue — its link to the epic that spawned it is a body mention — because the close gate that blocks on open sub-issues has no exemptions and would deadlock on a stub it just filed. Feature, estimate, candidate stories and provenance live in the body, never in labels. Planning a stub fills in that same issue, files its story children beneath it, and clears the label; nothing is created and nothing is closed. A stub too large to become one epic is closed as not planned, naming its successors.
+
+## Key Invariants
+
+1. A stub is an epic issue carrying the declared epic classification; no third kind of issue exists.
+2. Exactly one label denotes the unplanned state; feature, estimate, candidate stories and provenance are body content.
+3. The issue number is a stub's only identifier; no second lookup key is recorded or accepted as input.
+4. Promotion populates that same issue and clears the label — never a second issue, never a close.
+5. A stub too large for one epic is closed as not planned naming its successors, never as completed.
+6. No stub is ever a sub-issue, and no stub enters an epic's sub-issue set.
+7. Because a stub is an epic, every query enumerating epics for planned work carries the one negated filter, and every stage reconstructing an epic refuses an unplanned one by name.
+
+## Integration Points
+
+- [epic-approval-gate](epic-approval-gate.md) — what oversized scope becomes, and what a promotion re-enters this gate as.
+
+## Decision Log
+
+### 2026-08-02 — #185 — A stub is an epic born unplanned, and its number survives promotion
+
+Deferred and oversized scope stopped being markdown blocks in per-feature committed files and became epic issues marked unplanned, because a stub already is an epic — a functional goal sized at or below the epic ceiling, destined to become exactly one epic. Modelling it as its own kind would force every consumer to learn a third species and would answer the classification question twice, once per classification mode, where no suitable issue type exists and none can be minted without organisation-level administration. The identity consequence is the load-bearing one: because promotion populates the issue in place rather than creating a successor, every reference written when the scope was deferred — a dependency edge between siblings, a mention from the epic that spawned it, a line in a sequencing table — stays valid for the life of the work instead of being orphaned the moment the stub is promoted. Retiring the per-feature files collapses the backlog to one query and its exclusion to one negated filter; carrying that negation on every epic-enumerating query is the accepted price of the durable identity, named here rather than discovered later as a defect. Refuted alternative: a distinct backlog kind with its own label and its own issue type — it reads cleanly in a triage list and keeps unplanned work out of the epic query by construction, but the issue type cannot be created where the organisation has not defined one, so that mode degrades to filing stubs unmarked, and it forces a second identity at promotion, orphaning every reference to the first. Refuted alternative: create the epic fresh and close the stub as completed naming its successor — needs no change to the filing path, but it reintroduces an identity hop on every promotion and leaves a permanent trail of closed placeholders every reader and every dependency edge must indirect through.
diff --git a/.nexus/concepts/epic-approval-gate.md b/.nexus/concepts/epic-approval-gate.md
index b462c10..85aab9c 100644
--- a/.nexus/concepts/epic-approval-gate.md
+++ b/.nexus/concepts/epic-approval-gate.md
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 ---
 title: "Epic Approval Gate"
-aliases: ["approval digest gate", "epic filing gate", "decision-grade digest", "stub decomposition"]
-touches: ["nexus-pipeline", "story-as-unit", "issue-sourced-planning", "publishing-config-resolution", "decision-record"]
-last_updated_by: "#139"
+aliases: ["approval digest gate", "epic filing gate", "decision-grade digest"]
+touches: ["nexus-pipeline", "story-as-unit", "issue-sourced-planning", "publishing-config-resolution", "decision-record", "backlog-stub"]
+last_updated_by: "#185"
 status: active
 verification: verified
 ---
@@ -13,14 +13,14 @@ The epic stage files the epic and its story issues together, gated by a single d
 
 ## How It Works
 
-The epic stage takes a capability description directly, with no separate brief. It produces a right-sized epic and presents a digest: the feature line, the epic prose, the stories as sized one-liners, and the assumptions and out-of-scope boundary. Approval is the single forcing function; open questions must be resolved first. On approval, the stage files the epic issue and one issue per story, sequences them, and writes the feature navigation index linking to the filed issue. Filing also declares the design-warrant: a medium-or-larger complexity rollup gets the needs-design label, upserted before applied; an absent or unrecognized rollup errs toward needing design, and the lead can edit the label. Under issue-sourced planning it commits nothing at planning — the draft stays in session scratch — files issue-first, and a re-run reuses the already-filed epic issue. Scope too large for one epic decomposes into backlog stubs — slug, functional goal, candidate story-group titles, complexity — rather than several fully generated epics. A stub is promoted to a full epic later, on demand.
+The epic stage takes a capability description directly, with no separate brief. It produces a right-sized epic and presents a digest: the feature line, the epic prose, the stories as sized one-liners, and the assumptions and out-of-scope boundary. Approval is the single forcing function; open questions must be resolved first. On approval, the stage files the epic issue and one issue per story, sequences them, and writes the feature navigation index linking to the filed issue. Filing also declares the design-warrant: a medium-or-larger complexity rollup gets the needs-design label, upserted before applied; an absent or unrecognized rollup errs toward needing design, and the lead can edit the label. Under issue-sourced planning it commits nothing at planning — the draft stays in session scratch — files issue-first, and a re-run reuses the already-filed epic issue. Scope too large for one epic decomposes into backlog stub issues instead of several fully generated epics; the gate's consent covers that irreversible filing.
 
 ## Key Invariants
 
 1. The epic and its story issues are filed together, gated by one approval.
 2. The decision-grade digest, not the full epic document, is the read surface at the gate.
 3. Open questions block filing; they are the only pre-filing safeguard.
-4. Oversized scope becomes backlog stubs, not multiple fully generated epics.
+4. Oversized scope becomes backlog stub issues filed on the gate's consent, not fully generated epics.
 5. The epic stage takes intent directly; no separate brief is a precondition.
 6. Filing commits nothing at planning: the epic issue precedes its story children, and a re-run reuses an already-filed one.
 7. The epic and its stories resolve their target repository independently; later stages address the epic where it was filed.
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ The epic stage takes a capability description directly, with no separate brief.
 - [issue-sourced-planning](issue-sourced-planning.md) — the model this gate files into: issues, not a committed file.
 - [publishing-config-resolution](publishing-config-resolution.md) — decides the repository, classification, and project for every issue this gate files.
 - [decision-record](decision-record.md) — filing applies its needs-design label from the complexity rollup.
+- [backlog-stub](backlog-stub.md) — what oversized scope becomes, and what a promotion re-enters this gate as.
 
 ## Decision Log
 
@@ -54,3 +55,7 @@ Where an issue lands became a resolved decision rather than an implicit one, and
 ### 2026-07-26 — #139 — Filing declares the design-warrant on the epic issue
 
 Whether an epic warrants a decision record is now decided once, at filing, from the epic's own complexity rollup — medium or larger gets the needs-design label — and lives on the issue where the lead can edit it, so every downstream stage answers "should this epic have a record" from the issue graph with no remembered state, and a hand-filed epic without the label is simply an epic without a record. Small and extra-small are both exempt, since the stated threshold is medium-or-larger; an absent or unrecognized rollup errs toward needing design rather than silently skipping the gate. Refuted alternative: derive the need from the epic's embedded machine metadata — absent on hand-filed epics and not editable in the issue interface, exactly where the label form works for free.
+
+### 2026-08-02 — #185 — Oversized scope files stub issues, and a promotion re-enters by issue number
+
+The oversized path stopped writing markdown blocks into a per-feature file and now files one epic issue per functional goal, marked unplanned — so the gate's consent covers an irreversible platform write rather than a local append, and the choice text at the gate says so. Retiring the file also retires the slug those blocks were addressed by: a promotion re-enters this gate by issue number alone, and because a stub is filed as an epic it is the same kind of object this gate produces. That is what forces the operation to be stated rather than inferred — a bare number always means plan this epic and is legal only while the unplanned label is present, loading an already-planned epic is selected by its own flag, and anything else is a capability description. The gate keeps writing no feature navigation index on this path, because a stub writes nothing to the tree at all. Refuted alternative: infer the operation from whether the unplanned label is present and drop the flag entirely — one fewer input to learn, but the same command would then silently do two different things depending on a label a third party can remove, and the two operations differ in consequence.
diff --git a/.nexus/queue/epic-185/sameera/decisions-feat-backlog-stubs-as-issues.md b/.nexus/queue/epic-185/sameera/decisions-feat-backlog-stubs-as-issues.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 0df6e71..0000000
--- a/.nexus/queue/epic-185/sameera/decisions-feat-backlog-stubs-as-issues.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,71 +0,0 @@
-## 2026-08-01 — The label preflight is a shared batch helper, not a filer-local one
-
-- **Choice:** `ensure_labels` lives in `nxs-gh-shared/delivery_config.py` beside `ensure_label` and `label_exists`, taking `run` as a parameter like its neighbours.
-- **Why:** the single-source-of-truth guard test forbids the scripts redefining a `gh` label helper, and stories #187/#189 file stubs through the same preflight.
-- **Refuted alternative:** a private helper in `create_gh_issues.py` closing over `_run_plain` — shorter, but it duplicates the upsert path the guard exists to prevent.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — An unresolvable label query fails the batch closed
-
-- **Choice:** `ensure_labels` treats `label_exists` returning `None` (the query itself failed) the same as `False` — the label is reported missing and nothing is created.
-- **Why:** Invariant 19 optimises against a half-filed batch; a run that creates nothing is recoverable by re-running, a partially-filed one is not.
-- **Refuted alternative:** proceed on `None` and let creation fail per-issue — keeps transient failures non-blocking, but strands exactly the state the invariant names.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — Per-label creation styles, so an upsert cannot recolour an existing label
-
-- **Choice:** `ensure_labels` takes a `styles` map; the resolved story label keeps its established `BFD4F2`, everything else takes `ensure_label`'s default grey.
-- **Why:** the preflight now upserts frontmatter-declared labels too (`pipeline`, area labels), and `ensure_label` uses `--force` — a single uniform colour would repaint pre-existing labels on every run.
-- **Refuted alternative:** read each label's current colour back from `gh label list --json name,color` and pass it through — fully non-destructive, but more machinery than the story's "the only new call is the shared `ensure_label`" note supports.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — Invariant 6 is enforced in the filer, not promised in the command doc
-
-- **Choice:** `create_gh_issues.py` refuses, in its preflight, any work-item that carries the unplanned label *and* a `parent:` — the whole batch stops with nothing created.
-- **Why:** a deferred-scope stub filed beneath the epic being closed deadlocks `/nxs.close`'s all-sub-issues-closed gate, and the gate deliberately has no exemptions; a doc instruction is not a guarantee.
-- **Refuted alternative:** silently drop the `parent:` key for stub work-items — never deadlocks, but hides a writer bug instead of naming it.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — Deferred-scope filing is Phase 7.4, its own phase ahead of 7.5/7.6/8
-
-- **Choice:** a new phase between the checkpoint and the member-mode migration, rather than folding the filing into Phase 8's GitHub writes.
-- **Why:** the close record must name the filed numbers, and `--pr` mode commits the record in Phase 7.6 — before Phase 8 runs; only a pre-7.5 position satisfies both.
-- **Refuted alternative:** file in Phase 8.0 and amend the record afterwards — one fewer phase, but re-introduces amending an already-pushed artifact.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — The backlog query is a resolver subcommand with three named forms
-
-- **Choice:** `delivery_config.py backlog-query --form list|search|exclude` — the CLI listing, the issue-search fragment a link carries, and the negation an epic query wears.
-- **Why:** the query is named in two stage reports and two documents; a subcommand keeps the label resolved in one place (invariant 18) and makes "one query / one negated filter" assertable.
-- **Refuted alternative:** let each stage compose `--label $(… resolve unplanned-label)` inline — no new surface, but the negation form has no home and the three spellings drift.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — The features index is created, not the per-feature READMEs repointed
-
-- **Choice:** the backlog link lands once in a new `docs/features/README.md`; feature nav indexes gain no backlog section, and `/nxs.epic` Phase 6 gains a step that adds a new feature's row.
-- **Why:** the record's surfacing decision — with the feature held in the issue body, a per-feature view is a text search over bodies; the index is also the inventory the `nxs-pm`/`nxs-architect` agents already read.
-- **Refuted alternative:** a backlog section in each feature README linking a body-text search — preserves the per-feature navigation path, but is brittle and is ten links that all mean the same thing.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — A declared label is unquoted before the query quotes it
-
-- **Choice:** `_query_token` peels one pair of surrounding quotes off the resolved label, then re-quotes only when the label carries whitespace.
-- **Why:** the simple YAML reader keeps quotes verbatim, so `unplanned-label: "not planned"` would otherwise emit `label:""not planned""` — a filter GitHub matches nothing against.
-- **Refuted alternative:** strip quotes in `_parse_simple_yaml` — the right long-term home, but it changes what every existing key resolves to, well outside this story.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — Only `#<n>` is a literal dependency reference; a bare number stays a batch ref
-
-- **Choice:** `resolve_literal_ref` matches `^#\d+$` only, and resolves it against the platform; a bare `54` is looked up in the batch map and reported unresolved if absent.
-- **Why:** batch refs are author-chosen strings, so a bare number is indistinguishable from one — the sigil is what states the intent, and an ambiguous form would wire an edge onto whatever issue happened to have that number.
-- **Refuted alternative:** accept a bare number when it is not in the batch map — friendlier for the migration, but silently turns a typo'd ref into an edge onto an unrelated issue.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — The 24 proposed blocks migrate as authored; the frozen decision archive is not repointed
-
-- **Choice:** every `proposed` block became an issue (24, not the 22 the epic estimated — two were appended after planning); the `libs/origin/v2/.nexus/decisions/` logs still name `backlog.md` and were left alone.
-- **Why:** those numbered logs record decisions as they were made and are superseded by record #192 — rewriting them to match a later decision destroys the audit trail the project keeps them for.
-- **Refuted alternative:** sweep the archive too, satisfying the reference AC literally — but the deleted file is exactly what those decisions decided to create.
-
-## 2026-08-01 — The `--pr` acceptance harness seeds no backlog file
-
-- **Choice:** `scratchFeatureDocs` writes only the feature nav index into the provisioned throwaway repo.
-- **Why:** the harness verifies the live toolchain; seeding a retired artifact would rehearse a shape no writer produces any more.
-- **Refuted alternative:** leave the seed as inert scenery — harmless today, but the next reader takes it as evidence the file format is still live.
-
-## 2026-08-02 — The stale code anchor is left for the distiller, not hand-edited
-
-- **Choice:** repointed the last committed `backlog.md` references in `manual/assets.html`, but left `.nexus/anchors/workspace-resolution.md`'s "stub-promotion glob across backlogs" line untouched.
-- **Why:** anchors are a derived surface the distillation PR regenerates; writing the concept store on a feature branch is exactly what `/nxs.distill`'s never-on-main rule forbids.
-- **Refuted alternative:** edit the anchor here to satisfy invariant 17's "every committed reference" literally — but that hand-writes a file whose next regeneration would overwrite it anyway.
diff --git a/docs/concepts.md b/docs/concepts.md
index 18a4380..f0be182 100644
--- a/docs/concepts.md
+++ b/docs/concepts.md
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 
 # Concept Atlas
 
-Orientation map of the concept store — 47 active concepts. Each links to its full page
+Orientation map of the concept store — 48 active concepts. Each links to its full page
 (behavior, invariants, decision history); code locations live in the matching
 `.nexus/anchors/<slug>.md` sidecar.
 
@@ -20,11 +20,11 @@ Orientation map of the concept store — 47 active concepts. Each links to its f
 - [Close-Entry Migration](../.nexus/concepts/close-entry-migration.md) — Close-entry migration is the cross-repo tail of the close stage: it puts a closed epic where its concepts are distilled.
 - [Conformance Gate](../.nexus/concepts/conformance-gate.md) — Analyze checks the implemented code against the epic's acceptance criteria and the decision record's invariants, then proves it ran by leaving a receipt.
 - [Ephemeral Hand-Off Entry](../.nexus/concepts/ephemeral-handoff-entry.md) — An ephemeral hand-off entry is the version-ignored directory a local close leaves for the very next drain: the materialized epic, the conformance receipt, and the close record, none of them committed.
+- [Epic Approval Gate](../.nexus/concepts/epic-approval-gate.md) — The epic stage files the epic and its story issues together, gated by a single decision-grade digest the human approves.
 - [PR-Driven Post-Merge Flow](../.nexus/concepts/pr-driven-flow.md) — The lead can run the conformance, closure, and distillation stages against a pull request instead of a live branch.
 - [Publishing Config Resolution](../.nexus/concepts/publishing-config-resolution.md) — Publishing config resolution replaces every discovered-by-failure GitHub-publishing decision with one declared configuration block, resolved by a single shared resolver every publishing consumer goes through.
 - [Taxonomy Drift Advisory](../.nexus/concepts/drift-advisory.md) — The drift advisory is a deterministic, non-blocking step of the drain that reads the concept link graph and each page's filing and reports taxonomy decay as text in the distillation-PR body.
 - [Durable Close Record](../.nexus/concepts/durable-close-record.md) — The durable copy of a close's rationale is the comment the close stage posts on the epic issue, in every mode; the close-record file is a hand-off copy carrying no durability obligation.
-- [Epic Approval Gate](../.nexus/concepts/epic-approval-gate.md) — The epic stage files the epic and its story issues together, gated by a single decision-grade digest the human approves.
 - [Canonical Record Digest](../.nexus/concepts/record-digest.md) — One digest implementation computes the canonical hash of a decision-record body, and every stage that stamps or verifies the value invokes it.
 - [Scratch Capture](../.nexus/concepts/scratch-capture.md) — Scratch capture is the committed per-user surface inside an epic's queue entry where an engineer's agent records decision stubs and working notes at the moment of choosing.
 - [Taxonomy Filing Gate](../.nexus/concepts/taxonomy-filing-gate.md) — When the drain creates a concept and a domain registry exists, it files the concept under a best-fit domain by matching it against the registry's rubrics.
@@ -44,6 +44,7 @@ Orientation map of the concept store — 47 active concepts. Each links to its f
 - [Registry Seeding](../.nexus/concepts/registry-seeding.md) — Registry seeding is a one-time adoption tool for a store that has no domain registry yet.
 - [Remote Identity Normalization](../.nexus/concepts/remote-identity-normalization.md) — A single git remote can be written many equivalent ways — as a secure-shell address or a web address, with or without a trailing suffix, with an upper- or lower-cased host.
 - [Story Identity](../.nexus/concepts/story-identity.md) — A filed story is identified by its issue number alone, and nothing else — the pipeline's pre-filing sequence ref never survives filing, so a re-scope that withdraws stories never renames a survivor.
+- [Backlog Stub](../.nexus/concepts/backlog-stub.md) — A backlog stub is an epic identified but not yet planned — an epic issue carrying the repository's declared epic classification plus exactly one label denoting that unplanned state.
 - [Bare-Name Guard](../.nexus/concepts/bare-name-guard.md) — The bare-name guard is the security boundary of workspace resolution: a name declared in a workspace artifact may only be a bare directory segment, and the hub's optional docs-root override may only be a non-escaping repo-relative path.
 - [Config Write-Back](../.nexus/concepts/config-write-back.md) — Config write-back is how the declared publishing block comes to exist without anyone hand-authoring it: setup seeds it at bootstrap while a human can resolve ambiguity, and the first unattended fallback run persists what it just reached.
 
diff --git a/docs/delivery/lessons/2026-08-02-backlog-stubs-as-issues.md b/docs/delivery/lessons/2026-08-02-backlog-stubs-as-issues.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6eecf38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/delivery/lessons/2026-08-02-backlog-stubs-as-issues.md
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+date: 2026-08-02
+epic: "Backlog Stubs Become GitHub Issues"
+source: "#185"
+---
+
+# Lesson: a record that edits story scope leaves the story issues behind
+
+## The record superseded three acceptance criteria, and nothing made the issues follow
+
+Decision record #192 was approved with five explicit scope edits: promotion populates the stub in
+place rather than closing it, slug lookup is retired, and the backlog surfaces once rather than per
+feature. Those edits invalidated four acceptance criteria already written onto story issues #188 and
+#190 — including one, "the source stub issue is closed as completed", that the record's own invariant
+4 forbids outright.
+
+The code followed the record. The issues did not. Nothing in the pipeline noticed until
+`/nxs.analyze` ran at the end and reported it as a HIGH finding, at which point the lead hand-amended
+both issue bodies and the epic body before close would run against criteria the build contradicted.
+
+**What the next epic in this area should do differently:** treat "which story ACs does this record
+supersede, and have they been re-filed" as a step of `/nxs.decision-record`, not a discovery for
+`/nxs.analyze`. The record already writes a per-story Story Coverage section naming its scope edits —
+that section is the exact worklist, and it is produced at the moment the edits are decided. Amending
+the issues then costs minutes; amending them at analyze time costs a re-analysis and a waived
+conformance gate, which is what this epic actually paid.
+
+## An absolute invariant met two file classes nobody had in mind
+
+Invariant 17 read: the file deletion lands only after **every** committed reference has been
+repointed. Written that way it was clean and checkable. In this repository it met two kinds of file it
+could not have meant — a derived anchor the distillation PR regenerates, and a frozen decision archive
+whose whole value is recording what was true at the time. Satisfying the invariant literally would
+have hand-edited a generated file and falsified an audit trail.
+
+Both were resolved correctly at implementation time, with a stub each, and both surfaced at close as
+deviations. That is the system working — but the cost was two deviations on a close record for
+something the record could have said in one clause. **Next time:** when an invariant quantifies over
+"every committed X", state its exclusions where it is written. Generated surfaces and frozen archives
+are the two that recur here.
+
+## Estimates were sized against a moving inventory
+
+The epic was planned against 22 proposed and 12 promoted backlog blocks. The record corrected 12 → 13
+at approval; the migration ran against 24 proposed. Two blocks were appended to the committed
+backlogs between planning and implementation — by the ordinary act of deferring scope, which is what
+those files were for.
+
+Nothing broke: the migration is batch-driven and counted what it found. But the record's risk section
+named "twenty-two irreversible creations in one run" as the thing to rehearse, and the rehearsal
+figure was wrong by two before it was run. **For any future migration of a live surface, take the
+count at the migration commit, not at planning**, and phrase the risk as "every block present at
+migration time" rather than a number.
+
+## Sizing held, and the record predicted where it wouldn't
+
+Four S stories and one M, complexity M overall. The four S stories landed as S. Story #188 was the one
+the record flagged in advance — "this is the change that most pressures that story's sizing" — because
+in-place promotion needed an update path the epic filing surface did not have. It did absorb the most
+work.
+
+Worth keeping: the record's ADDRESS risks named the sizing pressure on a specific story rather than on
+the epic. That is a more useful signal than a complexity rollup, and it was accurate here.