A read verb could only reach a store by walking up from the cwd, and timeline/log could only emit the whole history. -R/--repo names a store directly, so timeline, log, leaves, branch, tag, info, ls, cat, artifact and annotate run against it with no working tree; a verb that reads or writes the checkout refuses -R by name rather than silently operating on the cwd's store. -n N caps timeline and log at the N most recent check-ins (0 means all), ordered by the same DAG the full listing uses. The -n spelling stays --dry-run on add/rm/clean/addremove, a per-verb overload matching fossil, so those verbs reject -n N and keep their boolean sense.

stat is left out of the -R grant on purpose: it interrogates only the store, but its handler takes no redirected repository, so it refuses -R by name rather than read the cwd's store while appearing to honor the flag. check-in: 43468196c2 user: dmestas tags: trunk