Repository.manifest parsed check-in manifests through the strict reference parser, which rejects fossil's own 2008 cvs2fossil-era manifests: their F cards carry a dangling trailing space after the hash, where the §4.2 perm token (1*tchar) permits none. On a large fossil-origin repository this made `zit timeline` stop at the first such check-in and exit non-zero, silently losing that check-in and every older one — a functional loss of history, surfaced as a misleading "input/output error".

Parse through parseForImport, the same read-path interop the diff baseline already relies on: the strict parser still runs first and stays the sole grammar oracle; the trailing-separator tolerance engages only when an otherwise well-framed, Z-valid artifact is rejected. OwnedManifest now also owns the normalized copy the manifest borrows when that tolerance fires. closed check-in: b503efb9f2 user: dmestas tags: iss7