A Fossil->Git mirror carries root manifest/manifest.uuid/manifest.tags that are not project content: wapp has 252 distinct manifest blobs across 252 commits while its native history tracks no such file. The classifier proves per commit that those bytes are reconstructible from what the import already holds, so packing can drop them.

Fail-closed and cryptographic: stripped-manifest hash equals the uuid, F cards equal the tree, P cards equal validated parents, D card equals the committer instant. A real top-level file named manifest cannot satisfy that by chance, and any inconclusive signal retains every present candidate -- never a strict subset.

Three corrections to the design, all established against the corpus: presence is per-repository (fossil's manifest setting emits each of the three independently), gate 6 must exclude every present candidate since F cards list none of them, and gate 3 must strip the sterilizer line the export appends or the uuid never matches. update.zig's manifest_paths and sterilizer are now public rather than duplicated -- it already had all three names and the exact trailer.

Measured on the pinned wapp corpus: 252/252 commits validate, drop set 512 = 252 manifest + 252 manifest.uuid + 8 distinct manifest.tags.

test 3461/3461, gate, e2e 716/716, git-import-e2e 11/11, dst 6x1000. check-in: d189b0da1d user: dmestas tags: sub-manifest