instructions: CONTRACT.md drops other files' step counts from copy-in-checklist rationale (#130)

Files changed:
- CHANGES.md
- VERSION
- instructions/CONTRACT.md

instructions/CONTRACT.md

@@ -330,15 +330,27 @@ required. Length alone is not the problem: a long flow of tool calls announces i
 because the next call fails without the previous one.
 
 Two skills qualify today, and the block names each of their numbered steps once, verbatim:
-`wiki-ingest` (twelve steps, of which `## Not Extracted` in step 6, the coverage check in step 10
-and the lint cadence in step 12 all fail quietly) and `wiki-lint` (nine, with steps 3-6 pure
-judgment). The rest do not, and the reason is worth stating so nobody adds one out of symmetry:
-`wiki-manage` has two flows of seven, `wiki-query` seven, `wiki-status` five and
-`gtd-weekly-review` five - none of them long enough for a reader to lose the thread.
+`wiki-ingest`, whose flow is long *and* carries steps that fail silently - `## Not Extracted`,
+the coverage check, and the lint cadence all skip past with no tool error and no validator to
+catch the omission - and `wiki-lint`, whose flow contains several steps that are pure judgment
+calls the same way. The rest do not, and the reason is worth stating so nobody adds one out of
+symmetry: every other skill's flow is short enough, and fails loudly enough step to step, that a
+reader cannot lose the thread even without a checklist - `wiki-manage`'s two flows, `wiki-query`,
+`wiki-status` and `gtd-weekly-review` all clear that bar.
 <!-- dist:strip-start -->
-Dev-instance-only: `stack-dev` (six) and `stack-close` (four) sit under the same threshold.
+Dev-instance-only: `stack-dev` and `stack-close` sit under the same threshold, for the same
+reason.
 <!-- dist:strip-end -->
 
+None of this is counted by number on purpose: a per-skill step count is a claim about a file this
+one does not own, and a claim like that can drift silently the moment the other file changes.
+This passage once cited `wiki-query` at six steps where it had already been seven for a while, and
+separately named only five of the eight skills that exist - neither wrong number made any check go
+red, because nothing here reads another file's prose. The two-halves test above (length *and* a
+silently-omittable step) is what actually does the work of picking `wiki-ingest` and `wiki-lint`
+out from the rest; a count was never load-bearing for that test, only decoration for it, and
+dropping it removes the one part of this passage that could be wrong without anyone noticing.
+
 The block says that it is to be copied and carried, not read. A checklist read once is the table
 of contents it replaced.