- In aeav_only flat is the source of truth and native meta is stale by design, so drift there means nothing: drift-check --fix refuses (it would overwrite current flat values with stale native ones), the daily sample skips such entities, and the router keeps routing a drifting group instead of falling back to stale native meta.
- Found before PR-074 on hardening/2.2 (PR-071–073 not released; dev21 still runs aeav_only).
- Verify: DriftCheckTest / PostQueryRouterDriftTest aeav_only cases (RED before); dev36 fix() in a simulated aeav_only refused.
- PR: PR-073b
- The post query router routes no clause of a group whose last drift-check recorded miss / diff / extra; all or nothing, so such a query stays fully native. A group never checked keeps routing (decision 2026-09-27: no slowdown after upgrading; PR-073 samples daily).
- The check sits in route_clause(), which every routed clause, HivePress sort shape and meta_key sort goes through.
- Verify: PostQueryRouterDriftTest (drifting group and drifting sort key RED before); dev36 hp_listing price search in shadow_read: clean → flat, drift → native, unchecked → flat, found 90347 each.
- PR: PR-072
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