docs(i18n): state the shipped severity for an unresolvable translation key

[os-try-charles]

Part of #18452

content/docs/protocol/kernel/i18n-standard.mdx told authors that an unresolvable
translation-bundle key "is a warning, not an error: nothing crashes". Both halves are
false against the shipped linter, and have been since #16310 promoted
translation-target-unknown to error. An author who read the page and then wrote a locale
key against a target the linter cannot resolve got a FAILED run, having been told in writing
it would be a nag.

The two texts, re-measured on this branch

Repository objectstack-ai/objectstack, worktree at base f1c9bb305.

Reading	Result
content/docs/protocol/kernel/i18n-standard.mdx:1027 (before this PR)	An unresolvable key is a **warning**, not an error: nothing crashes, the string
packages/lint/src/validate-translation-references.ts:151	const TRANSLATION_TARGET_UNKNOWN_SEVERITY = 'error' as const;
consumed as the severity of every finding at	:912 and :1364 — the card's :813 / :1265 are stale, so everything here was located by CONTENT
control that the probe reaches the page at all	translation matches 49 lines in that same mdx

What an error actually does, read from the consuming commands rather than inferred from the
severity word:

• os lint — failing = errors.length + (strict ? warnings.length : 0) and
  if (failing > 0) process.exit(1) (packages/cli/src/commands/lint.ts:918-922, :1040).
  No flag is needed; --strict only adds warnings on top.
• os validate — splitBySeverity(findings), then this.exit(1) on a non-empty ruleErrors
  (packages/cli/src/commands/validate.ts:353-383).
• os compile — the same shape (packages/cli/src/commands/compile.ts:370-397).

The rule reaches all three because its suite entry declares commands: ALL
(packages/lint/src/authoring-rules.ts:709-713).

Where the repair's boundary was drawn

The old sentence promised two things — "a warning, not an error" AND "nothing crashes" — so
repairing only the severity word would have left a worse half-truth than the original. The whole
claim is repaired instead:

• the severity now reads error, names the rule id so a reader can grep it, and names the
  three commands that exit non-zero;
• the runtime half is kept, because it is still true and is precisely the argument for the
  promotion: the string really does render in its source locale while its neighbours resolve, and
  that invisibility is what makes an orphan key worth failing on. The rule's own module header
  makes the identical argument (packages/lint/src/validate-translation-references.ts:29-48);
• the sibling rule is separated out, because the very next paragraph on the page is about it:
  translation-option-key-unknown is still a warning
  (packages/lint/src/validate-translation-references.ts:1309, :1328).

Out of bounds on purpose: the two places on this page that describe the key shape (the card
measured both as correct) are untouched, as is content/docs/ui/translations.mdx.
packages/lint/** is untouched by design — #16310 was a deliberate promotion, so the page is
what drifted, and downgrading the rule would be the gate-weakening the triage ruling forbids.

The sibling sweep — the spellings and the populations, named

The card's starting point ("under content/docs, exactly one file mentions unresolvable key or
translation-target-unknown") is a reading over ONE spelling, not over the claim, so it was
re-run wide. Probes, all on f1c9bb305, all case-insensitive:

#	Spelling	Population
1	translation-target-unknown	whole repo
2	unresolvable	whole repo
3	orphan[- ](key|translation) / orphaned (key|translation)	whole repo
4	nothing crashes	whole repo
5	warning,? not an error / not an error,? (a|just a) warning	whole repo
6	inert	content/docs, skills, examples, apps, README.md
7	a severity word (warning|warn|error|severity|fails the run|fails the build|exit 1) on the same line as translation-key language (translat|locale|i18n|bundle key|orphan)	content/docs, skills, examples, apps, README.md, minus content/docs/references and content/docs/releases
8	advisory|does not fail|doesn't fail|won't fail|never fails|non-blocking|non-gating|safe to ignore near translation language	content/docs, skills, examples, docs, apps
9	renders? (in its )?(source|original) locale / renders? untranslated / stays english	content/docs, skills, examples, docs, apps
10	the rule id / claim spellings of 1 and 3	docs, .claude, apps, skills, content
11	every severity word inside i18n-standard.mdx itself	that one file

What they returned:

• One live carrier in content/docs — the sentence this PR repairs. Probe 11 confirms the page
  states the severity claim exactly once; the other hits on that page are Callout type="warn"
  markers and an unrelated parse-failure sentence.
• A positive control, and it is the useful one. skills/objectstack-i18n/SKILL.md:196-197
  already states the claim correctly: "translation-target-unknown is an error and fails
  the run; translation-option-key-unknown is a warning." The probe reaches a second document
  carrying this claim, and that document has been right all along — so a zero elsewhere is a
  reading, not a blind spot.
• Dated historical records, deliberately not edited:
  docs/audits/2026-07-app-metadata-reference-integrity-assessment.md:93 ("warning throughout",
  stamped "Landed 2026-07-28") records what shipped on that date;
  .changeset/16310-orphan-locale-key-gates.md, packages/lint/CHANGELOG.md,
  packages/cli/CHANGELOG.md and content/docs/releases/** are release-owned and correct as of
  their entries. AGENTS.md forbids amending them from a code PR.
• Near-misses re-read and cleared: content/docs/ui/translations.mdx:242-244 (default-locale
  COVERAGE severity) and :346-365 (the flows group's liveness warning) are different rules, not
  this claim.
• One carrier this PR is fenced out of — see below; it is why this body says Part of and not
  a closing keyword.

Verification

Gate families derived mechanically from the change set rather than listed by hand:
node scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs --commands --repo objectstack-ai/objectstack at commit
4083936f7, then reconciled with --ran carrying one recorded exit code per family:

Run reconciliation - 39 derived, 39 run, 0 NOT-MEASURED, 0 UNRUN.
dispatch-gates --ran: 39 derived famil(ies) accounted for - 39 run,
  0 NOT-MEASURED (a DERIVED zero - all 39 recorded an exit code and none of them is 3).

Three families first answered exit 3 = PREREQUISITE NOT MET (@objectstack/lint and
@objectstack/client-react were unbuilt in a fresh worktree), which is not a finding. They were
re-run after building those packages and all three then exited 0: check:doc-formula-expressions,
check:doc-security-posture, check:docs-transcript-drift, plus check:skill-examples which had
exited 1 for the same unbuilt-dist reason it prints by name.

Notable members of the 39, all exit 0: check:docs-section-name, check:doc-anchors,
check:doc-authoring, check:docs-single-h1, check:doc-frontmatter, check:corpus-claim-drift,
check:docs-audit-scope, check:cross-package-test-inputs, check:nul-bytes,
pnpm --filter @objectstack/spec check:docs.

Also self-scanned for control bytes beyond the gate, per AGENTS.md:
grep -naP '[\x00-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]' over the edited file returns nothing (exit 1).

Declared scope of the local run: repository-wide scans (pnpm lint foremost) are CI's run, and
origin/main moved 4 commits after this branch's base. The only gate family those commits add is
check:rerun-safety-verdict, a self-test-only checker-health family wired whole-tree and unrelated
to content/docs; they add no docs-path family (measured by diffing .github/workflows/lint.yml
and package.json across that range). CI derives on the merge ref.

Changeset: none, and the measurement behind that

The criterion is whether anything PUBLISHED moves — what each package's files[] actually ships.
Measured over every non-private package.json in the workspace: 70 published packages, 0 whose
files[] names content/docs; positive control on the same instrument, 70 of 70 name dist.
apps/docs (the Fumadocs site that renders this page) is "private": true. Nothing copies
content/docs into a package at build time. Hence skip-changeset.

Acceptance notes

Observed while sweeping, NOT fixed here and NOT filed as cards:

• packages/lint/src/validate-translatable-sections.ts:40-43 justifies its own warning severity
  with "Same reading as its sibling rule (ADR-0072 D1): nothing crashes and nothing is dead". The
  sibling is validate-translation-references, which no longer holds that reading — this is the
  same falsified claim, one file over, by reference. Its own rule's warning severity is still
  correct; only the cross-reference is stale. packages/lint/** is fenced for this card by the
  triage ruling and by the dispatch, so it is reported rather than touched, and it is why this body
  reads Part of #18452 — the docs half is complete, the card's last carrier is not. The repo
  already carries the correction one file over, in
  packages/lint/src/reference-integrity-suite.ts:406-410: "warning-only on its own reading - NOT
  on its sibling's any more".
• packages/lint/src/validate-translation-references.test.ts:26-27 narrates the superseded Severity
  note in the present tense inside a docblock; harmless in context (the tests below it assert
  error), noted only because it is the third text in the family.

Neither is a reproducible defect, a declared-contract violation or a metadata-authoring trap, so
neither is filed by this PR; both are handed to triage in the report instead.

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