ship-tasks queue is permanently empty

Reproduction

1. cd modules/cuo
2. python3 -c "from pathlib import Path; from cuo.core.backlog_reader import parse_backlog, next_eligible; \
   r = parse_backlog(Path('../../docs/tasks/BACKLOG.md')); print(len(r), next_eligible(r))"
3. observe: 0 rows, next_eligible = None

Environment: any checkout of this repo, any Python. Frequency: always.

Expected vs observed


Expected	`parse_backlog` returns one row per task, and `next_eligible` returns the first `ready_to_implement` task whose dependency cone is `done`. STATUS-REFERENCE §1.1 promises `ship-tasks` picks up eligible work.
Observed	0 rows. `next_eligible` returns `None`. `ship-tasks` reports "no eligible task" regardless of backlog contents. The applier's `_rewrite_status_cell` also no-ops, because it bails on any line not starting with `\	`.

Blast radius

Who is affected: every consumer of the ship pipeline — ship-tasks, cyberos-cuo drain, status_server, brief_generator.
Since when: since BACKLOG.md was regenerated in bullet form. Predates the task->task rename; the rename merely surfaced it.
Workaround: none. The queue is simply dead.
Data integrity: no corruption. The failure is read-side and write-side no-op, not write-side wrong. Nothing to backfill.

Root cause

modules/cuo/cuo/core/backlog_reader.py:29 compiles _TASK_ROW_RE against a markdown table row (^\|\s*(TASK-[A-Z]+-\d+)\s*\|...). docs/tasks/BACKLOG.md contains 0 table rows and 357 bullet rows. Nothing has generated the table shape in a long time: BACKLOG.md's own header declares "Source of truth = task frontmatter", and render-status-hub.mjs:6 names its inputs as "task frontmatter, CHANGELOG.md, VERSION" — it never opens BACKLOG.md at all. The reader was left pointing at an orphan.

The failure is silent because an empty parse is not an error: re.match returning None on every line is indistinguishable from an empty backlog.

Fix

parse_specs() hydrates the queue from the 507 docs/tasks/<module>/TASK-*/spec.md frontmatters — the same source render-status-hub.mjs reads, so the CLI and the status page can never again disagree about what is eligible. parse_backlog() keeps the table path for back-compat and falls back to spec mode when the table yields nothing.

Regression test

modules/cuo/tests/test_backlog_reader_specs.py::test_parses_live_backlog

Red at HEAD~1 (returns 0 rows), green at HEAD (returns 507).

Edge cases

category	trigger	covered by
malformed	frontmatter status carries a trailing YAML comment (`status: on_hold # was "blocked"`)	`test_strips_yaml_comment`
empty	a `TASK-*/` dir with no `spec.md`	`test_skips_dir_without_spec`
boundary	a table-shaped BACKLOG still parses in table mode	`test_table_mode_still_works`

Prevention

A parser whose "no matches" path is indistinguishable from "empty input" will fail silently forever. parse_specs now returns a count the caller can assert on, and the regression test pins it against the real backlog rather than a fixture — a fixture would have kept passing through all of this.