Nothing is ever blocked by CPU load

Waiting for a busy machine to calm down before running, merging or judging anything means work stalls for reasons that have nothing to do with it, and on a shared host the wait can be endless. So no task ever waits on, or fails because of, how busy the machine is: what is judged is the work itself.

The user’s standing rule of 2026-10-15: “i never want anything to be blocked no matter what cpu usage we have” … “no matter what task”.

• It applies to EVERY task: merges, validations, tests, builds, lab rounds and agent work.
• Every judged measurement in the harness and the labs is load-independent: CPU work, not wall time (Q-TX2, UI-CPU). Wall values are recorded signals only.
• No quiet waits or load thresholds anywhere: chains, gates, runners, labs.
• Landings are never queued behind lab runs.
• The one global instrument lock (INSTRUMENT-LOCK) gives way to concurrent runs under per-run caps once measurement is load-independent.
• A “flake under load” needs no quiet host to reproduce: a test that fails under load is itself a load-dependence defect to fix (CPU work or event waits), not a flake to excuse (FLAKE-REPRO, amended).
• Retroactive: a whole-tree and all-labs audit lists every load-dependent gate and wait, and each gets an owned fix.

What is missing: not built yet. Heavy runs still take the one instrument lock and wait for it, and the suite budget verdict still defers a saturated host as provisional (engine/src/shared/budget-verdict.ts).