The degraded path counted every remote-tracking ref on every remote — stale
experiment branches and second remotes inflated version allocation, and a
failed base read flipped 3-digit repos to 4-digit slots. Now: ls-remote
--heads origin first (GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT=0, 5s timeout, zero local ref
mutation); on failure, local refs/remotes/origin ONLY with an explicit
stale-refs warning; a failed base read zeroes at the LOCAL version file's
width so a 3-digit repo allocates 0.0.1, not 0.0.1.0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
