design/state/ does not exist, and the reader/checker/projector tooling built for it has nothing to read

[The-Running-Dev]

Symptom — running Invoke-Pester -Path tools (or tools/Test-DesignState.ps1 directly) against a fresh checkout of this repository fails/could-not-evaluates: design/state/ does not exist anywhere in the tree, but tools/Read-DesignState.ps1, tools/Test-DesignState.ps1, and their own test suites assert real records exist there and self-check against this repository's own state. Expected the design-state reader/checker/projector (added in dc4d9b1) to have something to read; instead six Pester tests fail or report could-not-evaluate, and Test-DesignState.ps1 exits 2 naming StateSetAbsent.

Observed on branch reconcile-after-s13, commit be72319, macOS/Darwin, PowerShell 7.6.4, pwsh.

Reproduce

1. pwsh -File ./tools/Test-DesignState.ps1 against a checkout of main (or this branch) — exits 2, reporting [ContractListUnreadable] SectionNotFound: design/20-contract.md and [StateSetAbsent] design/state/ is missing or holds zero records.
2. Invoke-Pester -Path tools -PassThru — six failures/one block failure, all pointing at the same absence: Read-DesignState.Tests.ps1 S4.6, Test-DesignState.Tests.ps1 S5.6/S12.5/S12.6 (a block failure via a Pester label bug, Pester breaks on functions with unknown label pester/Pester#2669, that also takes down two child assertions), and Update-DesignProjection.Tests.ps1 S7.2.

Done when

• A regression test fails without the fix and passes with it

---

Agent instructions

This issue is the specification. A bug has no upstream design document, so unlike a
slice this block is the home rather than a pointer — it carries the constraints instead
of naming where they live.

• Authority: the failing tests named above (tools/Read-DesignState.Tests.ps1, tools/Test-DesignState.Tests.ps1, tools/Update-DesignProjection.Tests.ps1), all currently red against this repository's own tree.
• Out of scope: the S12.6 block failure's own root cause (a break/continue label mismatch inside the test file, tracked upstream as Pester breaks on functions with unknown label pester/Pester#2669) — that is a test-authoring defect in this repository's Pester usage, separable from whether design/state/ should exist.
• Stop if: populating design/state/ turns out to need a contract or schema decision about what belongs in it — that is a design question, not a bug fix.
• Verify by reverting the fix and confirming the tests fail again.
• Discovered while running /verify on pull request #150; not introduced by that PR, which touches only docs/docs/guide.md.