What causes "#${e.num}: Score has markdown bold: "${e.score}"" in santifer/career-ops?

Edit the row to strip the asterisks so the cell reads exactly `4.5/5` (or a sentinel `N/A`/`—`/`-`).

# : Score has markdown bold

Error message

#${e.num}: Score has markdown bold: "${e.score}"

What it means

A warning from verify-pipeline.mjs (Check 7) that a tracker row's Score cell contains markdown bold ('**'), violating the canonical-format rule that statuses/scores carry no markdown decoration. Bold breaks downstream parsers (merge-tracker.mjs's looksLikeScoreCell, stats roll-ups) that expect the literal `X.X/5` form.

Solutions

Edit the row to strip the asterisks so the cell reads exactly `4.5/5` (or a sentinel `N/A`/`—`/`-`).
Run `node normalize-statuses.mjs`, which canonicalizes status/score cells, then re-verify.
If many rows are affected, a one-line sed over the Score column of data/applications.md is safe because `**` never belongs there.
Prompt-batch workers to emit plain score cells; never render tracker tables as emphasized markdown.

Example fix

// before
| 42 | 2026-09-16 | Acme | Sr Backend | **4.5/5** | Applied | ... |
// after
| 42 | 2026-09-16 | Acme | Sr Backend | 4.5/5 | Applied | ... |

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const SCORE_RE = /^\d\.\d\/5$|^N\/A$|^—$|-$/;
if (!SCORE_RE.test(scoreCell.trim())) fixScoreCell(rowNum, scoreCell);

Prevention

Never apply markdown emphasis inside tracker table cells.
Run normalize-statuses.mjs after manual tracker edits.
Instruct LLM batch workers to emit bare `X.X/5` score cells.

When it happens

Trigger: Running `node verify-pipeline.mjs` when applications.md has a row like `**4.5/5**` — typically from an AI or human writing the table with markdown emphasis, or from a template that bolded the score column.

Common situations: Hand-editing the tracker with a markdown editor that auto-bolds; LLM-generated tracker rows using emphasis; copy-pasting rendered markdown tables back into the file.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of santifer/career-ops@e7abd431fc (2026-09-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/50512dba3e4a2c1b. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at verify-pipeline.mjs:229

}
if (badRows === 0) ok('All rows properly formatted');

// --- Check 6: Pending TSVs ---
let pendingTsvs = 0;
if (existsSync(ADDITIONS_DIR)) {
  const files = readdirSync(ADDITIONS_DIR).filter(f => f.endsWith('.tsv'));
  pendingTsvs = files.length;
  if (pendingTsvs > 0) {
    warn(`${pendingTsvs} pending TSVs in tracker-additions/ (not merged)`);
  }
}
if (pendingTsvs === 0) ok('No pending TSVs');

// --- Check 7: Bold in scores ---
let boldScores = 0;
for (const e of entries) {
  if (e.score.includes('**')) {
    warn(`#${e.num}: Score has markdown bold: "${e.score}"`);
    boldScores++;
  }
}
if (boldScores === 0) ok('No bold in scores');

// --- Check 8: Stale report-number sentinels (GC) ---
// reserve-report-num.mjs drops NNN-RESERVED.md files in reports/ when a
// number is claimed.  If the process crashed before writing the real report
// and deleting the sentinel it will linger.  Sentinels older than 4 h are
// stale; remove them here so they don't skew the next slot allocation.
const SENTINEL_MAX_AGE_MS = 4 * 60 * 60 * 1000;
let staleSentinels = 0;
if (existsSync(REPORTS_DIR)) {
  const now = Date.now();
  for (const name of readdirSync(REPORTS_DIR)) {
    if (!name.endsWith('-RESERVED.md')) continue;
    const full = join(REPORTS_DIR, name);
    try {

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