[mabry1985]

Summary

Added YAML-only difficulty thresholds, preserving the global default and existing timeout guards. Documented {medium: 1, large: 1} and added regression coverage.

Ruff checks passed. Full pytest run had 3,129 passes and 40 skips; its sole failure was the documentation key count, now corrected with all nine documentation tests passing. The 568 focused timeout and loop tests also passed.

Refs #549.

[protoreview]

QA panel review — PASS

code-review-structural · head d0e8edda3941 · formal

Low-risk, well-scoped PR: adds a per-difficulty override for the decompose-after-timeouts threshold with proper fallback to the global value. The panel raised a single nit-level maintainability note (cross-test-file imports of private helpers), which the verifier confirmed verbatim. No findings were refuted or dropped; no prior requests to disposition. No coverage gaps.

Findings

	Severity	Location	Finding	Verified
⚪	nit	tests/test_timeout_threshold_549.py:7	Cross-test-file imports of private helpers create brittle coupling between test modules	confirmed

findings JSON (machine-readable)

[
  {
    "file": "tests/test_timeout_threshold_549.py",
    "line": 7,
    "severity": "nit",
    "category": "maintainability",
    "claim": "Cross-test-file imports of private helpers create brittle coupling between test modules",
    "evidence": "test_timeout_threshold_549.py imports _CARD, _TIMEOUT, _SplitStore, _blocks, and _timing_out_board from test_timeout_decompose_378. These are private (underscore-prefixed) helpers with no stability contract. A rename, restructure, or split of that module would break this test file silently.",
    "source": "protopatch",
    "verdict": "confirmed",
    "note": "Line 7 reads verbatim: `from test_timeout_decompose_378 import _CARD, _TIMEOUT, _SplitStore, _blocks, _timing_out_board` \u2014 all five are underscore-prefixed private names imported across test modules."
  }
]

[protoreview]

Promoting the PASS verdict for head d0e8edda3941: all checks terminal-green, zero unresolved review threads. (approve-on-green)

Open findings carried by this approval — non-blocking, but they did not go away:

• nit tests/test_timeout_threshold_549.py:7 — Cross-test-file imports of private helpers create brittle coupling between test modules

Approving a WARN does not resolve its findings (issue #22).