backend/app/services/membership_reconcile.py

@@ -47,12 +47,12 @@ from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import AsyncSession
 from ..models import Artist, MembershipSync, PlatformMembership, Source
 from .membership_roster import (
     get_sync_state,
-    has_paid_access,
     identity_keys_for_source,
     pair_sources_with_memberships,
     roster_is_fresh,
     url_tail,
 )
+from .native_ingest_common import has_paid_access
 
 # Why a source appears in `tracked_not_subscribed`. Ordered strongest first —
 # the UI renders a different sentence per basis, because collapsing them into

backend/app/services/membership_roster.py

@@ -20,8 +20,10 @@ own word — `active_patron`, not some normalised FC value. The mapping from
 those words to FC's meaning is a read-site concern and belongs in code that can
 be corrected without a migration, because the vocabulary comes from whatever
 each platform says and will be discovered per platform rather than designed up
-front. `MEMBERSHIP_STATUS` below is a place for that knowledge to accumulate as
+front. `native_ingest_common.MEMBERSHIP_STATUS` is where that knowledge
-platforms are characterised; it is deliberately empty of guesses today.
+accumulates as platforms are characterised, and it holds no guesses. It lives
+there rather than here because platform clients need it, and a client may not
+import this module (test_gated_reason.py).
 """
 
 from __future__ import annotations
@@ -35,78 +37,10 @@ from sqlalchemy.dialects.postgresql import insert as pg_insert
 from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import AsyncSession
 
 from ..models import MembershipSync, PlatformMembership, Source
+from .native_ingest_common import has_paid_access
 
 log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
-# Platform word -> whether the account currently has paid access.
-#
-# Every entry here must come from a CHARACTERISED response, never from API docs
-# or a plausible guess — project rule 130, and inventing a status before seeing
-# it in a real payload is exactly the failure it names.
-#
-# patreon: from a live capture of the operator's own session, 2026-09-10
-# (Scribe note #3886). Only two values were OBSERVED in `patron_status` and
-# only those two are here.
-#
-# `declined_patron` is deliberately ABSENT even though it looks obviously
-# right. It appears in the request's `filter[membership_type]`, and the capture
-# proved that filter is NOT the same vocabulary as the attribute — a row
-# selected by the filter as `free_member` came back with
-# `patron_status: former_patron`, a word the filter does not contain. Reading
-# the filter as an enum is the specific mistake the capture caught; adding
-# `declined_patron` on the strength of it would be repeating that mistake one
-# step later.
-#
-# Unknown words are NOT an error: an unrecognised status means the roster
-# records evidence it cannot yet interpret, which is a better state than
-# dropping the row or asserting a meaning for it.
-#
-# subscribestar: from a live capture of the account's /subscriptions page,
-# 2026-09-13 (Scribe note #3989). SubscribeStar gives NO per-row status word —
-# a membership's state is which of two tables it sits in — so the "word" stored
-# is the table card's own `data-identifier`, verbatim. Those two identifiers are
-# the whole vocabulary; there is nothing further to characterise later.
-MEMBERSHIP_STATUS: dict[str, dict[str, bool]] = {
-    "patreon": {
-        "active_patron": True,
-        "former_patron": False,
-    },
-    "subscribestar": {
-        "active_subscriptions": True,
-        "cancelled_subscriptions": False,
-    },
-}
-
-
-def has_paid_access(
-    platform: str, status: str | None, *, is_free_member: bool = False,
-) -> bool | None:
-    """Does this membership mean the account currently PAYS for access?
-
-    Returns None for a status this code has not been taught, which callers must
-    treat as "unknown" rather than as False. The difference matters: False says
-    the operator has lost access, and asserting that from an unrecognised word
-    would tell them to cancel a source they are still paying for.
-
-    `is_free_member` is a second axis, not a status, and that is Patreon's
-    design rather than ours: the capture shows a free follow expressed as a
-    boolean alongside `patron_status`, so a "current" membership can still be
-    one nobody is paying for. Taking status alone would report a free follower
-    as a paying patron, and C4 would then never offer to clean it up.
-
-    (Honest limit: the capture contains no ACTIVE free member, so it cannot
-    demonstrate the two axes coming apart. The separation is what the payload's
-    shape says; the sample only shows it is possible, not that it happens.)
-    """
-    if status is None:
-        return None
-    known = MEMBERSHIP_STATUS.get(platform, {}).get(status)
-    if known is None:
-        return None
-    if not known:
-        return False
-    return not is_free_member
-
 
 async def touch_membership(
     session: AsyncSession,

backend/app/services/native_ingest_common.py

@@ -231,7 +231,7 @@ class Membership:
 
     `status` carries the PLATFORM's own word, verbatim and unmapped
     (`active_patron`, `former_patron`, ...). Deciding what it means is the read
-    site's job — `membership_roster.has_paid_access` — precisely so an
+    site's job — `has_paid_access`, below — precisely so an
     unrecognised word records as evidence rather than as a decision.
 
     `is_free_member` is SEPARATE from status and must stay that way. Patreon
@@ -396,3 +396,81 @@ class BaseNativeDownloader:
         sidecar_path = media_path.with_suffix(".json")
         sidecar_path.write_text(json.dumps(data, indent=2))
         return sidecar_path
+
+# --- membership status vocabulary (#387) ------------------------------------
+#
+# Lives here, beside `Membership`, rather than in `membership_roster`. It is
+# pure platform knowledge with no database behind it, and the platform clients
+# need it too. Patreon's must tell a lapsed membership to a deleted creator
+# (skippable) from a paid one it cannot attribute (drift), and a client may not
+# import `membership_roster`: test_gated_reason.py forbids any fetch path from
+# reaching the roster, so the roster can explain a skip but never cause one.
+#
+# Platform word -> whether the account currently has paid access.
+#
+# Every entry here must come from a CHARACTERISED response, never from API docs
+# or a plausible guess — project rule 130, and inventing a status before seeing
+# it in a real payload is exactly the failure it names.
+#
+# patreon: from a live capture of the operator's own session, 2026-09-10
+# (Scribe note #3886). Only two values were OBSERVED in `patron_status` and
+# only those two are here.
+#
+# `declined_patron` is deliberately ABSENT even though it looks obviously
+# right. It appears in the request's `filter[membership_type]`, and the capture
+# proved that filter is NOT the same vocabulary as the attribute — a row
+# selected by the filter as `free_member` came back with
+# `patron_status: former_patron`, a word the filter does not contain. Reading
+# the filter as an enum is the specific mistake the capture caught; adding
+# `declined_patron` on the strength of it would be repeating that mistake one
+# step later.
+#
+# Unknown words are NOT an error: an unrecognised status means the roster
+# records evidence it cannot yet interpret, which is a better state than
+# dropping the row or asserting a meaning for it.
+#
+# subscribestar: from a live capture of the account's /subscriptions page,
+# 2026-09-13 (Scribe note #3989). SubscribeStar gives NO per-row status word —
+# a membership's state is which of two tables it sits in — so the "word" stored
+# is the table card's own `data-identifier`, verbatim. Those two identifiers are
+# the whole vocabulary; there is nothing further to characterise later.
+MEMBERSHIP_STATUS: dict[str, dict[str, bool]] = {
+    "patreon": {
+        "active_patron": True,
+        "former_patron": False,
+    },
+    "subscribestar": {
+        "active_subscriptions": True,
+        "cancelled_subscriptions": False,
+    },
+}
+
+
+def has_paid_access(
+    platform: str, status: str | None, *, is_free_member: bool = False,
+) -> bool | None:
+    """Does this membership mean the account currently PAYS for access?
+
+    Returns None for a status this code has not been taught, which callers must
+    treat as "unknown" rather than as False. The difference matters: False says
+    the operator has lost access, and asserting that from an unrecognised word
+    would tell them to cancel a source they are still paying for.
+
+    `is_free_member` is a second axis, not a status, and that is Patreon's
+    design rather than ours: the capture shows a free follow expressed as a
+    boolean alongside `patron_status`, so a "current" membership can still be
+    one nobody is paying for. Taking status alone would report a free follower
+    as a paying patron, and C4 would then never offer to clean it up.
+
+    (Honest limit: the capture contains no ACTIVE free member, so it cannot
+    demonstrate the two axes coming apart. The separation is what the payload's
+    shape says; the sample only shows it is possible, not that it happens.)
+    """
+    if status is None:
+        return None
+    known = MEMBERSHIP_STATUS.get(platform, {}).get(status)
+    if known is None:
+        return None
+    if not known:
+        return False
+    return not is_free_member

backend/app/services/patreon_client.py

@@ -58,6 +58,7 @@ from .native_ingest_common import (
     NativeDriftError,
     NativeIngestError,
     basename_from_url,
+    has_paid_access,
     make_session,
     retry_after_seconds,
 )
@@ -631,7 +632,25 @@ class PatreonClient:
                 "cannot tell a complete roster from a truncated one"
             )
 
-    def _membership(self, member: dict, index: dict) -> Membership:
+    def _membership(self, member: dict, index: dict) -> Membership | None:
+        """One member row as a Membership, or None for a row the roster can skip.
+
+        The one skippable row is a LAPSED membership whose creator no longer
+        exists. The live roster (note #3886, CORRECTION 3) returned 104 rows,
+        because FC sends no membership-type filter and so gets lapses going back
+        years. One of them, a membership that ended in 2017, carried no
+        `campaign` relationship at all: the key is absent, not null, and its
+        reward names no campaign either. The creator's page is gone.
+
+        Raising on that row made the whole roster unusable over one membership
+        nobody can act on. Skipping it changes no conclusion. A lapsed
+        membership already means "not paying", absence means the same, and no
+        Source can be matched to a campaign that no longer has an id.
+
+        The refusal stays for every other row. An active or unrecognised
+        membership without a creator is something FC cannot vouch for, and
+        dropping it would read downstream as a cancellation.
+        """
         attrs = member.get("attributes") or {}
         if "patron_status" not in attrs:
             raise PatreonDriftError(
@@ -640,6 +659,17 @@ class PatreonClient:
 
         campaign_ids = self._related_ids(member, "campaign")
         if not campaign_ids:
+            paid = has_paid_access(
+                "patreon", attrs.get("patron_status"),
+                is_free_member=bool(attrs.get("is_free_member")),
+            )
+            if paid is False:
+                log.info(
+                    "Patreon roster: skipping a lapsed membership with no campaign "
+                    "(creator deleted); status=%s access_expires_at=%s",
+                    attrs.get("patron_status"), attrs.get("access_expires_at"),
+                )
+                return None
             raise PatreonDriftError(
                 "Patreon member resource has no campaign relationship — a "
                 "membership we cannot attribute to a creator is not usable"
@@ -700,7 +730,9 @@ class PatreonClient:
             index = self._transform(response)
             rows = [m for m in (response.get("data") or []) if isinstance(m, dict)]
             for member in rows:
-                yield self._membership(member, index)
+                membership = self._membership(member, index)
+                if membership is not None:
+                    yield membership
 
             seen += len(rows)
             total = int(response["meta"]["pagination"]["total"] or 0)

backend/app/services/subscribestar_client.py

@@ -316,7 +316,7 @@ _ROSTER_URL = f"{_ROSTER_BASE}/subscriptions"
 # `data-identifier`, the one vocabulary that names a state: the table class
 # inside the cancelled card says `for-unsubscribed_users`, a different word for
 # the same list (note #3989, CORRECTION 1). The identifier is stored verbatim as
-# Membership.status and mapped in membership_roster.MEMBERSHIP_STATUS.
+# Membership.status and mapped in native_ingest_common.MEMBERSHIP_STATUS.
 _ROSTER_ACTIVE = "active_subscriptions"
 _ROSTER_CANCELLED = "cancelled_subscriptions"
 

frontend/public/favicon.svg

@@ -15,7 +15,10 @@
        Colours are theme tokens (frontend/src/theme/fabled-tokens.js): obsidian
        plate, accent gold. The plate is kept here (unlike logo.svg) so the tab
        icon is self-contained against any browser chrome; on the nav it is
-       invisible because it matches --fc-chrome-rgb exactly. -->
+       invisible because it matches the fc-chrome-rgb custom property exactly.
+       No double hyphen may appear inside this comment: XML forbids it, and a
+       browser refuses to render an SVG that does not parse (it happened once —
+       tests/test_public_svgs.py). -->
   <rect width="32" height="32" rx="6" fill="#14171A"/>
   <rect x="6.2" y="4.2" width="19.6" height="23.6" rx="1.4"
         fill="none" stroke="#A87338" stroke-width="2.4"/>

frontend/src/components/AppShell.vue

@@ -17,6 +17,22 @@ const route = useRoute()
 
 <style scoped>
 .fc-content {
+  /* The full brand mark as one large, faint backdrop behind every page,
+     pinned to the viewport so content scrolls over it. Opaque surfaces
+     (cards, the nav) cover it; it shows in the gutters and on bare page
+     ground. The series reader is immersive and skips the shell, so reading
+     is never drawn over it.
+
+     Faded by laying the page colour over it at 94%, NOT with `opacity` on an
+     overlay element: an overlay needs this element to be z-indexed above it,
+     which makes all page content one stacking context under the nav and can
+     trap an in-page overlay beneath it. A background changes no stacking.
+     The mark is gold and parchment, close to the text colours, so it has to
+     stay this faint to keep text over it readable. */
+  background:
+    linear-gradient(rgba(var(--v-theme-background), 0.94), rgba(var(--v-theme-background), 0.94)),
+    url('/logo.svg') center / min(88vmin, 1100px) no-repeat;
+  background-attachment: fixed;
   min-height: 100vh;
   /* NO padding-top: the TopNav is position:sticky, so it already reserves its
      own space in the v-app flex column — content flows directly below it. The

tests/test_membership_roster.py

@@ -10,11 +10,8 @@ import pytest
 from sqlalchemy import select
 
 from backend.app.models import PlatformMembership
-from backend.app.services.membership_roster import (
+from backend.app.services.membership_roster import touch_membership
-    MEMBERSHIP_STATUS,
+from backend.app.services.native_ingest_common import MEMBERSHIP_STATUS, has_paid_access
-    has_paid_access,
-    touch_membership,
-)
 
 pytestmark = pytest.mark.integration
 

tests/test_patreon_memberships.py

@@ -239,14 +239,72 @@ def test_a_missing_data_list_is_drift(client, payload):
         list(client.iter_memberships(user_id="1"))
 
 
-def test_a_member_with_no_campaign_is_drift(client, payload):
+def _index_of(payload, status):
+    return next(
+        i for i, m in enumerate(payload["data"])
+        if m["attributes"]["patron_status"] == status
+    )
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("shape", ["null", "absent"])
+def test_an_active_member_with_no_campaign_is_drift(client, payload, shape):
+    """A PAID membership FC cannot attribute must refuse the roster. Dropping it
+    would read downstream as the operator having cancelled it."""
     mangled = json.loads(json.dumps(payload))
-    mangled["data"][0]["relationships"]["campaign"] = {"data": None}
+    rels = mangled["data"][_index_of(mangled, "active_patron")]["relationships"]
+    if shape == "null":
+        rels["campaign"] = {"data": None}
+    else:
+        del rels["campaign"]
     client._request = lambda *a, **k: mangled
     with pytest.raises(PatreonDriftError, match="campaign"):
         list(client.iter_memberships(user_id="1"))
 
 
+def test_an_unrecognised_status_with_no_campaign_is_drift(client, payload):
+    """Only a status KNOWN to mean "not paying" may be skipped. An unknown word
+    could be a paid membership (has_paid_access returns None for it)."""
+    mangled = json.loads(json.dumps(payload))
+    row = mangled["data"][_index_of(mangled, "active_patron")]
+    row["attributes"]["patron_status"] = "some_new_status"
+    del row["relationships"]["campaign"]
+    client._request = lambda *a, **k: mangled
+    with pytest.raises(PatreonDriftError, match="campaign"):
+        list(client.iter_memberships(user_id="1"))
+
+
+def test_a_lapsed_member_whose_creator_is_gone_is_skipped(client, payload):
+    """The live roster's shape (note #3886, CORRECTION 3). A membership that
+    lapsed in 2017 came back with no `campaign` key at all, because the creator's
+    page no longer exists. It used to fail the whole roster. Now it is the only
+    row missing, and every other row still arrives."""
+    mangled = json.loads(json.dumps(payload))
+    lapsed = _index_of(mangled, "former_patron")
+    del mangled["data"][lapsed]["relationships"]["campaign"]
+    client._request = lambda *a, **k: mangled
+    rows = list(client.iter_memberships(user_id="1"))
+    assert len(rows) == len(payload["data"]) - 1
+    assert all(r.campaign_id for r in rows)
+    assert all(r.status == "active_patron" for r in rows)
+
+
+def test_skipping_does_not_end_paging_early(client, payload):
+    """Paging counts the rows the SERVER sent, not the ones kept. Counting kept
+    rows would re-request an offset that was already read, or stop one page
+    short, whenever a row is skipped."""
+    first = json.loads(json.dumps(payload))
+    del first["data"][_index_of(first, "former_patron")]["relationships"]["campaign"]
+    total = 2 * len(payload["data"])
+    first["meta"]["pagination"]["total"] = total
+    second = json.loads(json.dumps(payload))
+    second["meta"]["pagination"]["total"] = total
+    calls = _serve(client, first, second)
+    rows = list(client.iter_memberships(user_id="1"))
+    assert len(calls) == 2
+    assert calls[1][1]["page[offset]"] == str(len(payload["data"]))
+    assert len(rows) == total - 1
+
+
 def test_a_member_with_no_patron_status_is_drift(client, payload):
     mangled = json.loads(json.dumps(payload))
     del mangled["data"][0]["attributes"]["patron_status"]

tests/test_public_svgs.py

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+"""Every SVG the browser loads from `frontend/public/` must parse as XML.
+
+A browser renders an SVG used as an image only if it is well-formed XML, and
+when it is not, nothing reports it: no console error in most browsers, no
+failed build, no failed request — the icon is simply blank. `favicon.svg`
+shipped that way (merge #251) because its comment contained a CSS custom
+property name, and `--` is illegal inside an XML comment. Both the tab icon and
+the nav brand mark went missing, and only a person looking at the page noticed.
+"""
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
+from pathlib import Path
+
+import pytest
+
+PUBLIC = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent / "frontend" / "public"
+SVGS = sorted(PUBLIC.rglob("*.svg"))
+
+
+def test_the_public_dir_has_svgs_to_check():
+    """Guards the guard: a moved directory would otherwise pass vacuously."""
+    assert {p.name for p in SVGS} >= {"favicon.svg", "logo.svg"}
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("svg", SVGS, ids=lambda p: p.name)
+def test_svg_is_well_formed_xml(svg):
+    root = ET.parse(svg).getroot()
+    assert root.tag == "{http://www.w3.org/2000/svg}svg"
+
+
+def test_the_parser_rejects_the_shape_that_broke_the_favicon():
+    """Positive control: the exact defect must fail this parser, or the
+    parametrized test above proves nothing."""
+    broken = (
+        '<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">'
+        "<!-- matches --fc-chrome-rgb exactly --></svg>"
+    )
+    with pytest.raises(ET.ParseError):
+        ET.fromstring(broken)

tests/test_subscribestar_memberships.py

@@ -22,8 +22,8 @@ from types import SimpleNamespace
 
 import pytest
 
-from backend.app.services.membership_roster import has_paid_access, roster_user_id
+from backend.app.services.membership_roster import roster_user_id
-from backend.app.services.native_ingest_common import Membership
+from backend.app.services.native_ingest_common import Membership, has_paid_access
 from backend.app.services.subscribestar_client import (
     SubscribeStarAuthError,
     SubscribeStarClient,