em dashes out of skeleton copy (titles use ' - ', prose reworded); split hardening after review: poll errors name the failing repo, failed release is not retried until a new commit, link-content checks all three dirs, editor write-access note, two-repo unit descriptions and comments

deploy/build.sh

@@ -43,18 +43,22 @@ head_of() {
 code_sha=$(head_of "$CODE_REPO")
 content_sha=$(head_of "$CONTENT_REPO")
 # Gitea down/unreachable is a transient, not a unit failure — exit 0 quietly
-# instead of painting the journal red every 10 s.
-for sha in "$code_sha" "$content_sha"; do
-  if [[ ! "$sha" =~ ^[0-9a-f]{40}$ ]]; then
-    echo "poll failed (gitea unreachable?) — skipping this tick"
-    exit 0
-  fi
-done
+# instead of painting the journal red every 10 s. Name the repo: a 404 here
+# also means "repo/branch missing or renamed", not just "Gitea down".
+[[ "$code_sha" =~ ^[0-9a-f]{40}$ ]] || { echo "poll failed for $CODE_REPO@$BRANCH (gitea down, or repo/branch missing) — skipping"; exit 0; }
+[[ "$content_sha" =~ ^[0-9a-f]{40}$ ]] || { echo "poll failed for $CONTENT_REPO@$BRANCH (gitea down, or repo/branch missing) — skipping"; exit 0; }
 release="${code_sha:0:12}-${content_sha:0:12}"    # code+content pin the release
 # Skip only if this pair is both recorded AND still present in releases/
 # (a deleted release dir must trigger a rebuild, not an eternal skip).
 [[ "$release" == "$(cat "$BASE/state/last-built" 2>/dev/null)" \
    && -d "$BASE/releases/$release" ]] && exit 0
+# A release that already failed is not retried until either repo moves —
+# otherwise one bad commit (e.g. broken frontmatter) turns into a full
+# rebuild every 10 s on a shared VM. The failure is loud once, then quiet.
+if [[ "$release" == "$(cat "$BASE/state/last-failed" 2>/dev/null)" ]]; then
+  echo "skipping $release — build failed before; push a fix to retry"
+  exit 0
+fi
 
 echo "building code=$code_sha content=$content_sha"
 t0=$(date +%s)
@@ -106,7 +110,8 @@ podman run --rm --network="$BUILD_NETNS" --memory=1g \
     npm run build
     rm -rf "../releases/$RELEASE"
     cp -a dist "../releases/$RELEASE"
-  '
+  ' || { echo "$release" > "$BASE/state/last-failed"; echo "BUILD FAILED for $release (see above) — will not retry until a new commit"; exit 1; }
+rm -f "$BASE/state/last-failed"
 
 # --- 3. Atomic publish: symlink flip via rename(2) — no half-published moment.
 # mv -T is GNU (the target host is Rocky); when testing on macOS put a