Say what the stop-word list costs and refuse a busy smoke port

The function-word list is fixed on purpose, and a fixed list cannot tell
"the" from "May": both are on it, so a claim built only from words that
double as function words offers nothing to compare and is never citable.
Measured — The meeting is in May, I will do it tomorrow and It can do
that all yield no claim terms, while Will Smith signed the lease still
yields signed / smith / lease. That is fail-closed, but the docstring
claimed the opposite ("only counted if it carries content") and the
checklist never said it. Both now state it, and a test pins it.

The checklist also carried three wrong pins for that list (line, size,
one-line comment) and named "ai" as already excluded when it is not: a
mixed claim still demands ['档案','温器','八度','ai']. The mechanism line
said "the three longest words", which is true of Latin and false of
CJK, where the demanded pairs are spread across the claim.

The smoke script trusted any answer on its port. With a server left over
from another run it measured that one and reported a false failure; it
now refuses a busy port and checks that its own process is still alive
before calling the server ready.

Gates: 325 passed, 60 in the four acceptance files, ruff clean, mypy
cold cache 24 errors in 9 files (the recorded baseline, net zero),
pyright 0, filesize clean, product audit clean, zero multi-line comment
blocks across 141 tracked files, smoke passes and exits 1 on a collision.

backend/src/ely_eye/trust.py

@@ -45,8 +45,7 @@ CORROBORATION_TERMS = 3
 CORROBORATION_LIMIT = 3
 # A claim written in both scripts is corroborated in both: the CJK positions plus its most distinctive Latin word.
 LATIN_WITH_CJK = 1
-# A function word cannot be one of the places a witness has to match. The list is fixed and knows nothing
-# about the corpus, so it cannot decide belief by size the way a rare-term cutoff did.
+# A function word cannot be one of the places a witness has to match; the list is fixed and never looks at the corpus, so it cannot decide belief by size the way a rare-term cutoff did.
 STOPWORDS: frozenset[str] = frozenset(
     ["a", "an", "the", "and", "or", "but", "if", "then", "than", "of", "to", "in", "on", "for", "with", "without", "within", "at", "by", "from", "into", "over", "under", "above", "as", "that", "this", "these", "those", "it", "its", "he", "she", "they", "them", "we", "you", "i", "not", "no", "yes", "very", "just", "also", "too", "am", "is", "are", "was", "were", "be", "been", "being", "do", "does", "did", "have", "has", "had", "having", "will", "would", "shall", "should", "can", "could", "may", "might", "must", "there", "here", "where", "when", "who", "whom", "whose", "which", "what", "how", "why"]
 )
@@ -134,8 +133,12 @@ def claim_terms(text: str) -> list[str]:
     word drop the Chinese assertion out of the comparison.
 
     Each script is measured on its own terms. A claim with fewer than three usable pairs is not made
-    comparable by a borrowed Latin word, and a demanded word is only counted if it carries content —
-    "恒温器 the" repeated verbatim, or "Pineapple answer the", is too short to corroborate anything.
+    comparable by a borrowed Latin word, and the Latin words it does demand skip a fixed list of
+    function words — "恒温器 the" repeated verbatim, or "Pineapple answer the", is too short to
+    corroborate anything. That list is fixed, so it also drops a content word that happens to be a
+    function word: "May", "can", "do". A claim built only from such words ("It can do that") offers
+    nothing to compare and is never citable. That direction is fail-closed, and it is a cost paid for
+    not letting a planted "the" carry a claim.
 
     What that does not buy: the middle position of a long claim can land on filler, so a witness that
     keeps the three positions and changes a date or a number elsewhere is still read as agreement, and

backend/tests/test_trust_quarantine.py

@@ -239,6 +239,14 @@ def test_a_function_word_does_not_stand_in_for_the_claim_it_hangs_off(settings:
     assert is_citable(stranger, Database(settings)), "the Chinese positions are the assertion; the trailing 'the' is not part of it"
 
 
+def test_a_content_word_that_is_also_a_function_word_leaves_a_claim_uncitable(settings: Settings) -> None:
+    claim = "The meeting is in May"
+    stranger = remember(settings, claim, origin=MemoryOrigin.third_party, holder="vendor")
+    remember(settings, claim, holder="husband")
+    assert not claim_terms(claim), "the fixed list drops 'May' with the rest, and a claim of nothing but function words has no spine"
+    assert not is_citable(stranger, Database(settings)), "a word-for-word witness still cannot be compared: fail-closed, the price of refusing to let 'the' carry a claim"
+
+
 def test_one_foreign_latin_word_cannot_drop_the_chinese_assertion(settings: Settings) -> None:
     stranger = remember(settings, "档案室的恒温器保持十八度 cryptography", origin=MemoryOrigin.third_party, holder="vendor")
     remember(settings, "档案室的恒温器保持二十六度 cryptography", holder="husband")