awaitStatus could never report done. PendingIfNotFound returns (done, err) — its nil case means "the read succeeded, that IS the answer" — and the guard read that first value as "pending", so every successful read returned false and the status comparison below was dead code. Each wait polled until the 45s budget expired, spending the contract's 100/min bucket on the way. Replaced with the direct form: a not-found is "no decision yet", any other error is terminal, and a successful read is where the comparison starts. The comment records why PendingIfNotFound is the wrong helper here rather than leaving the next reader to rediscover it. Also gofmt on queue_test.go, which make fmt-check rejected. Verified: gofmt -l over tests/e2e/ and internal/core/posts/ is empty, go vet -tags e2e passes, and contract-manifest still resolves all three markers at their new line numbers. NOTE: make fmt-check still fails on tests/lexicon_fixtures_test.go, which is pre-existing (committed unformatted in 10349f6, task 4) and outside the scope authorized here. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>