A writer that truncates before it writes leaves an empty file between its two events, and empty YAML loads as a valid zero-value configuration, so the watcher could momentarily replace the live config with an empty one. Loading 100ms after the last event reads the final content instead of the window in between. The new test holds the empty window open long enough to be deterministic, which is the race CI caught once under load. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>