Distinguish pending CI evidence from changed release identity

When a GitHub Actions release gate rechecks an immutable successful CI run, treat temporarily unavailable evidence separately from a changed run, attempt, or commit. A filtered run-list query can disagree with exact-run reads; a single pending result should still block mutation, but should be recorded as unavailable and may justify bounded read-only retries. Retain exact SHA, workflow, event, run, attempt, required-job and branch-tip checks on every successful recheck. Do not turn missing evidence into permission to deploy. If inconsistency persists, stop release retries and investigate the reader rather than bypassing the gate.

Applies when: A release performs multiple provenance checks against GitHub Actions APIs before mutation. Keywords: GitHub Actions release revalidation pending evidence run visibility retry provenance