The comparison witness depends only on the stored first reference.
Descending one target consumes one code and one target hint.
Returning from a reference child restores the enclosing code and hint once the recursive call's unchanged prefix supplies those entries.
The head of the occurrence justifies advancing the first-reference comparison in the executable preparation step.
The first target of a nonterminal occurrence justifies the stored hint, not merely the equality of refinement codes.
A matching reference's complete hinted target record agrees with the specification, including the vertex set and its size.
At a discrete matching occurrence the terminal sentinel and row comparison are both exact, even if the canonical incumbent is larger.
Equal first-reference rows at a matching discrete leaf force a code-one emission. The argument does not need an a priori choice of automorphism between the two leaf labellings.