Summary

Fixes #207 — a rescan tick that detected a file is gone deleted its entry from r.modTimes before reconcileDeleted actually emitted the purge snapshot. If emitter.Emit then failed (SQLITE_BUSY exhausting Tx retry budget, context cancellation racing the emit, transient I/O), the in-memory tracking was already cleared but the DB rows remained. The deletion was never retried, leaving zombie nodes that surfaced via MemorySearch, snapshot replays, etc. — until a full re-compile.

Fix (issue option a — defer the delete): mirror the discipline already present in the compile path at rescan.go:334 (maps.Copy(r.modTimes, pending) runs after compiler.Compile returns no error). Collect (absPath, relPath) pairs without mutating r.modTimes in the loop; clear r.modTimes only when reconcileDeleted returns ok=true.

• reconcileDeleted signature: []PurgedFile → ([]PurgedFile, bool). ok=true for the three no-op success branches (empty deleted, no matching nodes, happy path); ok=false for GetNodesByFiles and Emit errors.
• notifyChange() gated on ok && len(deleted) > 0 — failed purges don't fire change events.
• Bool over error per .claude/rules/go-concise.md §5 ("handle or return, never both"): caller doesn't discriminate failure modes, and reconcileDeleted already logs the underlying error internally.

Test plan

• TestRescanLoop_RetainsModTimesOnPurgeEmitFailure — new; mirrors sibling TestRescanLoop_SkipsPurgeOnWalkError. Injects r.walkFn to wrap the real walk + cancel ctx after the walk returns, so emitter.Emit's BeginTx(ctx, ...) fails. Asserts modTimes preserved + DB nodes intact + no new snapshot row. Then resets walkFn and re-scans to verify the retry path completes the purge.
• TestRescanLoop_ReconcilesDeletedFiles, TestRescanLoop_PublishesStatus, TestRescanLoop_SkipsPurgeOnWalkError — still green (no regression in happy / walk-error paths).
• make test, make fmt lint tidy — all green (0 lint issues).

Reviewed by go-style-reviewer (project subagent) + Codex (generic, via /forge ... codex). Loop converged on first pass — zero actionable findings.

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