The unchanged Zod 4.5.2 core gate reports a false diagnostic at core/schemas.ts:339:3. In the failure branch of a discriminated SafeParseResult, result.error is required and non-null. TypeScript therefore types result.error?.issues as the required issues array; Home re-adds undefined solely because optional-access syntax was written, making the returned failure object incompatible with StandardSchemaV1.FailureResult.
A strict standalone reduction with Success | Failure, a discriminated SafeResult, an unannotated toResult helper, and synchronous/promise validate branches is clean in TypeScript 6.0.3 and native TypeScript 7.0.2. Current ReleaseFast Home emits TS2322 because it infers issues as readonly Issue[] | undefined.
Acceptance:
- optional property and element access add undefined only when the receiver can still be nullish after flow narrowing;
- keep ordinary nullable-receiver optional chains and their short-circuit semantics unchanged;
- exact three-engine positive/negative oracle parity;
- remove only the schemas.ts:339 identity from the unchanged Zod core gate, with zero additions;
- full checker suite and optimized guarded build pass;
- no Zod/source-name/path/diagnostic special case.