Evidence publishes refresh the mutable root convenience copies (populace_us_2024.h5 at repo root) — decide whether the evidence tier should skip them

Surfaced by sol's merge adjudication of #674 (evidence tier, #506) as a post-merge caution, not a defect: publish_release writes the manifest-declared root artifacts (the H5/NPZ at their repo-root paths) in the main-branch commit for every non-tag-only publish. That is pre-existing behavior — a certified --no-latest non-default publish already overwrites the root copies today — so an --evidence publish with the default pointer update will likewise replace the root populace_us_2024.h5 with the evidence artifact.

Why it matters more at the evidence tier: a naive hf_hub_download("policyengine/populace-us", "populace_us_2024.h5") with no revision reads main's root copy and would receive an artifact whose gates failed, without seeing the tier marker that lives in the release manifest and the -evidence- tag. Every contract-aware path is unaffected: latest.json never moves, the registry/loader pin artifacts by revision (the release tag), and latest-evidence.json paths point under releases/<id>/.

Options for the owner:

1. Structural: at the evidence tier, upload root artifacts only in the immutable tag commit and omit them from the main-branch commit (evidence H5 reachable by tag + manifest revision only). ~10 lines in _publish_atomic plus a test asserting the evidence main commit carries no root artifact paths.
2. Operational: publish evidence with --tag-only-like semantics for roots but still move latest-evidence.json (needs a new flag combination; today --tag-only also suppresses the pointer).
3. Status quo: document that root copies are "whatever published last" (already the non-default semantics) and rely on consumers pinning revisions.

Recommend (1): it keeps the tier's "never mistakable for certified" guarantee structural for the one remaining unpinned read path. Worth deciding before the first evidence publish.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Start in _publish_atomic and trace how manifest-declared root H5/NPZ artifacts are written to the main-branch and immutable tag commits. Review the existing publish tests, then add coverage for the selected evidence-tier behavior, including whether the evidence main commit contains root artifact paths and how the relevant pointers are updated.