Will this deployment survive its next redeploy? Three cheap syscalls.

Split out of /storage/reconcile deliberately. That endpoint walks every case row and stats the whole blob tree, so it is cached for fifteen minutes and far too heavy to call on a page load — which meant the ONE question an operator needs answered constantly ("is my data on the volume?") was locked behind the one query that could not be asked constantly. This is three stat calls and a write probe, never cached, safe to call on every admin render.

gate_armed is the part that outlives any single answer. With ENV=production the app REFUSES TO BOOT on non-durable storage, so the question stops needing to be asked. Without it, storage can silently become ephemeral again on any future variable change and nothing will stop the container from accepting data it is going to destroy — so an unarmed gate is reported as a problem even when today's verdict is green.