Merged — per owner decision on RFC #10141: gateway token estimates (chars/4) become advisory-only for combo routing/context checks, never a hard pre-dispatch 400. Locally validated (31/31 focused tests across capability filtering, target resolution, and the #8841 repro), file-size/changelog gates clean, merges conflict-free against the current release tip. Thanks for the well-scoped fix and for flagging this as an RFC first!