diff --git a/docs/benchmark/README.md b/docs/benchmark/README.md
index 9939dcd..b6b5196 100644
--- a/docs/benchmark/README.md
+++ b/docs/benchmark/README.md
@@ -7,6 +7,9 @@ the benchmark fixtures. Before trace removal, the full functional coverage run p
 across 34 files under the 2 GB Node heap limit, excluding the separate benchmark.
 That run does not establish a passing performance protocol.
 
+The post-removal functional integration checks, browser QA and unchanged-input
+handoff for #78 are recorded in [the #77 verification report](../trace-free-planning-verification.md).
+
 On 2026-10-15, the #76 worktree based on `ea42561` passed 630 functional tests
 across 33 files with coverage under the 2 GB Node heap limit. Complete outcome
 comparisons against that baseline matched for all seven benchmark scenarios.
diff --git a/docs/trace-free-planning-verification.md b/docs/trace-free-planning-verification.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4e5a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/trace-free-planning-verification.md
@@ -0,0 +1,151 @@
+# Integrated planning verification after trace removal
+
+Functional verification for [#77](https://gitea.nessar.fr/nessar/vac-optimizer/issues/77),
+run on 2026-10-15 against `2f4af14869c47836d2c1008157136f75c9d3e98b`
+(`develop`, including the merged #76 implementation). The original checkout was
+clean at `d9d9befa1256cd2200aa4778d28b2bc23ba141e6`; both commits have the same
+tree. This verification adds two real-worker lifecycle tests and this report.
+It does not change production behavior, saved data, placement expectations,
+benchmark inputs, CI settings or performance limits.
+
+## Contract audit
+
+| Path | Verified retained contract |
+| --- | --- |
+| Synchronous and cooperative core | Outcomes, valid checkpoints, final-state snapshots, stable explanations and explicit cancellation; no recorder, candidate history or historical replay API. |
+| Server calculation context | Immutable submitted configuration, independently delivered outcome and explanation, and displayed-placement date analysis. |
+| Browser without Worker | Validation and explicit `worker-unavailable` handling; no synchronous planning or trace compatibility result. |
+| Native worker and coordinator | Heartbeat, progress, checkpoint, result, explanation and final artifacts. The coordinator terminates the worker after required delivery with no acknowledgement message or queue. |
+| Calendar and remaining balances | Final and valid partial calendars, placement provenance, objective comparisons, earned sources, validity dates and concrete non-placement reasons. |
+| Alternative dates | Captured horizon, entitlement, type and rule provenance; unrelated placements stay fixed. Hypothetical comparisons never update the displayed plan. |
+| Benchmark callers | Supported calculation outcome, explanation and timings; no trace promises, waits, counts or replacement trace metrics. |
+
+Production-source searches found no decision-trace, historical analysis,
+acknowledgement or replay implementation. Angular hydration's `withEventReplay`
+is unrelated to planning history. `PlanningArtifacts` carries actual explanation,
+final-state and planning-work timing data, rather than a compatibility shell.
+
+## Existing deterministic fixtures
+
+The full functional suite passes without changing any existing expected placement,
+balance, metric, objective, chronology or completed-stage assertion.
+
+| Requirement | Existing regression coverage |
+| --- | --- |
+| Typed joint obligations and shared provenance | `leave-planner.service.spec.ts`, `leave-planner-explanation.spec.ts` and real-worker tests. |
+| Earned-entitlement chains and availability | Integration, explanation, supporting-placement and real-worker tests, including declarations and cancellation. |
+| Custom formulas and reordered priorities | Optimization, calendar-objective, work-sequence and supporting-placement tests, including real-worker comparisons. |
+| Two- and three-year horizons | Service, calendar and worker tests retain the submitted dates and deterministic completed plans. |
+| No active optimization rules | Optimization and migration tests retain declarations and remaining balances without adding placements. |
+| Stable explanations and remaining reasons | Entitlements, every contributing rule, ordered objective values, first decisive objective, periods and dated non-placement reasons. |
+| Cancellation and failures | Before and after a jointly valid incumbent, stale calculations and date analyses, worker liveness, technical budgets, and local explanation errors. |
+| Saved settings | Existing migration and persistence tests preserve user rule choices, balances, declarations and explicitly selected horizons. |
+
+An additional direct comparison uses the pre-removal core from `ea42561`, with
+only its relative imports redirected to the unchanged calendar/date/objective
+modules. Both versions receive the same cloned requests and calculation date
+`2024-01-01`. Full outcomes and stable explanations are compared with deep
+equality; no placement expectations or retained explanation fields are filtered.
+
+All ten completed comparisons match for both the full outcome and stable
+explanation:
+
+| Fixture | Outcome | Placements | Last completed stage |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| Representative year | `Plan` | 30 | `dates` |
+| Typed joint obligations | `Plan` | 10 | `dates` |
+| Chained earned entitlements | `Plan` | 3 | `dates` |
+| Deliberate conflict | `PlanningConflict` | 0 | — |
+| Two years | `Plan` | 60 | `dates` |
+| Three years | `Plan` | 90 | `dates` |
+| Holiday value before non-working-day gain | `Plan` | 3 | `dates` |
+| Non-working-day gain before holiday value | `Plan` | 3 | `dates` |
+| Custom maximum holiday-week aggregation | `Plan` | 3 | `dates` |
+| No active optimization, with a declared day | `Plan` | 0 | `dates` |
+
+The reordered priorities retain their different placement dates: 6, 7 and 10 May
+for holiday value first; 29 April, 10 May and 17 May for gain first. The zero-rule
+case retains its declaration. These are correctness comparisons, not timed
+benchmark repetitions. An exploratory pre-removal loaded-year replay was stopped
+and is not used as passing evidence; its full protocol remains with #78.
+
+## Correctness and static checks
+
+Environment: Node `24.18.0`, Bun `1.3.14`, Linux under WSL2.
+
+```sh
+NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=2048 bunx vitest run --coverage --maxWorkers=1 --exclude='src/app/benchmark/**'
+bunx tsc -p tsconfig.app.json --noEmit
+bunx tsc -p tsconfig.spec.json --noEmit
+bun run lint
+bun run format:check
+bunx prettier --check 'scripts/ci-*.mjs' '.gitea/workflows/*.yml'
+node scripts/ci-policy.test.mjs
+node scripts/ci-image.test.mjs
+bun run build
+git diff --check
+```
+
+All checks pass. Functional coverage: **632 tests across 33 files**, 93.56%
+statements, 85.90% branches, 95.69% functions and 95.41% lines. The full coverage
+run took 95.67 seconds with the existing 2 GB Node heap setting. The focused
+real-worker file passes all 15 tests, including the two added lifecycle checks.
+Coverage configuration and thresholds are unchanged.
+
+The production build retains its existing warning budgets: initial bundle
+2.57 MB against the 2.50 MB warning and calendar-year styles 12.98 kB against
+the 8 kB warning. Both remain below their unchanged error limits.
+
+## Browser QA
+
+The production build was served locally with
+`NG_ALLOWED_HOSTS=localhost,127.0.0.1 PORT=4177` and exercised in headless
+Chromium `149.0.7827.55`, using native module Workers, reduced motion and
+375×915, 768×915 and 1440-pixel-wide viewports. The calculation date was fixed
+to `2024-01-01`. This is desktop functional evidence, not a phone performance run.
+
+| Flow | Result |
+| --- | --- |
+| Completed calendar and explanation | Three CP placements on 6, 7 and 10 May 2024, six gained non-working dates; keyboard disclosure, placement navigation and calendar selection work. |
+| Remaining balances | Future RTT availability and unavoidable expiry show their actual dates, reasons and planning horizon without attempt/history controls. Earned-source rendering is also covered by component tests. |
+| Date comparison | An alternative on 13 May is hypothetical; placements and selected calendar dates remain unchanged. Escape closes the dialog and restores focus to Compare dates. |
+| Immutable settings | Persisting a current CP balance edit from 3 to 99 leaves the displayed three placements unchanged. Select another placement and verify that a new comparison request is sent after the edit; that request still contains the captured quantity 3 and original horizon. |
+| Cancellation before a valid plan | At 375 px, hold the native worker script download, activate Cancel with Enter, then release startup. Result is `PlanningIncomplete` / `user-cancelled`, without an incumbent or a false conflict. This controlled startup is not latency evidence. |
+| Cancellation after a valid plan | At 375 px, use the unchanged loaded-year request and cancel with Enter after a real checkpoint. All three typed obligation windows remain satisfied, placements plus remaining balances total 72, and the partial explanation is available. Inputs remain editable during planning; Cancel is at least 44 px high. |
+| Delayed and stale delivery | At 375 px, hold explanation and artifact messages after a real outcome. The three-placement calendar is usable immediately. Recalculate, then release the old messages; the current result and explanation remain intact. |
+| Explanation failure | At 375 px, inject explanation transport and checkpoint-explanation recovery failures. An inline error appears while the completed calendar and all three placements remain available. |
+| Responsive and keyboard interaction | No page-level horizontal overflow at 375, 768 or 1440 px. Comparison dialogs fit, retain keyboard focus and restore it on dismissal. No unexpected browser page errors. |
+| Removed UI | No advanced trace explorer, historical overlays, replay controls, candidate-status UI or remaining-balance attempt controls. |
+
+Controlled-clock transport tests additionally verify that heartbeats renew the
+30-second inactivity watchdog across repeated windows and that monitoring ends
+at outcome delivery. Native-worker tests verify actual heartbeat delivery,
+incumbent validity and retained explanations. No automatic engine cutoff is added.
+
+## Handoff to #78
+
+The #70 → #71 → #72 → #73 → #74 → #75 dependency order is preserved. The tracker
+already reports those six tickets and #76 closed. This work verifies their
+functional integration and does not close or modify any other ticket.
+
+The benchmark source and its original correctness assertions remain unchanged
+from the integrated baseline:
+
+| File | SHA-256 |
+| --- | --- |
+| `src/app/benchmark/leave-planner-benchmark.ts` | `16e057fa042c898d203f71e018f183c9fbecb5cd0edbf0ce0f3f25277cb00d3a` |
+| `src/app/benchmark/leave-planner-benchmark.spec.ts` | `c7b4c37b6c169b42c4d18dfc3e650b25a2ba47415c97268dafefafbfb0ee3023` |
+
+All seven scenarios, typed and earned-chain fixtures, two-/three-year horizons,
+60-/90-placement expectations, determinism comparisons and final `dates` stage
+assertions remain in place. Warm-ups and measured repetitions remain unchanged.
+The full 2 GB / 300-second benchmark protocol and any required optimization stay
+open in [#78](https://gitea.nessar.fr/nessar/vac-optimizer/issues/78); they are not
+a completion gate for #75 or #77. This run makes no performance acceptance or
+trace-removal speedup claim. The separate advisory benchmark status must be
+resolved by #78 under the existing limits.
+
+Local run logs, the original spec and checkout record, comparison scripts and
+browser screenshots are in `/tmp/vac-issue-77`. The source fixtures and commands
+above identify the reproducible correctness checks; temporary QA controls are
+not part of the application.
diff --git a/src/app/services/leave-planner.worker.spec.ts b/src/app/services/leave-planner.worker.spec.ts
index 71fa2fc..f07c219 100644
--- a/src/app/services/leave-planner.worker.spec.ts
+++ b/src/app/services/leave-planner.worker.spec.ts
@@ -33,6 +33,9 @@ describe('real planning worker cancellation', () => {
 	let simulateLongCalculation = false;
 	let simulatedElapsed = 0;
 	const threads = new Set<NodeWorker>();
+	const sentTypes: string[] = [];
+	const receivedTypes: string[] = [];
+	let terminationCount = 0;
 
 	beforeAll(async () => {
 		directory = mkdtempSync(join(tmpdir(), 'vac-optimizer-worker-'));
@@ -65,6 +68,9 @@ parentPort.on('message', (data) => globalThis.self.onmessage({ data }));
 		heartbeats = 0;
 		simulateLongCalculation = false;
 		simulatedElapsed = 0;
+		sentTypes.length = 0;
+		receivedTypes.length = 0;
+		terminationCount = 0;
 		class RealWorker {
 			onmessage: ((event: MessageEvent) => void) | null = null;
 			onerror: (() => void) | null = null;
@@ -76,6 +82,7 @@ parentPort.on('message', (data) => globalThis.self.onmessage({ data }));
 						simulatedElapsed = data.elapsed;
 						return;
 					}
+					receivedTypes.push(data.type);
 					if (holdArtifacts && ['explanation', 'artifacts'].includes(data.type)) {
 						heldArtifactMessages.push(() => this.onmessage?.({ data } as MessageEvent));
 						return;
@@ -86,10 +93,12 @@ parentPort.on('message', (data) => globalThis.self.onmessage({ data }));
 				});
 				this.thread.on('error', () => this.onerror?.());
 			}
-			postMessage(message: unknown) {
+			postMessage(message: { type: string }) {
+				sentTypes.push(message.type);
 				this.thread.postMessage(message);
 			}
 			terminate() {
+				terminationCount++;
 				void this.thread.terminate();
 			}
 		}
@@ -104,6 +113,59 @@ parentPort.on('message', (data) => globalThis.self.onmessage({ data }));
 	});
 	afterAll(() => rmSync(directory, { recursive: true, force: true }));
 
+	it('delivers the outcome and explanation and releases the worker without acknowledgements', async () => {
+		const calculation = createPlanningCalculation({
+			horizon: { start: '2024-01-02', end: '2024-01-04' },
+			balances: [{ id: 'cp', type: 'cp', quantity: 1, expiryDate: '2024-01-03' }],
+			rules: [presets[0]],
+		});
+		const outcome = await calculation.outcome;
+		expect(outcome).toMatchObject({
+			kind: 'Plan',
+			placements: [{ date: '2024-01-02', balanceId: 'cp', type: 'cp' }],
+			lastCompletedStage: 'dates',
+		});
+		expect(await calculation.explanation).toMatchObject({
+			kind: 'PlanExplanation',
+			placements: [{ placement: { date: '2024-01-02', balanceId: 'cp' } }],
+		});
+		expect(await calculation.explanationError).toBeUndefined();
+		expect(await calculation.timings).toEqual({ planningWorkMs: expect.any(Number) });
+		expect(sentTypes).toEqual(['plan']);
+		expect(receivedTypes.slice(-3)).toEqual(['result', 'explanation', 'artifacts']);
+		expect(new Set(receivedTypes)).toEqual(
+			new Set(['heartbeat', 'progress', 'checkpoint', 'result', 'explanation', 'artifacts']),
+		);
+		expect(terminationCount).toBe(1);
+	});
+
+	it('ignores a replaced real worker’s late explanation without losing either outcome', async () => {
+		const request = {
+			horizon: { start: '2024-01-02', end: '2024-01-04' },
+			balances: [{ id: 'cp', type: 'cp', quantity: 1, expiryDate: '2024-01-03' }],
+			rules: [presets[0]],
+		};
+		holdArtifacts = true;
+		const first = createPlanningCalculation(request);
+		const original = await first.outcome;
+		expect(original.kind).toBe('Plan');
+		await vi.waitFor(() => expect(heldArtifactMessages).toHaveLength(2));
+		holdArtifacts = false;
+		const latest = createPlanningCalculation({ ...request, rules: [] });
+		const outcome = await latest.outcome;
+		expect(outcome).toMatchObject({ kind: 'Plan', placements: [] });
+		const explanation = await latest.explanation;
+		expect(explanation).toMatchObject({ kind: 'PlanExplanation', placements: [] });
+		await latest.timings;
+		for (const deliver of heldArtifactMessages) deliver();
+		expect(await first.outcome).toEqual(original);
+		expect(await first.explanation).toBeUndefined();
+		expect(await latest.outcome).toEqual(outcome);
+		expect(await latest.explanation).toEqual(explanation);
+		expect(await latest.explanationError).toBeUndefined();
+		expect(terminationCount).toBe(2);
+	});
+
 	it('preserves a complete optimization configuration and active order in the real worker snapshot', async () => {
 		const configuration: OptimizationConfiguration = structuredClone(
 			OPTIMIZATION_PRESETS.unplacedAtRisk,