The first-connection SkyLight investigation remains open.
Pass 15 provided one-run causal-intervention support that SkyAtmosphere admission state changes the captured cubemap content. One control became worse under the intervention, which is useful precisely because it resists a simplistic “toggle made image better” story.
This narrows the causal graph. It does not yet identify why the first and subsequent connections diverge, and it is not a production correction. The right result to preserve is therefore an unresolved finding with evidence, not a closed bug or a celebratory article.