The demote pass (pass 2) and the retire pass (3.5, #92783) each carried
their own copy of the two image-strip branches. The copies had already
diverged: the retire pass dropped the stale api_content sidecar on
rewrite, the demote pass did not — leaving an exact-wire sidecar that
replay could use to resend the pre-strip image bytes.
Extract _strip_images_from_tool_msg as the single policy owner; both
passes now use it, closing the sidecar gap in the demote path.
Images locked in protect_last_n never shrank, so compression savings
stayed under 10% and anti-thrash disabled further compaction. Keep the
newest three tool-result screenshots live for follow-up QA and replace
older native embeds with placeholders.
kshitijk4poor