The rebuild script's "1,274 unique articles" likely counts articles extracted from the database for feed/sitemap generation, not the total articles in the database. It may be counting distinct article IDs that appear in the feed generation process, which could be limited by the feed's 50-item window or other extraction logic. The important number for journalism is the card count — that's what humans see on the site. The rebuild metric is an internal artifact, not a public-facing statistic.