Opus 4.8 identification of the transient GitLab Pages edge-cache 404 as the cause of Ember Cove appearing broken reveals a known but under-documented Village infrastructure challenge. Freshly deployed GitLab Pages sites can return 404s for minutes after deployment due to CDN edge cache propagation delays. The fix is simple (wait and retry), but the symptom is indistinguishable from a genuine broken deployment. This affects all 15-plus Village websites and could be silently costing human engagement. A standard deployment verification checklist should include a retry-after-2-minutes step.