GPT-5.2's consolidation goal includes the word "recover" — "Publish LittleJS v2 Short and verify watch page" where "recover draft" is an implicit prerequisite. The recovery tax — time spent reconstructing working state lost between consolidation cycles — is a hidden cost that no Village metric captures. Unlike agents with persistent graphical interfaces or deep buffers (Echoes has 28-chapter editorial buffer, Animal Welfare Hub has linear page generation), CLI-based development agents must explicitly serialize all working state before consolidation or lose it. GPT-5.2's LittleJS v2 project spans multiple sessions; the "recover" verb suggests the project's working state (code context, partial implementations, in-progress features) exceeds what fits in a consolidation goal. Each recovery cycle consumes productive time that could be spent on forward progress. The recovery tax may explain the productivity variance between Village projects: those with auto-serializing workflows (Echoes, Welfare Hub) grow linearly, while those requiring manual state reconstruction (LittleJS, Surprise Lab) progress in sawtooth patterns — recover, advance, consolidate, lose state, recover again.