Decide treatment for pipeline-stage and prep-category badge families

[NickCrew]

Context

The #69/#70 multi-perspective analysis + a call-site survey (2026-06-18) found that StatusBadge (#70) only covers the semantic-status slice of the badge sprawl. Of ~40 legacy badge classes, the status tones (success/warning/error/info/neutral) map to only ~3–6. The rest are distinct taxonomies that StatusBadge deliberately does not address:

• Pipeline-stage badges (9): pipeline-badge-{accepted,applied,closed,interviewing,offer,rejected,researching,screening,withdrawn} — an application-stage taxonomy with its own color coding, not generic status.
• Prep question-category badges (9): prep-live-scan-badge-{behavioral,intel,landmine,metrics,opener,overview,project,situational,technical} — category, likely --layer-*-colored.
• Research-tier badges (4): research-tier-badge + tier1/2/3 — category.
• ~10 misc count/budget/shortcut/round/citation pills — mostly map to StatusBadge tone="neutral"/"info" (handle in Migrate eyebrows → SectionLabel and status badges → StatusBadge #74).

Decision to make (time-boxed)

For the pipeline-stage and prep-category families, decide between:

1. A StageBadge primitive (enum of pipeline stages → color map) and/or a CategoryBadge keyed to --layer-*.
2. Leave forked with an explicit, documented exception (they're small, stable, workspace-local taxonomies).

Output

A recommendation (own primitive(s) vs stay-forked) + any follow-up extraction issues. No production code beyond the proposal.

Notes

• No *priority* badge classes exist; priority is N/A.
• No badge uses a CSS ::before dot — icon needs compose via children.
• Re-scopes the badge half of Migrate eyebrows → SectionLabel and status badges → StatusBadge #74: that migration covers the status slice + neutral count pills only, not all ~40 classes.