Symptom
Progress file says success (ok:225), but recent items are all exactly 225 characters long.
Cause
Stage 3 of the fallback was "reuse existing data." Stage 1 was always failing (the source had no such field at all), so stage 3 re-read the husk it had made earlier and made another husk.
Fix
Block any fallback that uses its own output as source. If the source is missing, leaving it as failed is the honest answer.
★ A recorded length means nothing if the content is a self-copy; that is not output.
★ Identical output across many items is itself the signal.