With --no-checkout the file download moved out of the retried clone into the single unretried pin checkout, which ran after the empty clone was already published: a throttled pin left INSTALL_DIR with no index, and the next rerun stashed a 'delete every file' autostash. The pin now runs in the staged tree inside the deferred-checkout retry loop (which also stops materializing the tip first), and nothing is published until it succeeds.