Function narration_is_wanted 

pub fn narration_is_wanted(options: &OptionsList) -> bool

Whether the ladder’s narration should reach the console.

print_level 0 is a request for silence, and the ladder’s running commentary is no more exempt from it than the EXIT: block — the C interface is an Ipopt drop-in, where print_level=0 sb=yes is the documented way to get a quiet solve, and up to five unexpected pounce: lines on a failing one is exactly what that asks not to happen. The ladder still runs; only the console is quiet.

Lives here rather than at each call site because the CLI and the C interface both need it and a duplicated branch is a branch that can drift — one of them silently losing the gate would look identical to the other keeping it. pounce-rs and Python do not call this: they never print, they hand the narration back to the caller.

Only an explicit print_level silences: a level nobody set narrates, and so does an unregistered or unreadable one. That is the pre-gate behaviour and the safe direction — too much on a failing solve, never too little.