A rule condition using the "equal" operator can silently never match because the stored comparison value has a stray leading or trailing space. The space is invisible in the rule builder, so there is no way to spot it by inspection.

Real example: two conditions checked the same field against the same intended value. One stored and matched. The other stored (leading space) and never matched, so the record fell through to the catch-all path and got the wrong assignee, the wrong Slack/email notification, and the wrong sequence enrollment. Both values render identically in the UI — the only way to tell them apart is by diffing the raw values in the evaluation log.

Proposed solution: make the whitespace visible in the configuration screen. When a condition value has a leading or trailing space, highlight it in the rule builder (e.g. a visible space marker on the value plus a warning on the condition), so an admin can see and fix the typo before publishing.

Deliberately NOT trimming at evaluation time. Exact-match semantics should stay exact — some values legitimately contain padding, and silently rewriting what the admin typed makes rule behaviour differ from the stored config. The fix belongs in the configuration screen, where the mistake is made and can be seen.