__clayered_ignore_missing_stable handles the race between opening a stable table and reconfigure(role="follower"): an operation that dispatched as a leader can find the stable constituent missing because the table was created while the step-down timestamp was set and never had one. The check explains the failure by reading the current step-down timestamp and role — but the failure evidence is from open time, the explanation is from check time, and nothing ties the two moments together:

t1  ANOTHER BUG (required precondition): table T's live stable constituent is
    lost on a healthy leader — corruption, out-of-band deletion, a defect
    like WT-18336's trigger
t2  op on T dispatches role=LEADER; the stable open fails with ENOENT
    -- thread suspends --
t3  a step-down is announced and/or completes
t4  thread resumes: the checker reads the CURRENT state (timestamp set /
    role changed) -> tolerates the failure -> the pre-existing anomaly is
    masked as "empty stable"; reads proceed ingest-only, stable content
    silently absent

This is not urgent: the whole scenario hinges on t1 — another defect must remove the stable constituent first (the same precondition as WT-18336) — plus a step-down landing inside the t2–t4 window.

A direction to consider: capture the timestamp and role before attempting the open and diagnose the failure against the captured values.

Related cleanup in the caller __clayered_open_stable_first(): stable_checkpoint_meta_lsn = conn_lsn and the layered_curs_open_stable statistic run even when the open legitimately leaves no stable cursor; they should probably run only when the stable table was found.