nope, variables will not be set in the outer scope when being in a local ephemeral scope. Works just fine - I changed that. The alternative was to refactor the entire messy scope implementation into a more traditional stack/chain of scopes. However, since scopes are looked up by name/context, the current scope is more like a root, and the ephemeral scope is a traditional stack of scopes.

So, your concerns are addressed, and there are tests.
The rule regarding variables is that they can be created, they shadow outer, but they are not visible to other scopes.