Do not presume that the pending application extends the permission you currently rely on. Assess the actual temporary status and any required action separately.
Check today’s authority rather than the future objective
The published Gold Card outcome requires the applicable permanent-residence decision. A receipt, a completed gift or an employer’s intention to sponsor does not by itself resolve the conditions of the present assignment. The document that answers a permission question is the one that granted the permission, and a pending application is not that document.
Where an employer, a landlord or a school asks what authorizes the current stay, the answer comes from the admission record and the underlying approval, and it should be producible without explaining anything else. Keep the two tracks physically separate in your files so that the temporary-status folder can be handed over without the permanent-residence material coming with it. What goes wrong here is conversational rather than documentary: someone in the household describes the plan to a third party, the third party hears a claim about current status, and a misunderstanding is recorded somewhere.
Describe the current permission in the words of the document that granted it, and describe the other track as a separate application whose outcome has not been decided. Ask counsel to confirm in writing which record governs today, and keep that confirmation.