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32 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
timothy 5077408528 fix(706): abstain when a repair sentinel appears mid-run
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Round-3 cold review: `ex_repair` was recomputed by the last-moment re-read but
never consulted after it, so the POST wrote the `$state` frozen at
classification time. A stale overlapping run therefore posted its `success`
straight over a sentinel another run had just written — burying a human
rejection with no repair (the human row sits below the stale run's own
high-water mark) and no log entry.

This is the one path in the design that failed toward SUCCESS rather than
`pending`, so it was not covered by the recorded residual, and it is reachable
through exactly the run overlap this branch measured live (probe PR #722: the
older run finished 20s after the newer one started).

The guard is exact rather than conservative: a sentinel present at the FIRST
read forces `state=pending`, so `success` together with `ex_repair=yes` at
re-read time can only mean the sentinel arrived mid-run. Abstaining is then
strictly correct and, unlike the retarget fence, needs no successor run — the
sentinel row is already `pending` and already carries the re-post instruction.

Mutation-verified three ways: removing the guard reddens the new mid-run test
while its positive control stays green; making it unconditional on `ex_repair`
reddens the fixed-point test and the positive control, proving the condition is
precisely scoped and not merely present.

Also strengthens the mark-ordering test to pin the status-history FETCH as well
as its initialisation, closing the refactor evasion review flagged; sliding the
fetch past the re-read now reddens it.

Refs #706
2026-08-03 22:06:42 +02:00
timothy 63040296f4 fix(706): make the repair sentinel a fixed point, not a two-event delay
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Round-2 cold review found the round-1 sentinel self-clobbering: the branch
refused the exemption but fell through to the shared else, which posts the
GENERIC "Awaiting review verdict" description — erasing the very marker the
refusal depends on. The next run saw an ordinary machine `pending`, re-derived
it, and posted `success`, burying the human rejection two events after the
repair instead of one.

The single-hop test passed throughout, and the positive control asserting that
an ordinary machine `pending` DOES re-derive was itself the proof of the second
hop. Durability is a fixed point, and only a chain can assert a fixed point, so
the new test runs the job twice and feeds run N's own posted description in as
run N+1's existing status.

Keyed on `ex_repair` alone rather than on the exempt path: the fact recorded is
"a human verdict was lost on this sha", a property of the sha rather than of
this run's classification.

Verified by mutation — restoring the defect turns the chained test RED while the
single-hop test stays GREEN, which is exactly why the chain was needed.

Refs #706
2026-08-03 21:58:06 +02:00
timothy 8f6d4f4432 fix(706,707,711): fence the review-verdict write on the timeline retarget count
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Three related defects in the `review-verdict/h10` gate, all surfaced by the
cross-family review of PR #705.

#706 race 1 — a stale run could overwrite a fresher verdict, permanently. The
race was reproduced live rather than reasoned about (Gitea 1.25.4): with every
other workflow stripped, probe PR #722 showed run 7520 (`opened`) finishing 20s
AFTER run 7521 (`synchronize`) started. `pull_request_target` runs for one PR
genuinely overlap, older finishing last.

The issue proposed serializing with a non-cancelling concurrency group. That is
REFUTED by measurement: with the group active, runs 7528/7529 still overlapped
and 7528 ended 36s after 7529 began. A first probe appeared to show the group
working — a negative control with no `concurrency:` key at all showed the same
cancellations, revealing Gitea auto-cancels superseded `push` runs on its own
and the probe had measured that, not the group. The auto-cancel does not extend
to `pull_request_target`.

The fix leaves the runs unserialized and instead makes an overtaken run decline
to write: count `change_target_branch` events on the PR timeline at start and
again just before the POST, and post nothing if the count moved. The COUNT is
the key because the branch NAME is ABA-vulnerable (`main -> S -> main` reads
`main` at both ends — how #698 route 1 forged its exemption). Abstaining is a
handoff, not a stall: every retarget fires `edited`, so the event that makes a
run abstain has already queued its successor. `updated_at` was rejected as the
key precisely because it moves for comments/labels, which queue nothing.

#706 race 2 — a human BLOCKED landing in the unclosable window between the
pre-POST re-read and the POST was silently turned green. After an exemption
`success` the job now re-reads the per-POST history and repairs its own status
to `pending` if a human verdict appeared above a high-water mark taken just
before the write. The repair is `pending`, never a copy of the human's state.
The id comparison is load-bearing: a presence test would fire forever on a
base-mismatched verdict and deadlock that PR's exemption.

#707 — `pr-changed-files.sh` bound `.base.ref` and `.head.sha` across the
enumeration but never `.base.sha`, so an ordinary advance of `main` mid-paging
could drop a code path from an offset-paged diff and leave a complete-looking
docs-only list. Now bound from the JSON already fetched (no new round trips).

#711 — `.codex/` added to PROTECTED. It mirrors `.claude/hooks/` byte for byte,
including the merge-consent hook, so the "a PR that can weaken the gate cannot
exempt itself" rule had an incomplete path list. Latent today (untracked), live
the moment anyone tracks it.

Residuals are stated, not implied: a retarget inside the final round-trip, and
the repair being itself a read-then-write. Gitea's status API has no
compare-and-set, so neither reaches zero; both now fail toward `pending`.

Tests: 398 pass in scripts/tests. Each new guard was mutation-checked — the
fence's motion comparison, the untrusted-count gate, the repair POST and the id
high-water mark were each neutered in turn and the intended test went red while
its positive control stayed green.

fixes #706
fixes #707
fixes #711

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-08-03 21:41:16 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 57e33f9937 chore(698): drop a trailing blank line at EOF
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review-verdict/h10 Review-verdict: MERGEABLE @ 57e33f9 (base: main)
Nit from review round 6 (git diff --check). No behaviour change.

Refs: #698
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 21:02:41 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 fe00e0d71f fix(698): compare the recorded base exactly, never parse it out
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Review round 5 returned BLOCKED with one High, and it needed no forgery and no #697 —
just a branch name.

`main)evil` IS A VALID GIT BRANCH NAME (`git check-ref-format --branch 'main)evil'`
succeeds). A genuine human verdict earned while head H targeted it is written
`(base: main)evil)`. Truncating at the first `)` yields exactly `main`, which matches a
PR that has since been retargeted onto `main`, so the verdict is inherited over a
completely different diff.

I had asserted the opposite in a code comment one commit earlier — that a `)` in a
branch name "mismatches — safe direction". That was generalised from `feat/foo)bar`,
which does mismatch, and is false for EVERY branch whose name starts with the target
base. Two attempts at extracting this value have now been defeated (`##` last-marker by
an appended marker, `#` first-marker by this), so the lesson is the shape, not the
off-by-one: do not parse a value out of user- or attacker-influenced text when you can
compare against the exact expected literal instead.

The description must now END with the literal `(base: <this PR's base>)` AND contain
exactly ONE marker — the marker count kills the append trick without having to decide
which occurrence is authoritative. Pure shell (`${#}` arithmetic), no truncation to
abuse. Verified across all six shapes, including a PR that legitimately targets
`main)evil` (accepted) and `(base: )` (rejected). Absent markers remain accepted, since
verdicts predating #632 carry none.

Mutation-verified: restoring the truncating parse reddens only the new paren test, while
the appended-marker, matching-base and legacy tests stay green.

385 tests pass. Note for the record: pytest has never executed inside the review sandbox
in any of the five rounds, so the suite has only ever been run here.

Refs: #698
Decisions-Edit: yes
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 20:51:57 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 e7bae06385 fix(698): review round 5 — a human verdict formed against ANOTHER base is no longer inherited
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Round-4 cross-family review returned BLOCKED with a single Medium; the three round-3
items were confirmed actually fixed.

THE SHA-BINDING WAS ESCAPABLE THROUGH THE HUMAN PATH, not the exemption path. The
short-circuit identified a human verdict by creator + `Review-verdict:` prefix and then
exited before looking at the base. So: earn a GENUINE `success` on head H while it
targets a scratch base with a benign diff, then retarget H onto `main`, where its diff
carries unreviewed code. Creator real, prefix real, status inherited — a green required
check over code nobody reviewed. `post-review-verdict.sh` has recorded the reviewed base
in the description since #632; this gate simply never read it. The merge-consent hook
did compare it, but that is advisory and covers only its own path: a merge through the
Gitea UI or API sees nothing but the status.

The gate now rejects a verdict whose recorded base differs from the PR's. An ABSENT base
is deliberately NOT a mismatch — verdicts predating #632 carry none, and re-deriving over
one would un-approve a genuinely reviewed head. Only present-and-different is rejected,
which is exactly the escape.

Tests: the mismatch case, plus two positive controls (matching base still short-circuits;
a legacy no-base verdict still short-circuits) so the check cannot pass by blanket
rejection. Mutation-verified: removing the check reddens only the mismatch test.

Also from round 4: sharpened the docstring of test_the_classify_step_runs_without_SHELL_ERRORS.
It catches guards that die NOISILY; it is not a general liveness check, since a clean
mutation like hardcoding n_protected=0 emits nothing. The branch-discriminator test is the
actual liveness guard. Claiming otherwise would have made a cheap net look like a strong one.

And fixed a dangling decision key I had just introduced: the base-in-description convention
belongs to `release.verdict-status-check`, not the `ci.verdict-records-base` I invented —
the breadcrumb hazard our own retrieval rules warn about.

382 tests pass.

Refs: #698
Decisions-Edit: yes
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 21:44:44 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 d4c600149d fix(698): review round 4 — the PROTECTED guard was DEAD; define before use, fail closed, fix prescriptive docs
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Round-3 cross-family review returned BLOCKED with 3 Mediums. The first was serious
and self-inflicted.

THE PROTECTED GUARD WAS A NO-OP. Round 3's `count_matching` / `count_not_matching`
helpers were defined AFTER the classification chain that calls them, so
`count_matching` was `command not found` on every run, `$( )` yielded an empty string,
`[ "" -gt 0 ]` errored, and the `elif` was simply skipped — the protected-path check
never executed at all. Confirmed by direct execution before fixing.

Three "protected path" tests stayed GREEN throughout, because a protected path is also
not a manifest and not docs-only, so the job still reached `pending` down a different
route. Asserting the STATE could not distinguish a working guard from a dead one. The
mutation battery missed it too: I had mutated the predicates, not their reachability.

Fixed three ways:
  * helpers are defined immediately after `gh()`, before any use;
  * the three counts are evaluated ONCE at TOP LEVEL and validated numeric, because
    `exit 1` inside `$( )` leaves only the subshell and, with the substitution sitting
    in a conditional, `set -e` never fires either — so a grep error had been silently
    reading as "no match". A non-numeric result now aborts with nothing posted, and an
    absent required check blocks the merge;
  * the helpers return a non-numeric sentinel instead of trying to `exit`.

Verified: an invalid regex now exits 2 and posts NOTHING (previously it classified and
posted). Renaming the helper at its definition turns six tests red.

TESTS, aimed at the failure mode rather than the symptom:
  * assert the DISCRIMINATOR (the job's `Decision:` reason line), not the outcome —
    when several branches yield the same verdict, the verdict cannot tell you which ran.
    A first draft of this test asserted the status description and failed against a
    WORKING guard, because for `pending` the description is constant;
  * a cheap stderr sweep for `command not found` / `integer expression expected` /
    `unbound variable` across four representative PR shapes. Each of those makes an `if`
    condition merely false while the job exits 0 and posts a plausible status, so this
    catches a whole family of silently-skipped guards.

DOCS. The record and ci-cd.md still PRESCRIBED the here-string that round 3 removed —
following them would have reintroduced the temp-storage failure. Both now prescribe
counting, define-before-use, top-level evaluation and numeric validation. The workflow's
measurement paragraph still said the npm manifests "are included" three lines above the
note saying they are excluded; corrected.

379 tests pass.

Refs: #698
Decisions-Edit: yes
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 21:13:56 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 d8bd1dcba9 fix(698): review round 3 — count instead of matching, re-read before the POST, fix stale docs
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Round-2 cross-family review returned BLOCKED: 2 High + 3 Medium.

HIGH — here-strings traded one fail-open for another. `grep -q… <<< "$data"` fixes
the SIGPIPE inversion, but bash materialises a large here-string via temporary
storage, so it fails when temp space is full or unwritable — and since these sit
inside `if`/`!`, that failure flips the predicate exactly as SIGPIPE did. It did NOT
reproduce on my bash 3.2, DID on the reviewer's Linux bash 5.x, and CI is Linux; the
disagreement is itself the argument for a construct that cannot fail either way.

Path predicates now COUNT with `grep -c`, which drains stdin (no early exit, no
SIGPIPE) over an ordinary pipe (no temp file), and grep's status is read honestly:
exit 1 means "zero matches", a legitimate answer, while >1 is a real error that FAILS
THE JOB rather than silently reading as "no match". `set -e` does not catch these on
its own — they sit in command substitution inside a conditional. Verified correct
under 171KB input AND an unwritable TMPDIR. The description test became a `case`
prefix match, removing another pipeline from a security predicate. New record
`ci.grep-q-pipefail-inversion` covers the whole class.

HIGH — a human verdict landing mid-run was still overwritten, and the code claimed
otherwise. The job read statuses once, classified over several round-trips, then
posted: a reviewer posting BLOCKED in between had it replaced by an exemption
`success`, turning an explicit rejection into a merge. Added a re-read immediately
before the POST which refuses to write over a human verdict found then. The heading
no longer says "never overwrite" — it cannot promise that, since there is no
compare-and-set on Gitea's status API. Remainder tracked as #706.

MEDIUM — documentation was stale in three places, all mine. The record's frontmatter
`rule:` still listed the npm manifests (I fixed the body and forgot the frontmatter,
so the canonical rule AND the generated catalog were wrong); docs/ci-cd.md still said
`edited` was absent from `types:`, contradicting a section I had just updated; and the
workflow header still implied the `edited` re-run settles the ABA race. All corrected
to say detection, not atomicity.

TESTS. 373 pass. New: a mid-run human verdict via a status stub that returns nothing
on the first read and BLOCKED on the re-read, and large-input regression tests for the
ADVISORY hook, which had none — the copy with less authority is the one that quietly
keeps a bug (#649's whole point). Mutation-verified: reverting the hook predicate,
the workflow predicates, or the pre-POST re-read turns exactly the intended tests red
while every positive control stays green.

Refs: #698
Decisions-Edit: yes
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 20:53:36 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 bafb487eaa fix(698): review round 2 — close a PRE-EXISTING SIGPIPE inversion, narrow the bot allow-list, correct two overclaims
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Cross-family adversarial review returned BLOCKED with 3 Blockers + 2 Highs. Two
were verified independently before acting on them.

BLOCKER 1 (pre-existing on main, not introduced here). `producer | grep -q…`
inverts under `set -o pipefail`: grep exits at its first match, the producer takes
SIGPIPE and exits 141 once the list exceeds the pipe buffer, so a MATCH is reported
as a FAILED pipeline. Reproduced at 1901 paths / ~171KB, inside the enumerator's
2000-file cap:
  * `A.cs` + 1900 docs paths  -> docs_only=yes, status 141 (a C# PR exempted)
  * `.gitea/…` + 1900 docs    -> the PROTECTED guard MISSES entirely
The second reaches a green required status on a PR rewriting the gate, with no
retarget, no bot account and no forged status. This construct shipped with the
original docs-only check (review-verdict.yml:257 on main), so it was live. Fixed in
both the enforced gate and the advisory hook by using here-strings, which have no
writer to signal. New record `ci.grep-q-pipefail-inversion`.

BLOCKER 2 (mine). `web/package.json` / `web/package-lock.json` are removed from
BOT_MANIFESTS. renovate.json enables only nuget/github-actions/dockerfile, so npm is
unmanaged here and the entry bought nothing — while package.json `scripts` are
EXECUTED by CI (npm ci, npm run build). It widened an exemption onto a
code-execution path for no benefit.

BLOCKER 3 + HIGH (documentation was wrong, code unchanged). The claim that `edited`
made the retarget residual "non-durable" is retracted: runs are not serialized, so a
stale run can post `success` after the reclassifying run posts `pending`. The ABA
transition is narrowed and observable, NOT closed. Likewise the provenance check
asks "posted by a user credential", not "posted by a reviewer" — ETV_STATUS_AUTH is
basic auth, so a #697 forgery gets a non-null creator AND an attacker-chosen
description and is preserved as human. Both now stated at full strength.

TESTS. 4 large-input cases crossing the pipe buffer, each paired with a large-input
POSITIVE control so "large lists now fail closed" (a deadlock) cannot pass as a fix.
Verified by mutation: reverting the here-strings turns all three negatives red while
the control stays green. Two of my own weak tests fixed — the "base advances" case
called head_moves_to(SHA) with the already-current sha (a duplicate positive control,
now a structural assertion that the comparator is .base.ref and never .base.sha), and
the arity test counted five arguments without checking the fifth was the base.

The whole class was invisible because every previous test used a handful of short
paths: a guard whose behaviour depends on a buffer threshold needs a test that
crosses it.

Refs: #698
Decisions-Edit: yes
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 20:35:29 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 f523fc535d fix(698): bind the base, constrain the bot exemption by content, re-derive unattributable successes
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review-verdict/h10 Review-verdict: BLOCKED @ f523fc5 (base: main)
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The `review-verdict/h10` exemption path decided from mutable or unattributed PR
state, and a machine-written `success` was never revalidated. Three routes, one
root cause, so one change.

Route 1 (reproduced live as probe PR #703, closed unmerged): `/pulls/{n}/files`
diffs against the PR's LIVE base, so retargeting moves the answer without moving
the head sha. A PR opened into `main` and retargeted mid-run enumerated docs-only
and was granted `h10=success` while its diff against `main` carried a C# file;
retargeting back reclassified nothing. `scripts/pr-changed-files.sh` now takes the
expected base branch as a REQUIRED 5th argument (optional would be a silent
opt-out) and checks it before and after paging; the workflow passes it from the
`pull_request_target` payload, which a retarget cannot rewrite, and `edited` is in
`types:` so a retarget reclassifies.

A pinned two-sha diff would close route 1 outright but Gitea 1.25.4 cannot serve
one: `compare/{base}...{head}` returns no `files`, and a `--depth=1` fetch of the
two shas has no merge base. Measured, not assumed. The residual window is stated
in the code and the record rather than papered over.

Route 2: `pull_request.user.login` is the PR's immutable CREATOR while its head is
not, so pushing code onto an open Renovate branch kept the exemption. The bot
exemption now also requires EVERY path to be a dependency manifest — a set measured
across all 11 Renovate PRs this repo has had, not guessed.

Route 3: the never-overwrite short-circuit exited on ANY `success`, so a forgery
obtained once was inherited forever. It now fires only for a status positively
identified as a human verdict (non-null `.creator.login` AND a `Review-verdict:`
description — measured: user-posted statuses carry a creator, Actions-posted ones
carry null). Written in the positive direction so an unrecognised shape is
re-derived rather than trusted.

The two exemptions are composed, not chained: as an `elif` chain a Renovate
docs-only PR lost the docs-only exemption. Caught before commit and pinned by a
test.

Tests: 17 new cases in scripts/tests/test_pr_changed_files.py, each verified by
mutating the clause it covers (8 mutations, 8 kills). Both records trimmed under
the 60-line prose ceiling so the corpus tail-boundary check stays calibrated.

Does NOT close the class: anyone who can POST a status directly can still
impersonate a verdict — that is #697, deliberately left open.

Refs: #698
Decisions-Edit: yes
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 19:52:00 +02:00
timothy ceef16081d docs(672): make the self-test gap discoverable (signals + section pointer)
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review-verdict/h10 Review-verdict: MERGEABLE @ ceef160 (base: main)
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Re-review of the round-2 head returned MERGEABLE with one LOW: the record's
`signals:` field did not mention the self-test gap. That field is the semantic
discovery surface -- it is what the MemPalace mirror matches on -- so the most
operationally dangerous property of this change ("a gate edit goes live only on
merge, having never run") was unreachable by anyone searching for it. Someone
asking "how do I test a change to review-verdict.yml" would have found nothing.

Adds three signal phrases and points the record's one-line reference at a
section rather than at a ~1050-line file.

No behaviour change; frontmatter and prose only. Verified the frontmatter still
parses under PyYAML rather than the validator's hand parser, per #674 -- an
apostrophe in a single-quoted scalar is exactly what that hand parser cannot see.

Refs: #672
Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-28 23:17:14 +02:00
timothy 20b7171fba fix(672): review round 2 -- correct a stale rule: field, document the self-test gap
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Re-review of the fix commits returned MERGEABLE (nine trigger mutations all
caught, every prior finding verified against independent sources) with four
low-severity findings. All four are addressed here.

F1: `release.verdict-status-check`'s `rule:` frontmatter still said "A
`pull_request` workflow auto-passes the two exempt classes". Round 1 past-tensed
that record's BODY and left its `rule:` stale -- which is the exact failure mode
the previous commit cites as the reason to put limitations in `rule:` in the
first place. The catalog row mirrors this field verbatim and it mirrors again
per-`key:` into MemPalace, so a stale `rule:` propagates further than a stale
paragraph.

F2: same record, "is what makes the rollout self-hosting" -> past tense. It
described #630 and now reads as a live property.

F3, the one that matters operationally: base resolution cuts BOTH ways. A change
to `review-verdict.yml` is no longer exercised by its own PR -- the PR runs the
version already on `main` -- so an edit goes live only ON MERGE, repo-wide,
having never run. A broken edit merges green and then breaks the gate for every
subsequent PR, and the PR that would repair it is gated by the same broken
workflow. The recipe for verifying one safely (scratch base + throwaway PR +
probe-named context) now lives in docs/ci-cd.md, which is where an operator
looks, rather than in the record.

F4: the sibling-workflow guard globbed `*.yml`, so a workflow added as `.yaml`
would be silently unscanned. Latent today, which is when it is cheap.

The record lost its meta-justification paragraph to the 60-line prose ceiling.
Fifth trim this session; the operational recipe moving to ci-cd.md is better
placement anyway, but it was forced rather than chosen. ersatztv#688.

Refs: #672
Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-28 23:03:15 +02:00
timothy b2a5c72bfe docs(672): widen the residual to the real inventory (#697, #698)
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Cross-family review established the residual is materially larger than the
previous commit said, and that saying "docker-build.yml / ETV_STATUS_AUTH"
understates it.

Gitea injects `GITEA_TOKEN` into EVERY job automatically, defaulting to
read/write. So the set of workflows that can POST `review-verdict/h10` is not a
short list to audit -- it is all of them, plus `workflow_dispatch` (1.24+ loads
the definition from the selected branch) and `push`-triggered ones. A
collaborator's own write-scoped API token is a route with no workflow at all,
because branch protection binds the required CONTEXT, not its issuer. Recorded
in #697.

The same review found three defects in the exemption path itself, none of them
introduced here and none closed here: a retarget race that enumerates a
docs-only diff against a scratch base while the enumerator revalidates only
head.sha, a Renovate-PR hijack (the exemption reads the immutable PR creator,
not who pushed the head), and an inherited `success` that short-circuits before
any PR/base/author/file check. Filed together as #698, since they share one root
cause -- the gate trusts state it cannot attribute.

Also drops the claim that the three properties are "pinned by tests". The tests
pin the workflow's SHAPE; no in-repository test can establish status-authority
isolation, and the sibling-workflow guard added in the previous commit catches
only a workflow that names the context in plain text.

Trimmed to the 60-line prose ceiling for the third time in this session. That is
ersatztv#688 -- the ceiling is now deleting rationale two reviewers asked for.

Refs: #672
Refs: #697
Refs: #698
Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-28 22:41:48 +02:00
timothy 35a8ea8aef fix(672): review round 1 -- pin the trigger set exactly, sweep the stale claims
Cold review found the first cut of the test satisfiable by a still-vulnerable
config, and two prose claims that outran the evidence.

The test asserted "pull_request_target present, pull_request absent". Adding
`workflow_dispatch:` or `push:` ALONGSIDE it kept that green, and both are
ref-resolved with secrets, so either one restores an equivalent
self-supplied-definition path. Enumerating those two would have the same hole one
trigger later, so the assertion now pins the whole set: exactly
{pull_request_target}, nothing else. Verified by mutation -- adding
`workflow_dispatch` now reds.

Adds the guard that would have caught the residual below rather than only the
instance: no workflow OTHER than review-verdict.yml may reference
`review-verdict/h10` in executable lines. Scoped honestly in its docstring as a
drift guard, not a security boundary -- a workflow can still write the status
through an indirection a text scan cannot see.

`release.verdict-status-check` item 4 still asserted, in the present tense, that
a PR editing review-verdict.yml is judged by its own edited copy. That is now
false for this workflow, and it is the record a reader resolving the gate from
the catalog actually lands on. Past-tensed, with the surviving residual named.

The probe count said three. There were four; the omitted one is the only one with
a negative result, which is what turns an honest partial into an overclaim.
Corrected in both the record and ci-cd.md, along with what was NOT measured
(`reopened`/`ready_for_review` firing under the new trigger).

Also records two operational consequences a maintainer will otherwise hit cold:
retargeting a PR onto `main` leaves it statusless until its next push (`edited`
is not in `types:`), and the required contexts carry a literal `(pull_request)`
suffix, so repeating this fix on docker-build.yml would rename them and deadlock
merges unless branch protection is edited in the same operation.

Trimmed the record back under the 60-line prose ceiling -- for the second time
this session, which is ersatztv#688 reproducing, not a defect here.

Refs: #672
Refs: #697
Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-28 21:49:22 +02:00
timothy 8b73234d78 docs(672): record that the fix closes the route, not the class (#697)
Probing rather than reasoning turned up a second instance of the same
vulnerability class while this fix was in review. `docker-build.yml` also
triggers on `pull_request`, so it is head-resolved too, and it carries
`ETV_STATUS_AUTH` (`REGISTRY_USER:REGISTRY_PASSWORD`) for the #420 revalidation
read. Basic auth is not scoped: an account that can read commit statuses can
write them. Confirmed with a scratch PR that POSTed a probe-named context using
those credentials and succeeded — so a PR rewriting `docker-build.yml` can still
post `review-verdict/h10=success` for its own head.

That workflow cannot take the same fix. It builds and tests the PR's code, so it
must resolve from the head; `pull_request_target` there would be the real
footgun. It needs a read-only status identity instead. Filed as #697.

The `rule:` field carries the limitation, not just the body, because the
predecessor record's documented failure was exactly a reassuring sentence in the
position a catalog reader stops at.

Also trims the record to the 60-line prose ceiling. Adding it at 62 lines pushed
p90 past the ceiling and reddened the blocking `script-tests` job — which is
ersatztv#688 reproducing live, not a defect in this change.

Refs: #672
Refs: #697
Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-28 21:41:26 +02:00
timothy cf907f0988 fix(672): trigger the verdict gate on pull_request_target scoped to main
`review-verdict.yml` writes `review-verdict/h10`, the status branch protection
requires on `main`. It triggered on `pull_request`, and Gitea resolves a
`pull_request` workflow DEFINITION from the PR's own head commit — so a PR
editing this file ran its own rewritten copy and could post `h10=success` for
itself. `PROTECTED` did not help (the rewrite defines it too), and neither did
branch protection, which requires the context rather than an author and carries
`required_approvals: 0`.

The #649 base-ref checkout binds the SCRIPTS this job runs to the base. It
cannot bind the job definition. Only the trigger can.

Measured on this instance (Gitea 1.25.4) with three throwaway scratch PRs
rather than inferred from GitHub, since the premise is a claim about someone
else's software:

  A. A PR rewriting the workflow posted its own probe context and the real
     `review-verdict/h10` was never written — the base definition never ran.
  B. Under `pull_request_target` the identical rewrite was ignored: the BASE
     definition ran and posted `h10=pending`, on `opened` and `synchronize`
     alike, with `secrets` still available.
  C. With `branches: [main]`, a PR into a non-main base produced no run and no
     status at all.

The probes only ever posted probe-named contexts, never a forged `h10`.

`branches: [main]` is half the fix, not a refinement: base resolution means the
BASE branch supplies the definition, so without it the rewrite simply moves to
an attacker-pushed base — and a status forged there is inherited by any later
real PR with the same head sha (#663).

`pull_request_target` is safe here only because this job never checks out or
executes head-supplied code; the base-ref checkout is what makes the trigger
usable, so the two are one decision.

Rejected `required_approvals: 1` as the cheaper fix: Gitea forbids approving
your own PR and this is effectively a single-maintainer repo, so it would
deadlock every PR rather than gate the dangerous ones.

Three mutations confirm the new test discriminates rather than merely passing:
reverting to `pull_request`, dropping the `branches` filter, and re-adding
`pull_request` alongside the safe trigger each go red with a distinct message.
It parses the YAML instead of substring-matching because `pull_request` is a
prefix of `pull_request_target`.

Refs: #672
Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-28 21:28:38 +02:00
timothy c794a48462 docs(649): narrow the base-ref headline to what the checkout actually binds
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review-verdict/h10 Exempt: docs-only change (no code, no protected path)
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The record's bold sentence said the base-ref checkout means the workflow "cannot be
rewritten by that same PR to weaken its own judgment". That is true of the SCRIPTS the job
executes and false of the workflow itself: Gitea resolves a `pull_request` workflow
definition from the PR's own head, so a PR editing `review-verdict.yml` runs its rewritten
copy — which can delete the checkout outright, or just post `review-verdict/h10=success`
and stop. Branch protection requires the context, not an author, and carries
`required_approvals: 0` (#672).

The scoping already existed further down, under "What is deliberately NOT claimed". That
is not good enough for this particular sentence: it is bold, it is the paragraph a reader
resolving this record from the catalog lands on, and someone who stops there leaves with
the opposite of the truth. A caveat only works if it is reached.

So the headline now says what the checkout binds (the scripts, from the already-reviewed
base) and a following paragraph states the head-resolution hole directly, with the
superseded claim quoted so a reader who remembers it can see it was retracted rather than
wonder whether two records disagree. The later paragraph loses its duplicated opener and
points at it instead.

Docs only; no behaviour change. Same failure class the rest of #649 kept turning up — a
claim stronger than the code — reached this time through prose rather than a test.

Refs #649, #672

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-27 18:30:44 +02:00
timothy 3885fd6aea docs(649): narrow the enumeration's stated guarantees to what it actually proves
Two limitations the cold review surfaced are now written where the guarantees are
described, rather than living only in a review transcript. Both are pre-existing and
tracked separately (#663, #664); neither is fixed here.

- Head-sha binding detects ONE-WAY movement. An A->B->A force-push round trip restores
  the expected sha, so the binding holds while the pages came from two states. The record
  previously read as though the race were closed.
- A commit status is repo-GLOBAL, so a success earned on one PR is inherited by any other
  PR with the same head. Same property that makes the per-sha binding work, read from the
  other end.

Refs #649

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-26 23:29:44 +02:00
timothy 9114a7e8af fix(649): point the ENFORCED review-verdict gate at the shared PR-file enumeration
#658 landed the shared implementation, `scripts/pr-changed-files.sh`, and rewired the
ADVISORY hook onto it. The ENFORCED copy — the one that writes the branch-protection-
required `review-verdict/h10` status — was left byte-identical to main, so its
fail-closed behaviour on a malformed or empty response stayed INCIDENTAL: an empty `n`
erroring `[ "$n" -lt 50 ]` to false. That is #649's second Done-when box, and the whole
point of the issue was that the gate with real authority was weaker than the gate with
none.

`review-verdict.yml` now:

- checks out the PR's BASE ref (`base.sha`, `persist-credentials: false`), never the
  head, so a PR cannot supply the code that judges it;
- runs `scripts/jq-preflight.sh` in FLOOR-ONLY mode — `--expect` here would deadlock
  every merge on `main` the day the runner's jq changes;
- calls `scripts/pr-changed-files.sh` and reads its EXIT STATUS, never its stdout on a
  failure path. The env trap flagged in review is handled: the script reads
  GITEA_BASE_URL and takes owner/repo as two separate arguments, so passing BASE_URL and
  a combined `owner/repo` would have silently fallen back to the hardcoded LAN default.

The ~40 lines of inline enumeration are deleted, so the two copies can no longer drift.
A base ref predating #658 has no such script; that posts `pending` with the reason
rather than dying with no status at all.

The drift guard is re-tightened from "the hook uses the shared script" to "BOTH callers
do", and the workflow's own preconditions are pinned by parsing the YAML rather than
substring-matching it — `head.sha` for `base.sha` is a nine-character diff.

Verified by mutation, six mutants, each killed by its intended test: ignore the exit
status; check out the head; drop `persist-credentials`; add `--expect`; re-inline a
`pulls/N/files?` fetch; delete the PROTECTED clause.

That last one initially MISSED, and the miss was the useful finding. The test used a
docs-only-plus-protected file list and passed with the clause deleted, because
PROTECTED (`.claude/ .gitea/ .husky/ scripts/ docker/ci/`) and DOCS_ONLY (`docs/`, root
`*.md`) are disjoint — on the docs-only path that clause can never fire, and DOCS_ONLY
was doing all the work. PROTECTED is load-bearing only on the BOT path, so the test now
covers a Renovate PR editing the shared script, with a positive control proving the bot
exemption fires at all.

The caller contract is tested by EXECUTING the workflow's `run:` block against a stubbed
enumeration that fails while emitting a perfectly docs-only list — the one combination
the "every failure path also happens to print nothing" redundancy cannot absorb, and the
exact mutation that survived the whole suite last round.

Docs: both "Landing note" blocks removed, and the record's base-ref paragraph converted
from a future-tense requirement to present-tense fact with its staging rationale kept as
history.

Refs #649

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-26 23:05:14 +02:00
timothy b255b7ffdc test(648): close the mutation gaps round 5 found — two tests passed for the wrong reason
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review-verdict/h10 Review-verdict: MERGEABLE @ b255b7f
Round 5 could not break the predicate itself: 28,930 real runs of the script across
14,465 crafted --version strings on bash 3.2.57 and 5.3.15 produced zero fail-opens, and
`{1,9}` is honoured on bash 3.2, so round 4's bound is not void on the authoring Macs.

What it did find is that two of round 4's changes were unpinned, and the tests that
looked like they covered them did not.

Reverting BOTH the first-line slice and `[[:blank:]]`→`[[:space:]]` together left the whole
suite green. The four filler cases are all killed by the SEPARATOR restriction alone, so
they attributed the fix to the wrong layer. Added three cases carrying the literal word
`version` (`jq\nversion\n9.9` and friends), which satisfy the separator rule and can only be
stopped by confining the parse to line one with a newline-free blank class.

The CR-strip test was worse: vacuous through two independent mechanisms. `str.splitlines()`
also splits on `\r`, so a per-line view dropped the stray CR; and `subprocess.run(text=True)`
translates `\r` to `\n` outright, so even a raw-string check on stdout was unfalsifiable.
The mutant demonstrably emits `... = jq-1.6<CR> (parsed 1.6; ...)` at the byte level while
the test reported green. Added `run_bytes()` and a bytes comparison.

Both gaps are now mutation-verified: reverting either change reddens exactly its own test.

Also records the operational edge this parser acquires in the follow-up: it is strictly
fail-closed by design, so once the floor mode gates the required check, a jq wrapper that
prints a banner line would deadlock merges. The fix there is to widen the accepted forms,
never to relax fail-closed.

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-26 22:21:07 +02:00
timothy 4e094637c6 fix(648): the version parser was fail-OPEN on a jq that cannot start
Round 3, and it found that round 2's fix was a REGRESSION on the case that matters most.

`raw=$(jq --version 2>&1 || true)` did two wrong things at once: folded stderr into the
parse input and discarded the exit status. Combined with a pattern that matched the first
<digits>.<digits> ANYWHERE, a jq broken by a glibc mismatch — which exits 127 and writes
"version `GLIBC_2.34' not found" to stderr — parsed as version 2.34 and PASSED the floor.
The strip-based parse this replaced failed CLOSED there. So the fix for a fail-open bug
introduced a worse fail-open bug, in the one script whose entire purpose is to refuse to
certify a version it did not parse.

Same mechanism, second symptom: an unanchored match let a prefix outrank the real version.
`2026.07.26 jq-1.6` parsed as 2026.07; a leading warning line carrying any number won too.

Now: jq's exit status is captured explicitly (`$?` inside `if ! cmd` is the NEGATED status,
so that needed care too), stderr is kept out of the parse, and the pattern is anchored to
the leading `jq` token. Every legitimate form still parses — `jq-1.6`, `jq version 1.6`,
`jq-1.7.1`, `jq-1.6-dirty`, `jq-1.6 (Debian 1.6-2.1)`, `jq-1.10` (numeric compare, so the
two-digit minor is not read lexically).

The tests could not have caught any of this: the shim always exited 0 and never wrote to
stderr, so every case it could express was clean. It now takes stderr and an exit code, and
the four new cases turn red under the exact mutation.

Also: the drift guard now strips comment lines before matching. A future comment citing
`pulls/$pr/files?limit=100` as an example of what not to do would otherwise have reddened
script-tests — which, per this branch's own correction, blocks merges.

And the record no longer over-corrects: the combined-status read is guarded by
`if [ "$mwcs" != "true" ]`, so a red script-tests blocks the hook-mediated merge path, not
literally every merge.

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-26 22:21:07 +02:00
timothy 5e7623b8d5 fix(648,649): security-review round 2 — close the version-parse hole and the untested caller contract
Two real defects, and three docs claims that were simply wrong.

jq-preflight.sh parsed the version by stripping around the first `-` and `.`, which
assumed the format is exactly `jq-X.Y`. A build printing `jq version 1.6` left major
empty; the sanity check concatenated major+minor into "6", which is non-empty and
all-digits, so it PASSED. The floor comparison then ran `[ "" -lt 1 ]`, which errors —
and `set -e` exempts a failing command in an `if` condition, so the conditional read
false and the script exited 0 having asserted nothing, after printing a plausible
"parsed" line. The silently-untested-axis failure this script exists to eliminate,
reproduced inside the script itself. Now parsed by explicit regex, failing closed with a
diagnosis when there is no <digits>.<digits> match. Also: `--expect` with no value exited
1 with empty output on both streams.

The hook's exit-status check was pinned by nothing: mutating `if files=$(...)` into
`files=$(...) || true; files_complete=yes` left the ENTIRE suite green. It survived only
by redundancy — the script writes stdout once, right before exit 0, so failures also
happen to yield empty stdout and `[ -n "$files" ]` catches it. Safe by accident, which is
the exact criticism this branch levels at the old code. Four tests now pin it, with a
stub that FAILS while emitting a docs-only list (the one case redundancy cannot absorb)
plus a positive control proving the harness can see the difference. Verified: the
mutation now turns exactly those tests red.

Docs corrections. The record claimed the --expect pin was safe because script-tests is
"advisory, not a required check" — false. The merge-consent hook reads the COMBINED
status (ci.advisory-red-blocks-the-merge-gate, #598), so firing the tripwire blocks every
non-docs-only merge until someone re-pins. Kept anyway, for a stated reason, but no
longer described as free. The record also asserted in the present tense that
review-verdict.yml checks out the base ref; it has no checkout step at all, so that is
now a future-tense requirement on the follow-up. And the documented .status allow-list
named GitHub's `removed`, which the code rejects.

The drift-guard regex anchored on `?limit=`, so a re-inlined copy written
`files?page=1&limit=50` would have walked past it.

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-26 22:21:07 +02:00
timothy 2c10f057b8 fix(648,649): stage the enforced-gate wiring behind the scripts it calls
Splits the review-verdict.yml rewiring out of this PR. That workflow checks out the
PR's BASE ref — deliberately, so a PR cannot rewrite the gate that judges it — and the
base is main, which does not yet contain scripts/pr-changed-files.sh or
scripts/jq-preflight.sh. Wiring it here would make the job exit 127 on its own PR and
block the merge gate through the combined status, which reads red jobs as blocking.

So this PR lands the scripts, their tests, the hook rewiring and the script-tests jq
pin; the follow-up points review-verdict.yml at them once they exist on main.

The two tests that asserted on review-verdict.yml are scoped accordingly, each carrying
the reason. test_review_verdict_never_pins_a_jq_version is asserted NOW rather than in
the follow-up, so the no-pin constraint on the required check is already enforced when
the wiring lands.

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-26 22:21:07 +02:00
timothy 63fa81fbb5 docs(648,649): the jq contract + the shared PR-file enumeration record
Adds docs/ci-cd.md "The jq contract" (1.6 floor, the three divergent constructs,
and the deliberate pin-vs-floor asymmetry with its merge-deadlock reason), plus two
decision records: ci.jq-version-contract and ci.shared-pr-file-enumeration.
ci.script-tests-job stops restating the three jq rules and points at the new record.

Also corrects the script-tests preflight description: it is now two steps (git
presence, then jq VERSION via scripts/jq-preflight.sh --expect 1.6), not one.

A literal NUL byte had crept into the ci-cd.md paragraph describing jq 1.6's NUL
truncation — which git treats as a binary file. Replaced with the literal text.

Decisions-Edit: yes
2026-07-26 22:21:07 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 bb1809fbf0 fix(647): the jq-1.6 fail-open was ALSO in review-verdict.yml — the enforced gate
Round-4 review caught the miss that matters most: #643 fixed the `jq -e`-on-empty
fail-open in .claude/hooks/pretooluse-merge-consent.sh, but the SAME construct sits in
.gitea/workflows/review-verdict.yml — and that is the copy that runs on the CI runner,
where jq is 1.6, and that feeds the branch-protection-required review-verdict/h10
status.

Reproduced: `printf "" | jq -e '.statuses | type == "array"'` exits 4 on jq 1.8.2 (guard
fires, correct) and 0 on jq 1.6 (guard passes). So on a transient API error `statusjson`
is empty, the guard lets it through, `existing` reads "", and the job posts `pending` —
or for a bot/docs-only PR an exemption `success` — over a possibly-existing human
verdict. That is precisely what the comment three lines above it says must never happen.

The hook version was harmless in practice because it runs on a dev Mac with jq 1.8. This
one is live. Fixed identically, with a comment naming why the sibling fix missed it, and
the same hardening applied to the changed-files read in the same workflow.

Also from round 4:

- LOW, reproduced — an ARRAY-valued `.status` dodged the closed allow-list. `index` is
  polymorphic: with an array argument it does SUBSEQUENCE matching, so
  `[...,"renamed",...] | index(["renamed"])` is truthy while `.status == "renamed"` is
  false — the row passed the allow-list AND skipped the `previous_filename REQUIRED`
  clause. The same `git mv code -> docs/` dodge the closed set exists to block, one type
  away. Now requires `.status` to be a string first; mutation-verified.

- The record now carries all THREE jq rules rather than the one, and notes that the
  durable fix is pinning/preflighting the runner's jq version rather than patching
  constructs one at a time (tracked on #647).

200 tests pass under BOTH jq 1.8.2 and jq 1.6.

Refs #647, #643, #631

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-26 13:24:20 +02:00
timothyandClaude Opus 5 f4473926d4 fix(643): close the status-string dodge, pin the allow-list anchors, fix two doc claims
Round-3 review (MERGEABLE, all findings Low/Nit) — applied anyway, because each is the
over-claim or unpinned-anchor family this PR keeps hitting.

LOW — the `renamed => previous_filename REQUIRED` clause matched `.status` by exact
lowercase string, so any other value took the `else true` branch: a row with
`"Renamed"`, or with no status at all, validated fine and silently dropped its SOURCE
path, letting `git mv ErsatzTV/Program.cs -> docs/a.md` read as docs-only. `.status` is
now checked against a closed set and an unknown value fails closed.

Two things that fix taught me, both caught by my own positive control rather than by
review:
  1. The first predicate was WRONG in a way that gated everything: inside
     `[...] | index(.status)`, jq's `.` is the ARRAY, so `.status` was null and every
     row failed. `$s` is now bound from the row before the context switches. A
     security check that rejects everything looks identical to a working one from the
     failing side — only test_gitea_real_status_values_are_accepted caught it.
  2. The set includes BOTH `changed` and `modified`. Live Gitea 1.25.4 emits `changed`,
     but a closed allow-list built from the wrong vocabulary is worse than the hole it
     closes: it would gate every genuine docs-only PR. The property wanted is "reject
     what we don't recognise", not "enumerate one version exactly".

LOW — three allow-list anchors had no test at all: dropping `^` from the `docs/`
alternative (`ErsatzTV/docs/Program.cs` would exempt), dropping `$` from `.md`
(`x.md.cs` would exempt), and dropping the non-empty-list guard. Since the round-3 `..`
finding WAS an anchor subversion, they are now pinned; all three mutation-verified.

NIT — docs/ci-cd.md called this job "a checkout plus a pure-stdlib pytest run", which
the same file contradicts 450 lines later and which this PR's own record names as the
bug that turned the job red on its first CI run. Also replaced a frozen "111 tests" with
an explicitly indicative figure — the suite is ~190 after rebasing onto main, and a
frozen count has rotted four times this session.

198 passed under both jq 1.8.2 and jq 1.6.

Refs #643, #631

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-26 13:24:20 +02:00
timothy 54c875414c fix(643): validate every field the extraction consumes; fix a vacuous test
Re-review of the previous fix commit found it incomplete and its test vacuous. Both
reproduced before fixing.

MEDIUM — the validation domain did not match the CONSUMPTION domain. `chunk` emits
`(.previous_filename // empty)` for EVERY row regardless of status, but the guard
validated that field only when `.status == "renamed"`. So a row marked `modified` — or
Gitea's distinct `copied` — carrying a newline in previous_filename was still exempted.
Verified EXEMPT for both statuses against the previous commit. Now validated whenever
present, with the `renamed` => REQUIRED clause kept on top.

MEDIUM — test_newline_in_previous_filename_is_also_rejected asserted the right outcome
without exercising the mechanism: its payload's second segment was
`ErsatzTV/Program.cs`, which the allow-list rejects on its own, so the test passed with
the newline guard entirely removed. That is why the hole above went unnoticed — the
same filter-hides-the-defect trap the guard itself is about. Payload changed to a
segment that PASSES the allow-list, so the test now discriminates, plus parametrized
regressions for modified/copied/added.

LOW — `..` components rejected. The allow-list anchors `^docs/`, so
`docs/../ErsatzTV/Program.cs` matched it (reproduced). Git will not produce such a
path, but this guard exists to fail closed on unexpected 2xx shapes.

Added a positive control (a legitimate docs->docs rename still exempts) so the
tightened row schema cannot be satisfied by never exempting anything.

Severity calibrated in the record: the docs-only exemption ends in `decide allow ""`, a
passthrough to the normal permission prompt, NOT an auto-grant. Every bypass here
downgrades a mechanical deny/ask to a human prompt; none can silently self-merge. Real,
worth fixing, but not what an earlier framing of #643 implied.

All mutation-verified; 123 passed under BOTH jq 1.8.2 and jq 1.6.

Refs #643, #631
2026-07-26 13:24:20 +02:00
timothy c046add10a fix(643): close two more fail-opens in the docs-only enumeration, found by cold review
An independent cross-family review of the jq-1.6 fix found two further ways the
docs-only exemption can fire over an incomplete file list — both reachable with NO
transport error, so neither had anything to do with the original bug.

1. HIGH — a path containing a newline. `chunk` flattens paths into newline-delimited
   text before the allow-list grep, so a filename of "safe.md\ndocs/Program.cs" splits
   into two lines that BOTH match the allow-list, while the real single path ends in
   .cs. Git permits newlines in filenames and the reviewer reproduced the bypass
   against this hook. Now rejected outright at the row-schema guard, on both
   `filename` and `previous_filename`: no docs path contains a control character, so
   failing closed costs nothing.

2. HIGH — a short page read as the last page. `n < 50` assumed the server's page size
   is the 50 we requested, but Gitea caps `limit` at the server-wide
   MAX_RESPONSE_ITEMS (default 50, configurable) and may return fewer. A 30-row docs
   page followed by a page of code completed the enumeration over a PARTIAL list.
   Only a validated EMPTY page may now terminate it; the page<=40 cap still fails
   closed, and the cost is one extra request.

3. MEDIUM — the enumeration was not bound to one head. Paging is several round-trips,
   so a force-push between them assembles a list belonging to no single commit: page 1
   from head A plus a short docs tail from head B, with B's code page never read. The
   head sha is re-read after enumeration and the exemption refused if it moved.

All three mutation-verified: reverting each fix reddens exactly its own test and
nothing else. A positive control (short page then empty page) pins that the stricter
terminator still exempts a genuinely docs-only PR, so "never terminate early" cannot
be satisfied by never exempting anything. 118 passed under BOTH jq 1.8.2 and jq 1.6.

The record now states the generalisable lesson: every defect here was an
exhaustiveness failure in an enumeration whose completeness is load-bearing. When a
security decision depends on having seen ALL of something, the termination condition
must be positive and explicit, never inferred from a proxy.

Refs #643, #631
2026-07-26 13:24:20 +02:00
timothy 5f068a2488 fix(631): close a fail-open in the merge-consent gate that only CI could see
Running scripts/tests in CI for the first time turned up a real defect in the gate
itself, not just in the harness.

`jq -e` over EMPTY input exits 4 on jq >= 1.7 but 0 on jq 1.6 — verified against both
binaries, not inferred. The docs-only pagination guard in
pretooluse-merge-consent.sh leaned on that exit status to reject a transport failure.
On jq 1.6, which the CI runner ships:

  page 2 errors -> gq returns empty -> jq guard wrongly PASSES -> n is empty so
  [ "$n" -lt 50 ] errors into false -> the loop walks PAST the failed page -> page 3
  legitimately returns [] -> files_complete=yes over a PARTIAL list -> the docs-only
  exemption fires over unread pages that may be pure code.

That is the very defect the guard's own comment describes, reintroduced one layer down
by a jq version difference. Fixed by rejecting an empty body explicitly rather than
inferring it from jq's exit status. The same hardening is applied to the
review-verdict status read, which fell through to `vstate=""` -> deny (fail-CLOSED, so
never a hole) but would have surfaced the wrong message.

Why it survived: the existing transport-failure test asserts the right thing but can
only observe the bug where jq is 1.6, so it passes on a developer Mac with the bug
fully present — and the suite had never run anywhere else. The new test removes that
dependency by shimming ONLY jq 1.6's empty-input exit status, so it pins the property
on any host. Mutation-verified: revert the fix and it goes red on jq 1.8.2.

The shim is deliberately narrow (no `-n`): a broader first version swallowed the
`jq -n` calls `decide` uses to build its JSON, so the hook emitted nothing and every
decision read as a passthrough — the verifier manufacturing the exemption it was
meant to disprove. test_jq16_shim_actually_reproduces_the_quirk now pins the shim
itself, `-n` case included.

Suite: 113 passed under jq 1.8.2 AND under jq 1.6.

Refs #631
2026-07-26 13:24:20 +02:00
timothy 73577f484f ci(631): install pyyaml too — the suite is not pure-stdlib, and CI proved it
First CI run went red on `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'yaml'` at collection:
test_migration_equivalence.py imports scripts/migrate_decisions_split.py, which uses
PyYAML by design. It passed locally only because this machine already had PyYAML.

The original claim came from reading decisions_lib/decisions_validate/build_catalog
and the test files themselves — which is precisely the set that does NOT import yaml.
Replaced with an AST import scan over all of scripts/, which gives the complete
third-party set: pytest and yaml. (etv_client is imported only by
scripts/scripted-schedules/entrypoint.py, a container entrypoint pytest never
collects.)

This does not contradict the dependency-free decisions READ path:
decisions_lib._read_frontmatter is hand-written exactly so validation runs where
nothing is installed. The one-shot WRITE path is allowed PyYAML, and its test needs it.

Verified the way it should have been the first time: a clean venv with pytest alone
reproduces CI's collection error; adding pyyaml gives 111 passed. Comments, ci-cd.md
and the decision record all corrected to drop the "pure stdlib" claim.

Refs #631
2026-07-26 13:24:19 +02:00
timothy 69d8d3ccfe ci(631): run scripts/tests in CI as its own job, not inside the flake-covered decisions-guard
Nothing executed scripts/tests/. No workflow and no Husky hook invoked pytest:
decisions-guard runs decisions_validate.py and build_decisions_catalog.py directly
(the code, never its tests) and the `test` job is dotnet test only. The 111 tests
guarding the decision corpus, the #610 migration-equivalence harness, the
merge-consent exemption logic and the #622 review-verdict poster were enforced only
by whoever remembered to run pytest locally.

Adds a `script-tests` job to pr-checks.yml rather than the step inside decisions-guard
the issue proposed. decisions-guard is covered by ci.decisions-lifecycle-flake, a
standing instruction that a lone `decisions lifecycle` red is a known flake and must
not be investigated — so a genuine pytest regression there would surface as exactly
the red every session is told to wave through. A gate inherits the credibility of the
job it lives in.

Runs unconditionally: the suite executes the real post-review-verdict.sh and
pretooluse-merge-consent.sh, so a `scripts/**` path filter would miss a
.claude/hooks/** edit. ~10s, pure stdlib + pytest.

Negative control verified locally (broken test -> exit 1); CI-red measurement follows
on a scratch PR per the Done-when.

Refs #631
2026-07-26 13:24:19 +02:00
timothy fba5233caf feat(610): split the decision corpus into one YAML-frontmatter file per record
PR Gates / CI image pin matches docker/ci (pull_request) Successful in 11s
PR Gates / Docs update reminder (pull_request) Successful in 16s
PR Gates / decisions lifecycle (pull_request) Failing after 23s
Build ErsatzTV Image / Formatting (changed .cs conform to .editorconfig) (pull_request) Successful in 1m17s
Build ErsatzTV Image / API docs in sync (OpenAPI + endpoint index) (pull_request) Successful in 1m29s
Build ErsatzTV Image / Build & test (.NET) (pull_request) Successful in 8m5s
Build ErsatzTV Image / EF migration integrity (SQLite + MySql) (pull_request) Successful in 16m5s
Build ErsatzTV Image / Functional E2E (curl + UI contracts) (pull_request) Successful in 17m6s
Build ErsatzTV Image / Build & push image (amd64) (pull_request) Has been skipped
168 records -> docs/decisions/records/<area>/<topic>.md (163 active, 23 dirs) and
docs/decisions/archive/<area>/<topic>.md (5 archived). The filename IS the key,
so one-active-record-per-key becomes a filesystem property rather than a
validator check, and supersession becomes a `git mv`.

WHY: the monolith was a concurrency problem before an aesthetic one. A
3,900-line append target made parallel sessions collide -- PR #605 and PR #614
both hit append-vs-append conflicts during routine rebases, and hand-resolving
those inside the corpus is exactly the operation the rationale-rewrite guard
exists to police.

HOW IT IS VERIFIED: a ~170-file diff cannot be meaningfully read, so correctness
does not rest on reading it. The parser was taught BOTH formats first, so the
body-diff guard parses the old form at the merge-base and the new form at head --
the migration validates itself, no bypass. The proof is a field-level equivalence
harness: 168 records before and after, zero lost, zero gained, zero field
mismatches, zero rationale bodies differing. Reviewers should scrutinise the
harness; it is the actual evidence.

What measuring caught that reading would not have:

- ~500 lines sit OUTSIDE any record -- decisions.md's lifecycle schema and each
  topic file's preamble, mostly the only copy. Source files are kept and
  stripped, never deleted. They also cannot be filed per-area: topic files hold
  several areas and 4 of 23 areas span several files.
- Archive discovery was a non-recursive glob; after the split it found ZERO
  archived records, surfacing as four bogus "supersedes points to unknown key"
  errors rather than an obvious failure.
- ~32 live docs point into the corpus BY DATE, which the split dangles. Each
  stripped file now ends with a generated "Records formerly in this file" index,
  which also rescues the identical breadcrumbs in old issue comments.
- decisions.md's "In this file:" list was 97 same-file anchor bullets that the
  split makes WRONG, not merely stale. Dropped; the generated index replaces
  them with links that resolve.

The equivalence harness now runs against a checked-in FIXTURE, not the live
corpus. The earlier version migrated the real tree, which made it a one-shot:
the moment the migration landed there was nothing left to move and the tests
failed for reasons unrelated to the code. A fixture keeps them testing the
SCRIPT rather than the repo's current state.

Keys preserved verbatim, warts included: `sched` (12) and `scheduling` (1) remain
two directories for one concept. Renaming a key is not a move -- it changes
identity, breaks the equivalence proof, and invalidates MemPalace's per-key
drawers. Taxonomy normalisation is separate work.

refs #610
2026-07-25 19:45:09 +02:00