enhance(#3872): what a command reports it wrote — the transaction diff (#3878)

* test(#3872): failing-first regressions for what a command reports it wrote

Pins ADR-3473 §8.7 at the consumer's output. state planned-phase advances
current_phase on disk and never reports it, and reports progress.total_plans
which reconcileReportedFields silently drops because it cannot resolve a
dotted key against nested frontmatter. Both directions of #3818's own
before/after diff, reproduced against the real CLI.

Also pins the two properties the change must not break: a fully-failed patch
still reports an empty updated array, which is what state.cts:607's success
boolean depends on; and two content-identical writes differ in last_updated
alone. That second one measured state_head NOT to be ambient — it is
recomputed every write but only changes when git HEAD moved — so the
provenance exclusion is a one-element set, with a companion test pinning that
state_head does change when HEAD moves.

Refs #3872

* feat(#3872): derive what a command reports from the transaction diff

ADR-3473 §8.7. reconcileReportedFields compared the transform's own output
against persisted bytes and then filtered what preservation had restored by
its FIELD_CLASSIFICATION policy. Both are replaced by one comparison of
persisted against the pre-write state the transaction already holds, surfaced
to the command through the same caller-allocates out-param idiom divergedFields
established.

Both of the old directions fall out of that single comparison: a field the
transform reported but the pipeline discarded is persisted-equals-snapshot and
drops out, and a field nobody reported but the write moved is different and
appears. The classification filter is deleted, not relocated — no policy test
remains anywhere in the reporting path.

Reporting is at dotted-leaf granularity, enumerated from the progress.* rows
FIELD_CLASSIFICATION already declares rather than by walking user data to
arbitrary depth. That closes a live defect: plannedPhaseCore already pushed
progress.total_plans and reconcileReportedFields silently dropped it, because
a flat hasOwnProperty cannot resolve a dotted key against nested frontmatter.
Current Position was lost the same way and is fixed in the same place.

The exclusion is one field, last_updated, and it is by provenance rather than
by classification: it is the only field measured to change on every write
regardless of content. state_head was measured NOT to qualify — it is
recomputed every write but only changes when git HEAD moved. Without that
exclusion state.patch's success boolean, which is updated.length > 0, would be
permanently true and a fully-failed patch would report success.

Refs #3872

* fix(#3872): cover the matrix, and close a prototype-chain read the coverage found

Review found 20 of 29 test-matrix rows uncovered. Covering them found two real
defects rather than merely documenting the intended behavior.

bodyLabelFor read FRONTMATTER_KEY_TO_BODY_LABEL with a bare bracket index on a
plain object literal, so a field named __proto__, constructor or toString
resolved to the inherited prototype member and leaked a non-string value into
the updated array. Fixed with an own-property check, mirroring the discipline
resolveFrontmatterPath already had. The security-relevant matrix row proved it
before the fix.

applyPostSyncPreservation still carried its own inline copy of the value
comparison alongside the new stateFieldValuesDiffer, which is two live copies
of one rule introduced by the epic that exists to remove them. Routed through
the single owner.

Adds the fast-check property that a field appears iff its persisted value
differs from the snapshot, the string-versus-number representation boundary,
dotted paths into missing parents and into scalars, deleted and added keys,
and the preserve-if-placeholder pair that proves no classification test
survives in the reporting path.

Refs #3872

* docs(#3872): document the transaction diff on the write path

The updated array's contract belongs where the write path is described. States
the iff rule, leaf granularity, the single provenance exclusion and why
state_head is deliberately not one, and closes with the consequence a reader
actually needs: these arrays are longer than they used to be, because they used
to under-report.

Refs #3872

* fix(#3872): a derived leaf materializing is not a change the caller made

The remote matrix caught 17 failures with two causes. The substantive one is
that progress is source: disk, and the disk cannot change during a STATE.md
write — the write only touches STATE.md. So a progress block appearing where
the snapshot had none is the scanner populating a document that had never been
synced. The bytes moved; nothing the caller did moved them.

That is the same shape as last_updated one level up, so the provenance rule is
generalized rather than special-cased: a field appears iff its persisted value
changed for a reason attributable to this write's action, and two cases are not
attributable — a field stamped unconditionally on every save, and a declared
derived leaf materializing from a source that did not change. Crucially this
does not consult the preservation policy, so the filter §8.7 deleted stays
deleted; it uses the declared leaf set to know which keys are derived.

This had a second production consumer the earlier review concluded did not
exist: cmdStatePlannedPhase gates publishStateContract on updated.length, and
its own inline comment predicts exactly this failure. A no-op call was
publishing state.json.

advancePlanNoOpDoesNotPublish genuinely encoded pre-§8.7 behavior and moves. E2
and E6 had carved out total_plans as reportable-on-materialization, an error
introduced earlier on this branch rather than a pre-existing pin, and are
corrected with it.

Refs #3872

* chore(#3872): backfill changeset PR number

---------

Co-authored-by: sim <sim@local>
This commit is contained in:
Tom Boucher
2026-08-25 23:51:16 -04:00
committed by GitHub
parent 8f674281fd
commit 3b18eff388
7 changed files with 1689 additions and 145 deletions

View File

@@ -557,6 +557,14 @@ STATE.md carries the same fact in two places — YAML frontmatter and the docume
`rebuildStateTransaction()` is the typed form of ADR-3408 §8.3's closed exception list: `state sync`, which exists to let the body win, and `/gsd-health --repair`'s factory reset. Both are deliberate and permanent, not debt — and because the type names them, the write-path drift guard no longer has to track them as strings in a ratcheted baseline.
**What a command reports it wrote is the same snapshot, read back (ADR-3473 §8.7).** Every `state.*` command returns an `updated` array. That array is now derived by comparing what was actually persisted against the transaction's pre-write snapshot: **a field appears if, and only if, its persisted value changed.** One comparison answers both of the questions that used to need separate machinery — a field the caller asked for that the pipeline then discarded is persisted-equals-snapshot and drops out, and a field nobody asked for that the write moved anyway is different and appears. Nothing is filtered by its preservation policy.
Reporting is at **leaf granularity**: when a single counter moves you are told `progress.total_plans`, not `progress`. The leaves are the ones the field-classification table already declares, so the report is bounded by a schema rather than by walking the document.
One field is excluded, and it is excluded for its *provenance* rather than its policy: `last_updated` is stamped on every save regardless of what you changed, so admitting it would make `state patch`'s success signal — which is simply whether `updated` is non-empty — permanently true, and a patch in which every field failed would report success. `state_head` is deliberately **not** excluded: it is recomputed on every save but only *changes* when the commit it records actually moved, so reporting it tells you something true.
A practical consequence worth knowing: these arrays are now longer than they used to be, because they used to under-report. If you compare one exactly, expect more entries — and expect them to be the ones that really changed.
**[ADR-3408](adr/3408-state-write-path-preservation.md) is the normative contract** for that path: one executor per declared policy, one write seam, and reports computed from what was actually persisted rather than from what the caller intended to write. Where the contract and the code disagree, the code is the defect. It is the write-side counterpart of [ADR-3180](adr/3180-planning-semantic-model-single-owner.md), which gave each read-side derivation a single owner.
**[ADR-3473](adr/3473-enforcement-by-construction.md) owns the invariants that sit outside that contract.** ADR-3408 governs what survives a write; it does not govern the pipeline's precondition, what a command reports it wrote, or where the set of STATE.md keys, types and enums is declared. ADR-3473 owns those, alongside document parsing, enumeration, and the return contract of every routine that can fail. It is the third application of ADR-3180's mechanism and the first whose success metric requires the guard surface to *shrink* as each seam lands.