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msd-core/docs/how-to/interpret-scope-conformance-warnings.md
Tom Boucher 2f86278b5e fix(#3003): opt-in mechanism for intentional deletions in worktree.cleanup-wave (#3757)
* test(#3003): failing-first suite for declared deletions in cleanup-wave

Binds the guard's opt-in before it exists, so the suite is RED against next.

The rows that carry the weight are the over-authorization set: a directory
declaration must not authorize its children, a glob declaration must authorize
nothing, and a declaration must not act as a string prefix of another path.
Each of those BLOCKS, and each would PASS under a prefix, glob, or startsWith
matcher — which is how a path list quietly degrades into the boolean opt-in
#3003 explicitly rejected. The glob row matters most: declaredScopePrefix
already returns null ("matches everything") for a glob-leading pattern, correct
for the advisory it serves and catastrophic for a gate.

Also pinned: a failed deletion check blocks on its own reason rather than being
filtered into a pass; the block detail names only the undeclared residue so the
operator is not misdirected by paths that were fine; an entry with no
declaration blocks exactly as before; junk and non-array declarations do not
authorize; and a blocked entry still isolates rather than aborting the wave
(#2852, which must stay fixed).

Two advisory rows cover an interaction found while designing: git diff
--name-only includes deleted paths, so without unioning the declaration into
the #2596 scope check, authorizing a deletion would raise
SCOPE_OUT_OF_DECLARED against the very path just authorized.

A seeded property states the whole invariant the three over-authorization rows
sample: a deletion merges iff its normalized path is in the declared set.

* feat(#3003): declared deletions opt-in for the cleanup-wave guard

The deletions guard blocked the merge-back of any executor branch whose diff
removed a file, with no way to say a removal was intended. A plan that folded
one test file into a sibling could not be merged by the tool meant to merge it,
forcing a manual --no-ff outside the tool -- strictly less safe than what the
guard protects against.

A plan now declares removals in its own frontmatter (files_deleted), and that
list rides the same path files_modified already travels: plan-document parse ->
phase plan JSON -> the per-plan worktree gate -> record-agent/create
--deletions -> declared_deletions on the manifest entry -> the guard. The guard
blocks only the deletions NOT in that list.

A path list rather than a boolean, per the pinned decision: a boolean disarms
the guard for the whole entry, so an unexpected deletion riding along with a
declared one would pass unnoticed. Matching is exact after the module's shared
normalizer -- never a prefix, never a glob. Both would let one declaration
authorize a whole set, which is the mass-deletion accident the guard exists to
catch. That also means declaredScopePrefix is deliberately NOT reused here: it
returns null ("matches everything") for a glob-leading pattern, which is right
for the advisory it serves and would silently disarm a gate.

The block detail now carries only the undeclared residue, so an operator is not
sent looking at paths that were fine. A failed deletion check still blocks on
its own reason and is never filtered into a pass. A blocked entry still
isolates rather than aborting the wave (#2852).

The #2596 scope advisory unions the declaration into its declared set --
git diff --name-only includes deleted paths, so without that, authorizing a
deletion would immediately warn that the same path was out of declared scope.

Optional and additive throughout: files_deleted is absent from
PLAN_REQUIRED_FIELDS, a manifest entry without declared_deletions keeps the
original unconditional block, and omitting --deletions leaves the on-disk entry
shape untouched.

Supersedes the spent #2856 emitted-drift ack entry for execute-phase.md, the
same supersede that entry performed on #3370 and #3370 on #3324.

* fix(#3003): wire --deletions on every dispatch surface, not just one

Review found the feature inert on two of three dispatch paths. execute-phase.md
(harness inline) passed --deletions, but the orchestrator-worktree path
(executor-isolation-dispatch.md, worktree.create) and the Fleet-parallel batch
path (capabilities/claude-orchestration/fragments/execute-wave-pre.md,
worktree.record-agent) still passed only --files. A plan declaring
files_deleted would have merged on one path and been blocked on the other two
-- the exact bug #3003 exists to fix, left unfixed where most of the isolation
actually runs.

Worse, per-plan-worktree-gate.md already claimed --deletions was passed 'on the
same worktree.record-agent / worktree.create calls', which was false for both
untouched sites. A doc asserting coverage that does not exist is how a gap
survives review.

All four surfaces now pass the flag, verified by sweeping every .md under
gsd-core/, capabilities/, commands/, skills/ and agents/ that invokes
worktree.record-agent or worktree.create: each one that passes --files now also
passes --deletions. The isolation-dispatch note explains why this flag, unlike
--files, is not advisory -- omitting it does not skip a check, it blocks a
merge the plan declared.

Regenerates capability-registry.cjs, which the fragment edit made stale.

Neither newly-grown file needs an emitted-drift ack: executor-isolation-dispatch.md
sits under workflows/execute-phase/steps/ and execute-wave-pre.md under
capabilities/, both outside currentSizes()'s non-recursive scan of
gsd-core/workflows/ and agents/.

* docs(#3003): document files_deleted where a plan author will actually find it

The feature's entire user surface is one plan-frontmatter field, and the
canonical reference for that frontmatter -- docs/reference/plan-md.md, the table
that documents every other key -- never mentioned it. A field nobody can
discover ships as a field nobody uses. Adds the files_deleted row and an example
entry in all five locales (en, ja-JP, zh-CN, ko-KR, pt-BR), stating the property
that makes the opt-in safe: matching is exact per path after separator
normalization, with no globs and no directory prefixes, so a declaration can
never authorize more than it literally lists, and omitting the field keeps the
guard's original unconditional block.

Also corrects two claims in the scope-conformance how-to that this change made
false. Its opening paragraph described the recorded declared scope as
files_modified alone; declared_deletions is now unioned into that comparison.
Its "Renames are not detected specially" bullet asserted the deletions guard
blocks any entry whose diff contains a deletion, full stop -- which was the
whole point of #3003 and is no longer true. Reworked to say what now decides a
rename's fate: declare the old path in files_deleted and both halves become
ordinary paths for the advisory check, which is also why the old path needs no
separate files_modified entry.

Documentation that describes the pre-change behavior of the thing being changed
is worse than no documentation, because a reader trusts it.

* fix(#3003): close every review finding on the declared-deletions opt-in

Two independent isolated reviewers, correctness and security. Neither found a
blocker; both found real defects, and the directive treats a finding at any
severity as blocking. All of them are fixed here.

MAJOR -- the submodule worktree gate could not see a deletion-only plan.
per-plan-worktree-gate.md intersected $SUBMODULE_PATHS against $PLAN_FILES
alone, while $PLAN_DELETIONS was extracted and then never used. Before
files_deleted existed, a path had to appear in files_modified to be planned at
all, so the gate saw it; the new field plus the new docs telling authors a
deleted path needs no files_modified entry opened a hole where a plan whose only
submodule touch is a removal kept worktree isolation on -- the exact case #2772
disabled it for. Both channels now feed the intersection. Note the posture is
deliberately the OPPOSITE of the cleanup-wave guard: there the channels stay
apart because a deletion AUTHORIZATION must never be inferred; here they merge
because a safety fallback must never MISS a touch.

MAJOR -- same-wave conflict detection could not see a deletion. The planner's
implicit-dependency rule compared files_modified only, so plan A editing
src/x.ts and plan B declaring files_deleted: [src/x.ts] scored as conflict-free
and ran in parallel: one branch removing what the other is writing, which is the
sharpest conflict there is. Overlap is now computed across both channels.

MINOR (both reviewers, one root cause) -- the advisory union gave one field two
matching rules. declared_deletions was unioned into the scope list handed to
planWaveScopeConformance, which reads it with prefix-and-glob semantics. So a
field that is exact-match-only at the gate silently became wider at the
advisory: ["*.md"], inert at the gate, yielded a null prefix meaning "matches
everything" and muted the advisory completely, and ["src"] muted all of src/.
The union also activated the advisory on plans that declared no modification
scope at all, warning on every modified path. Replaced with subtraction from the
findings, gated on files_modified alone. One field, one rule, everywhere.

MINOR -- core.quotepath made the feature silently inert for non-ASCII paths.
git emits "tests/\303\251.ts" C-escaped and quoted, which never equals the
declared plain path, so a correctly declared deletion of tests/é.ts would block
forever with nothing pointing at the encoding. Both diffs now pass
-c core.quotepath=false.

NIT -- flag() consumed a following flag as a value, so --deletions --files x
swallowed --files and dropped both. Now treated as a missing declaration, which
fails closed. Fixed at both call sites; the helper is duplicated verbatim in
cmdWorktreeRecordAgent and cmdWorktreeCreate and leaving one would reintroduce it.

TEST -- one test passed for the wrong reason. "a declared deletion is in scope
for the advisory" asserted only that warnings omit the deleted path; under a
full revert the entry blocks first, warnings come back empty, and the negative
assertion passes anyway. It now asserts the entry actually merged, which is the
load-bearing half. Four regressions added, one per fix above.

Docs corrected rather than extended. The rename bullet in the scope-conformance
how-to claimed a rename whose delete side is undeclared never reaches the
advisory. Verified false: git's rename detection is on by default, so a pure
rename is a single R entry that appears in no --diff-filter=D output and was
never gated, before or after #3003. Only a rename that edits enough to fall
below the similarity threshold decomposes into add+delete. The pre-existing
sentence made the same wrong claim; this restates it correctly instead of
sharpening the error. The localized plan-md.md reference edits are reverted:
the PR template requires docs content added here to be English, and the
translations already lag by three fields, so English-only is the repo's
standing posture, not an oversight.

Agent-file size caps respected: gsd-planner.md is XL-tier by bytes but carries a
separate 49152-LF-CHAR cap asserted by four suites, so its edit is deliberately
terse and lands at 49141 with 11 chars of headroom, with the rationale moved to
docs/reference/plan-md.md, which has no cap. gsd-plan-checker.md lands at 49107
bytes, 45 under the LARGE cap. Both acks merged into the existing fragments that
already name those paths, since two ack sources may never name the same path.

* fix(#3003): decode git's path quoting instead of changing the git argv

The previous commit's non-ASCII fix turned the remote suite red: 44 failures,
42 of them "unexpected git call: -c core.quotepath=false diff --diff-filter=D
--name-only ...". The suite's git mocks match on exact argv, so adding two
flags to the deletions diff and the advisory diff invalidated every existing
fixture in tests/worktree-safety.test.cjs. Rewriting dozens of fixtures to
accommodate one flag would be paying a large Hyrum's-law bill to fix a small
defect.

Both execGit calls are reverted to their original argv. The C-quoting is now
decoded in normalizeScopePath instead, via a new decodeGitQuotedPath helper.
That is the better fix on its own merits, not merely the cheaper one: the git
argv is untouched so no fixture moves, the decode lands on the ONE normalizer
already applied to both sides of the comparison so the declared and reported
paths cannot disagree, and it holds regardless of the user's own core.quotepath
setting rather than only when we remember to override it.

A value not wrapped in a leading AND trailing quote is returned completely
untouched, so the plain-ASCII path -- the overwhelmingly common case -- is
byte-identical to before. Escapes decode to BYTES collected into a Buffer and
UTF-8 decoded only at the end, because \303\251 is two bytes forming one
character and decoding them separately yields mojibake. Malformed input never
throws: a trailing lone backslash or a short octal escape degrades to the
literal character, since one bad path must not take down a cleanup wave.

Caught while reviewing the helper: the non-escape branch pushed a UTF-16 code
unit rather than UTF-8 bytes. Git always escapes non-ASCII so its own output was
fine, but this normalizer runs on the DECLARED side too, and an author may write
a quoted path holding a literal é -- pushing 0xE9 alone is invalid UTF-8, so the
declaration would decode to a replacement character and silently stop matching.
That is precisely the failure this change removes, reintroduced on the other
side of the comparison. Now converts whole code points, surrogate pairs intact.

The other 2 failures: tests/parallel-dependent-plans.test.cjs pins the exact
unbackticked substring "files_modified overlap" in gsd-planner.md, and rewording
that comment to "declared-scope overlap" deleted it. The comment is restored
verbatim and the files_deleted change rides in the pseudocode and the Rule
sentence instead. Recorded in the ack fragment so the next contributor does not
rediscover it the same way.

Four regression tests cover the decode through the public cleanup-wave seam
(the helper is module-private): a declared non-ASCII deletion merges against a
C-quoted git report, the symmetric case where the DECLARATION is the quoted
form, an undeclared non-ASCII deletion still blocks with the residue naming the
decoded path an operator can act on, and a path merely containing a quote is
left alone. Plain ASCII was already covered and is not duplicated.

* fix(#3003): revert the leading-dash flag guard, the review nit was wrong

The remote suite came back with 2 failures, down from 44, and both point at the
same thing: tests/worktree-safety.test.cjs:7045 already pins the opposite
contract, deliberately.

  test('a flag-shaped --files value is not re-parsed as a flag', ...)
    recordAgent(['--files', '--branch'])
    -> files_modified === ['--branch']
    -> branch === 'worktree-agent-a1'  ("the real --branch value must be untouched")

So consuming the next argv element positionally, whatever its shape, is the
tested intent of this parser, not an oversight. The security reviewer's nit
claimed --deletions --files x would "swallow --files and drop both". It does
not: each flag runs its own indexOf, so --deletions records the literal
'--files' while --files independently still resolves to x. And that literal is
a path git never reports as deleted, so it authorizes nothing -- already
fail-closed with no guard at all. The guard bought no safety and silently
changed --files behavior along the way, outside this issue's scope.

Reverted at both call sites, which are byte-identical again, along with the test
asserting the reverted behavior and the docs sentence describing it. The nit is
recorded as REJECTED in the review artifact with the reasoning above, rather
than as fixed -- a finding that turns out to be wrong should leave a trace of
why, or the next reviewer files it again.

docs/CLI-TOOLS.md now states the positional-read behavior plainly instead, so
the next person meets it as documented intent rather than rediscovering it
through a red suite.

* chore(#3003): backfill changeset pr number to 3757

* test(#3003): cover parsePlanDocument's filesDeleted branch to clear the mutation gate

CI's Stryker shard for plan-document failed at 73.28 against a break threshold
of 75: 170 killed, 62 survived, 232 total. Eight of those survivors are the
filesDeleted block this issue added to parsePlanDocument, which shipped with no
direct coverage at all -- the field was exercised end to end through the
cleanup-wave tests, but the parser itself was never called with a plan that
declares it, so every mutant in the block lived.

Four tests, each pinned to specific mutants rather than written for coverage
percentage:

- absent key yields exactly [] -- kills the array-literal seed
  (["Stryker was here"]) and the `fmDeleted = true` conditional, which would
  otherwise produce ["true"]
- a scalar underscore `files_deleted:` wraps into a one-element array -- kills
  `fmDeleted = false`, the `&&` logical-operator swap, the `fm[""]` string
  mutation on the first operand, the emptied if-block, and the ternary's
  non-array branch
- an array-valued hyphenated `files-deleted:` maps element-wise -- kills the
  `fm[""]` mutation on the SECOND operand (only reachable when the legacy
  hyphen alias is the one carrying the value) and the ternary's array branch
- an empty list yields [] -- boundary case, and a genuinely distinct one from
  the absent key: [] is truthy in JS so it ENTERS the if, and only
  Array.isArray's true branch mapping over nothing produces the same []

Threshold arithmetic: 174 of 232 are needed for 75%, and these take it to about
178, so the shard clears with margin rather than landing on the line.

Every expected value was confirmed by executing the built parser before being
asserted, not inferred from reading the source.

---------

Co-authored-by: sim <sim@local>
2026-08-22 13:17:51 -04:00

6.3 KiB

How to interpret scope-conformance warnings

Goal: Understand the advisory warnings that the worktree.cleanup-wave gauntlet emits when a plan branch commits changes outside the scope it declared, and decide what — if anything — to do about one.

Prerequisites: GSD Core is installed and you have run /gsd-execute-phase with worktree isolation enabled (workflow.use_worktrees: true, the default), so that plan branches were merged back by a cleanup-wave.


What you will see

When /gsd-execute-phase runs plans in isolated worktrees, each plan branch is merged back into the phase branch by the worktree.cleanup-wave gauntlet. If the wave manifest recorded the plan's declared scope (files_modified, passed as --files to worktree record-agent / worktree create), the gauntlet compares the branch's actual committed diff (HEAD...<branch>) against that declared scope and reports any committed path that falls outside it.

A realistic cleanup-wave result with one such warning:

{
  "ok": true,
  "reason": "wave-cleanup-complete",
  "warnings": [
    {
      "code": "scope_out_of_declared",
      "branch": "plan-04-add-rate-limiter",
      "path": "src/util/rate-limiter-cache.cts"
    }
  ],
  "entries": [
    {
      "branch": "plan-04-add-rate-limiter",
      "status": "merged_removed",
      "warnings": [
        {
          "code": "scope_out_of_declared",
          "path": "src/util/rate-limiter-cache.cts"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

ok: true and status: "merged_removed" are unchanged by the warning — the merge happened. The same warning object appears twice: once nested under the offending entry, and once aggregated into the top-level warnings array so you can scan for conformance issues across the whole wave without walking every entry.


Why this happens

/gsd-execute-phase gives each plan a declared scope up front (files_modified in the phase plan index), so that parallel plan branches can be reasoned about and merged with some confidence about what each one touched. The scope-conformance check is a post-hoc, best-effort verification of that promise: after a branch merges, the gauntlet diffs what was actually committed against what was declared, and flags any mismatch as a warning. This is issue #2596.


The two warning codes

  • scope_out_of_declared — emitted once per committed path that falls outside the plan's declared scope. A branch with three unexpected paths produces three of these warnings.
  • scope_check_unavailable — emitted once per entry when the scope diff itself could not be computed (a git failure or a timeout), rather than once per path. This means conformance is unknown for that entry, not clean — the check deliberately distinguishes "could not verify" from "verified and clean" so an unknown result is never silently read as a pass.

It does not block

Scope conformance is advisory by design. A scope_out_of_declared or scope_check_unavailable warning never changes ok, reason, the per-entry status, or the process exit code — the merge proceeds exactly as it would with zero warnings. There is no failure to fix here. Promoting scope conformance to a hard gate (one that blocks the merge) would be a separate, explicitly disclosed change — it is not what this check does today.


What to do about one

  1. Compare the reported path against the plan's declared files_modified in the phase plan index.
  2. Decide which side is wrong: either the executor committed something outside its brief (over-reach), or the plan's files_modified under-declared what the work actually needed to touch.
  3. If the plan under-declared its scope, widen files_modified in the plan so future waves report accurately.
  4. If the executor over-reached, review that path's changes specifically — it is already merged into the phase branch, so treat the review as catching it before it travels further (into a PR, a release, or a later phase).

When nothing is reported

Absence of scope_out_of_declared / scope_check_unavailable warnings is not proof that a branch stayed in scope. The check legitimately stays silent in three cases:

  • No --files was recorded for the plan. Scope is unknown, so no comparison runs at all — not even a git call is made for that entry.
  • Every out-of-scope path is a .planning/**/*SUMMARY.md artifact. These are always exempt: the executor writes them by orchestration contract, and no plan declares them as part of its scope, so flagging them would be noise rather than signal.
  • A declared pattern had no literal prefix (for example, *.md). Matching is prefix-based (see below), so a pattern with no literal prefix cannot usefully bound anything — the check suppresses warnings for that entry by design, so an advisory check never cries wolf on a pattern it cannot meaningfully evaluate.

Known limits

  • Glob matching is literal-prefix only. src/**/*.ts matches anything under src/, including src/a/b.json — the check does not parse glob syntax past the literal prefix.
  • Renames are not detected specially, and mostly are not gated at all. Git's rename detection runs by default, so a pure rename (content unchanged, similarity 100%) is reported as a single R entry and appears in no --diff-filter=D output. The deletions guard therefore never fires on it — before or after #3003 — and the rename lands here at the advisory, where the new path is compared against the declared scope like any other. Only a rename that also edits the file enough to fall below git's similarity threshold decomposes into a separate add and delete; that delete is a real deletion, and the guard blocks the entry unless the old path is declared in files_deleted. Declaring it is the fix in that case. The old path needs no files_modified entry either way: a declared deletion is subtracted from this check's findings, so it never shows up as out-of-scope.
  • /gsd-quick worktrees have no plan-declared scope. They are never checked, for the same reason as the "no --files recorded" case above.