Twenty-eight test files described the code they guard by what it did
before a fix. Each is now the property and the failure it prevents, in the
present tense: the backfill snapshot, the per-dial calibration query, the
rule scope, the lesson trigger filter, the subshell global, the trash owner
scope, the version readout fallback, and others. A docstring line that
narrated the backup suite's own history is removed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ten more test files: issue, milestone, rule, decision and snippet numbers
come out of docstrings, comments and messages; the preference door states
what a preference is instead of quoting the framing; the JSON reader says
why jq is not assumed instead of what every hook used to do; the backup
round trip's column warning no longer claims the import side is unguarded.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
CI run 6937 red — 3 collection errors, `positional argument follows keyword
argument`, in the three integration fixtures that call the service positionally
(`create_rule(topic.id, uid, "title", "statement")`). The script that added
`when_to_apply=` to 15 fixtures inserted it as the FIRST argument, which is
valid only where every other argument is already a keyword.
Moved to the last argument in every call, which is legal in both styles, and
the continuation indent now matches the surrounding arguments.
Also repairs self-inflicted damage: the same script added a trigger to the two
tests in test_rule_trigger_required.py whose whole purpose is to call the
creators WITHOUT one. They would have stopped raising and the guard's own
proof would have inverted — a test that passes for the opposite reason than
the one it names, which is worse than a failing one.
Caught by ast.parse across tests/ rather than by the next CI round trip.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01821k5B3Ysecp9fNYs92Kuy
`when_to_apply` is not metadata. `rule_document` embeds a rule as
`{title} — {trigger}` / `When to apply: {trigger}\n\n{statement}`, the trigger
appearing twice so purpose dominates a short vector — the shape note 2485
measured on snippets (a 0.153 top-to-second gap against 0.010–0.023 for
everything else). Without one the document silently becomes title + statement:
a DIFFERENT shape, ranked against a corpus it does not match, with nothing to
report it. Every bar and every rank in the system assumes one shape.
`create_preference` has refused an empty trigger since it shipped. The two rule
creators defaulted it to "" — so the shape was enforced for the record kind
that guides and optional for the kind that binds.
The guard lives in the SERVICE, because both doors reach it: the MCP tools and
the frontend's fast path in routes/rulebooks.py. Written in either alone, the
other could still create a rule that never fires. The route keeps a matching
check for the STATUS CODE only (400, not the 404 it maps ValueError to).
update_rule refuses to EMPTY an existing trigger, checked after the mutation so
it covers `clear=[...]`, an emptied form input, and any route added later.
Deliberately asked as "did this edit remove one" rather than "does one exist":
a rule predating the guard has none, and refusing to save it would freeze
precisely the unreachable records that most need fixing.
Deliberately not following arose_from_id, which the human door exempts itself
from because provenance is about auditing what the AGENT changed. That reasoning
does not reach this field — a missing trigger is not a missing explanation, it
is a rule that does not work, and it fails an operator as badly as a session.
15 test fixtures across 6 files were creating rules with no trigger. They now
pass one; that they did not is the point — curation is not a guarantee.
Step 1 of milestone 416 "Retrieval stops guessing a bar". First because every
later step assumes one document shape, and it is much cheaper to guarantee
before a corpus grows than to backfill after.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01821k5B3Ysecp9fNYs92Kuy
The write path, and the step where a preference stops being a relabelled
rule. `create_preference` / `update_preference` on the MCP surface, plus
`kind` on update_rule and both HTTP doors.
SEPARATE TOOLS, NOT A `kind=` ARGUMENT. create_rule's docstring IS the
approval gate (#3557): propose, offer three answers, wait. That is right for
a rule — the person it binds should have agreed. A preference inverts it, and
one reached through create_rule would be read through that prose, so the
caller would hesitate over exactly the act this kind exists to make routine.
Two doors, two contracts, one table. Reads stay shared: a preference IS a
rule row, and "what governs this" wants both.
Two required fields, each buying something:
- `when_to_apply`, because the trigger is two-thirds of the embedded
document. Without one the record is written, stored, and silently never
delivered — indistinguishable from one nobody wrote.
- `arose_from_id`, the price of the ungated write. A corpus that drifts with
no record of what taught each change cannot be audited, and the operator's
veto over drift is worth exactly as much as their ability to read why it
happened.
The near-duplicate gate is what lets this corpus be written freely and stay
small: the second preference about a thing updates the first. It is
title-scoped and kind-blind, so it also catches a preference restating a rule
that already binds.
The asymmetry is guarded as two PRESENCE facts — the rule door still asks,
the preference door still says write it — never as an absence. An absence
check passes against a docstring that was deleted or rewritten into something
else, which is snippet #3352's warning and would read as coverage here while
proving nothing.
`_plain_detail` moved to tests/helpers on its second copy, per that module's
own reason for existing (#2825).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011cPyzNnegXHr5iRMzzy5KJ
bvandeusenandClaude Opus 5.5