#3127 checklist 12, plus rule 27 — a capability with no surface the operator
can touch is not shipped.
The step was planned on the premise that nothing read `/api/version`. Two
things did, and the state was worse than nothing:
- `App.vue` fetched it, wrote `version` into a ref initialised to the literal
`"dev"`, and swallowed the error. An instance that could not answer rendered
EXACTLY what a healthy local build renders. That is checklist 12's named
failure — a blank standing in for `unknown` — in the one readout whose whole
job is to say what is running, and it would have made #3298's debugging
session no cheaper.
- `SettingsView.vue` fetched the same endpoint again on every mount and wrote
the result into a local ref no template ever read. A duplicate request whose
answer was discarded.
So this is not "add a readout"; it is "make the existing one honest, and give
it the three fields nobody could see."
The readout — Settings → Config, first section, beside the other "what is this
instance doing" facts. Three states kept apart, because collapsing any two of
them is the defect:
not asked yet (tab unopened) nothing
answered the values, each ABSENT field as "unknown"
the fetch itself failed its own message, with a retry
`version` and `channel` prominent, `commit` in full with a copy button so it
can be pasted into a `:sha` lookup (rule 145 — the registry's identity and the
artifact's own must be checkable against each other), `build` kept because its
ABSENCE is the diagnostic part: no ordering key means this build is not in any
update order, which is what a local or hand-built image looks like.
Absence, not falsiness. The payload omits what it does not know rather than
sending `""` or `0` (see `build_version_payload`), so the renderer uses `??`
throughout — `build` is a number and `0` is a legitimate ordering key, which
`||` would report as unknown. `tests/test_version_readout.py` pins that
operator specifically, along with the "no plausible default" property, because
`||` is the form a person reaches for by habit.
Rule 156 — the fetch carries a deadline. This readout is consulted when an
instance is misbehaving, which is exactly when it may never answer; without one
the surface sits on "still loading" forever, which is the same blank arrived at
from the other direction. `apiGet` gains an OPT-IN `timeoutMs` rather than a
default, so no existing call site's behaviour moves. Every other call in the
client still has no deadline — reported separately, not fixed here.
No frontend test runner exists, so verification is the typecheck lane plus four
source-inspection guards in the unit lane, each pinning one property.
Also folded in: `plugin/README.md` now leads with the mint script and offers
`make` second, since `make` is not installed on every workstation.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01TcCs1CcQ1ormdnzSshKqvN