feat(version): sidecar and /api/client/version carry name, code and channel

The client compares names while Android installs by versionCode, and the
wire had no way to close that gap: the sidecar was one positional line and
the endpoint returned a name only. This is the plumbing that makes the
ordering key decidable by the client at all.

The sidecar is now JSON rather than a grown positional string. That shape
was chosen against a specific failure: the obvious growth path was
"<name> <code>", which a first-space split silently mangles the moment a
third field appears — the code stops parsing as an integer and the reader
falls back to name comparison WITHOUT erroring. JSON cannot mistake a new
field for an old one.

code is a POINTER on both sides, and omitempty on the wire. Absent has to
stay distinguishable from zero: a build published before ordering keys were
recorded genuinely has no code, and zero would claim it is infinitely old
rather than unknown.

A malformed sidecar now fails loudly instead of serving a blank version.
If an unreadable file produced an empty name, every client would compare
against nothing, conclude it was current, and go quiet — "I cannot read
this" and "there is nothing newer" would return the same answer, which is
the failure mode nobody reports because nobody is offered anything to
report.

The non-tag :latest path no longer RECONSTRUCTS the bundled APK's version.
android-release now publishes the sidecar as a release asset beside the
APK, and the image build downloads it. The old reconstruction duplicated a
derivation formula across two files, and could only ever recover the name —
the ordering key is build-time minutes and exists nowhere once that build
ends. Releases predating the sidecar report their name with a null code,
which is the honest answer rather than a guessed one.

image-release also drops to a shallow checkout: it needed full history and
tags only to re-derive versions from the tagged commit, and now touches git
for nothing. MINSTREL_VERSION comes from GITHUB_REF.

Two things checked rather than assumed. The Android Json sets
ignoreUnknownKeys, so the added fields cannot break already-installed apps.
It also sets coerceInputValues, which will silently turn a null code into 0
if step 4 declares the field non-nullable — recorded on task #3811, because
reading the field declaration alone would never reveal it.

Also fixes a stale comment block describing "the Flutter client", deleted
in v2026.08.18.

Step 3 of 5 — Scribe task #3810, milestone #390.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SQ31KQpYbStyK5y58UmPLH

internal/api/client_assets_test.go

@@ -77,18 +77,32 @@ func TestClientVersion_404WhenAPKButNoVersion(t *testing.T) {
 	}
 }
 
-func TestClientVersion_200WithBothFiles(t *testing.T) {
+// writeClientAssets stages an APK plus a raw sidecar body, and returns the
+// APK's size so callers can assert size_bytes without recomputing it.
+func writeClientAssets(t *testing.T, sidecar string) int64 {
+	t.Helper()
 	dir := withClientAPKDir(t)
 	body := []byte("fake apk content")
 	if err := os.WriteFile(filepath.Join(dir, clientAPKFilename), body, 0o644); err != nil {
 		t.Fatal(err)
 	}
-	if err := os.WriteFile(filepath.Join(dir, clientVersionFile), []byte("v2026.05.10\n"), 0o644); err != nil {
+	if err := os.WriteFile(filepath.Join(dir, clientVersionFile), []byte(sidecar), 0o644); err != nil {
 		t.Fatal(err)
 	}
+	return int64(len(body))
+}
+
+func getClientVersion(t *testing.T) *httptest.ResponseRecorder {
+	t.Helper()
 	h := &handlers{logger: slog.New(slog.NewTextHandler(io.Discard, nil))}
 	rr := httptest.NewRecorder()
 	h.handleClientVersion(rr, httptest.NewRequest(http.MethodGet, "/api/client/version", nil))
+	return rr
+}
+
+func TestClientVersion_200WithBothFiles(t *testing.T) {
+	size := writeClientAssets(t, `{"name":"2026.09.10.1432","code":3523847,"channel":"stable"}`+"\n")
+	rr := getClientVersion(t)
 	if rr.Code != http.StatusOK {
 		t.Fatalf("want 200, got %d (body: %s)", rr.Code, rr.Body.String())
 	}
@@ -96,14 +110,69 @@ func TestClientVersion_200WithBothFiles(t *testing.T) {
 	if err := json.Unmarshal(rr.Body.Bytes(), &resp); err != nil {
 		t.Fatal(err)
 	}
-	if resp.Version != "v2026.05.10" {
-		t.Errorf("version: want trimmed v2026.05.10, got %q", resp.Version)
+	if resp.Version != "2026.09.10.1432" {
+		t.Errorf("version: want 2026.09.10.1432, got %q", resp.Version)
+	}
+	if resp.Code == nil {
+		t.Fatal("code: want 3523847, got absent — the client decides on this, so absent means it silently falls back to name comparison")
+	}
+	if *resp.Code != 3523847 {
+		t.Errorf("code: want 3523847, got %d", *resp.Code)
+	}
+	if resp.Channel != "stable" {
+		t.Errorf("channel: want stable, got %q", resp.Channel)
 	}
 	if resp.APKURL != "/api/client/apk" {
 		t.Errorf("apk_url: want /api/client/apk, got %q", resp.APKURL)
 	}
-	if resp.SizeBytes != int64(len(body)) {
-		t.Errorf("size_bytes: want %d, got %d", len(body), resp.SizeBytes)
+	if resp.SizeBytes != size {
+		t.Errorf("size_bytes: want %d, got %d", size, resp.SizeBytes)
+	}
+}
+
+// A release published before ordering keys were recorded has a name and
+// genuinely no code. That must arrive as ABSENT, not as 0 — zero would claim
+// the build is infinitely old and offer an update to everyone forever.
+func TestClientVersion_CodeAbsentIsOmittedNotZero(t *testing.T) {
+	writeClientAssets(t, `{"name":"2026.09.09","code":null,"channel":"stable"}`)
+	rr := getClientVersion(t)
+	if rr.Code != http.StatusOK {
+		t.Fatalf("want 200, got %d (body: %s)", rr.Code, rr.Body.String())
+	}
+	var resp clientVersionResponse
+	if err := json.Unmarshal(rr.Body.Bytes(), &resp); err != nil {
+		t.Fatal(err)
+	}
+	if resp.Code != nil {
+		t.Errorf("code: want absent, got %d", *resp.Code)
+	}
+	// The wire must omit the key entirely, so a client can distinguish
+	// "this server reports no code" from "this build's code is 0".
+	var raw map[string]any
+	if err := json.Unmarshal(rr.Body.Bytes(), &raw); err != nil {
+		t.Fatal(err)
+	}
+	if _, present := raw["code"]; present {
+		t.Errorf("code key should be omitted entirely, body was %s", rr.Body.String())
+	}
+}
+
+// The failure this guards is the one nobody reports: if an unreadable sidecar
+// produced an empty version, every client would compare against nothing,
+// decide it was current, and go quiet. "I cannot read this" and "there is
+// nothing newer" must not be the same answer.
+func TestClientVersion_MalformedSidecarErrorsRatherThanReportingNothing(t *testing.T) {
+	for _, sidecar := range []string{
+		"2026.09.10.1432",              // the OLD plain-text format
+		`{"name":"x",`,                 // truncated JSON
+		`{"code":123,"channel":"dev"}`, // valid JSON, no name
+		"",
+	} {
+		writeClientAssets(t, sidecar)
+		rr := getClientVersion(t)
+		if rr.Code == http.StatusOK {
+			t.Errorf("sidecar %q: want an error status, got 200 with body %s", sidecar, rr.Body.String())
+		}
 	}
 }