`optimize --subtract` has only ever proposed. `--apply` executes the blocks the
operator picks, behind a backup whose coverage is verified and a scope gate the
engine enforces rather than describes.
The open design decision from plan §C6 was settled by two measurements, not by
taste. It is NOT a fix-engine action: the subtraction axis appears nowhere in
scan-orchestrator or optimization-lens-scanner, so verifyFixes' re-scan would
mark every removal `verified` whether or not it happened -- a success-shaped
no-op, the same shape that made restoreBackup silently do nothing. It is NOT a
plan/implement step either: that pipeline needs a finding code, and OPT declares
exactly one, for the deterministic check.
The approval artifact is written by main context, not by the lens agent. That is
where the operator's decision actually happens, and it keeps the feature off the
still-unmeasured agent write surface (M-BUG-18 lists optimize as open).
Three properties are load-bearing, and each was seen red against its own defect:
removals validate against the ORIGINAL content and apply in descending line
order; the range check is not redundant with the text check (`line: 0` makes
`slice(-1, 0)` empty, so an empty text MATCHES and `splice(-1, 1)` deletes the
file's last line); and createBackup skips a nonexistent path while still
returning an id, so manifest coverage is asserted before a byte changes.
Two guards were green on their own defect and were fixed after measuring:
`/\b80\s*%\b/` never matches "80% of the file" -- `%` is a non-word character, so
the trailing `\b` demands a word character next. And the caller-arm sweep passed
vacuously against HEAD, iterating an empty list; only the added non-emptiness
assertion caught it.
The floor is repeated, not moved: floor-exclusion still vetoes before anything is
proposed, and the engine refuses a load-bearing block again so a hand-built
approval cannot route around it. `mv` to `_archive/` is a file-level rule and
does not apply to a block excision -- the timestamped backup is the recovery
artifact, and a second copy with no restorer would be worse than none.
strongestGate moves into write-scope.mjs so the gate ordering has one owner.
Dogfooded DRY-RUN against the real ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md: 29 candidates, gate
refused all 29 with exit 0 until the scope was approved, then 29/29 spans
validated with nothing written. ~789 tokens, ~18% of the file -- corroborating
the #40 fasit's ~850, and well short of what a deletion feature is tempted to
promise.
Suite 1625 -> 1659/0. Frozen v5.0.0 and default-output baselines untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_017A6vrtPKsVuM4DJ27p7jzw
The chain observed configuration across repos but presented every write it then
proposed as though it landed where the session stands. STATE named two arms;
measuring found five, and two of them are worse than the two already known:
- implement — the approval prompt named NO path at all, only a count, so a plan
editing ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md and one editing ./CLAUDE.md produced byte-identical
prompts.
- rollback — the file list rendered `.claude/settings.json`, a repo-relative
FORM, while the restore writes to the absolute original. The other arms were
silent; this one pointed the wrong way.
- fix — paths were visible but unclassified, and --global mixed machine-wide and
project rows into one unmarked table.
The gate's strength comes from the target's scope class, never from the command
asking: five command-owned policies would drift apart the way five copies of the
lever table did. SCOPE_CLASSES is one source for class, gate, wording and
predicate; templates render `disclosures[]` from the CLI instead of restating
what a class means.
Two orderings in that table are load-bearing, and both were measured:
- plugin-managed before user-scope. Both ~/.claude/config-audit/ and the legacy
~/.config-audit/ are live, and every command writes session state there. The
other order fires the gate on every write ever made and gets it switched off,
which is worse than no gate.
- user-scope before cross-repo. ~/.claude/.git EXISTS, so a plain .git-upward
walk answers "another repo" for ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md and silently downgrades
the strongest gate on the subtraction axis's primary target to disclosure.
disclose is not require-ok: campaign export is cross-repo by design, so the gate
there says so rather than refusing. Distinct from require-target-dir.mjs, which
asks whether a scan ROOT is readable (exit 3) — a different invariant, left
unmerged along with its four inline copies.
Also structural, both found while building this: the hand-maintained GUARDED
list in the unknown-flag sweep now derives its completeness from the directory
(measured complete at 14 of 14 first, so nothing was hiding — but the 15th CLI
would have been swept by nothing); and prose shape-guards use whitespace-
tolerant patterns, after one went red against a command file that did say the
right thing, line-wrapped.
Gated: implement, fix, rollback, plan, campaign export. Suite 1596 -> 1625/0,
frozen v5.0.0 and default-output baselines 0 changed files. No new GAP dimension,
no lever, no finding code — utilization denominators untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013941cEohSD5Aw56FVAtBgZ
Dogfooding `/config-audit` (the router) against the repo, fasit written before
any run (docs/router-fasit.local.md, untouched). Every claim below is measured
behaviour, not a reading of the source.
1. Bare `<target-path>` inside the step-3 fence is a shell REDIRECTION, not an
argument. Measured in zsh: both CLIs failed before starting, no output file
was written, and the echoed status was 1 — inside the band the router's own
gate calls "continue normally". Quoting makes an unsubstituted placeholder
reach argv, so it fails in the CLI where the exit code means something.
Swept the whole class: 30 sites across 12 further command files, since a
defect in one file is a class until the opposite is measured. New guard:
command-placeholder-shell-safety.test.mjs.
2. The orchestrator's exit code was discarded. Two commands on one line share a
single trailing `echo $?`, which reports only the last: measured, an
orchestrator exit 3 echoed as posture's 0, so the "3 -> stop" gate could
never fire. Both statuses are now captured and echoed.
3. "Running 12 configuration scanners" — the orchestrator registers 16. The new
test binds the narrated count to the registry so the next scanner added
cannot re-stale it silently.
4. The Area Breakdown table hardcoded 7 rows; posture emits 9 quality areas.
Token Efficiency (a B on this repo) and Plugin Hygiene never reached the
user. Rows added, and the row set is now asserted against lib/scoring.mjs.
Label aligned: "MCP Servers" -> "MCP", as posture emits it.
5. Step 6 rendered "the headline line from the humanized stderr scorecard" and
forbade deriving a replacement — while step 3 sent posture's stderr to
/dev/null, as UX rule 2 requires, and the prose is absent from the JSON
payload (measured). The slot could only be improvised. posture's stderr now
goes to a file in the session dir, as commands/posture.md already did; the
user still never sees raw scanner output.
Also: `grep -q -- "--raw"` matched any argument CONTAINING --raw (measured on
`--rawdog` and on a path with --raw in it) — anchored to whole arguments.
SCOPE_FLAGS renamed SCOPE_FLAG, since zsh does not word-split and the plural
invited the M-BUG-45 shape.
command-shell-state-shape.test.mjs only recognised line-initial assignments, so
it reported the idiomatic `node …; STATUS=$?` capture as never assigned. Widened
to assignments after a separator; verified it still fails on a real cross-block
reference before trusting it.
Suite 1477 -> 1483, frozen v5.0.0 snapshots untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YDAwy1ZXRpZxht1wyCeSbF
Dogfooding `campaign` + `knowledge-refresh` against a throwaway ledger. Seven
defects, all found by running the commands as written and measuring, not by
reading them.
The headline pair only existed together. `knowledge-refresh` built
`STALE_AFTER="--stale-after 30"` and expanded it unquoted, trusting the shell to
split it in two. bash does; zsh — the macOS default, and what the Bash tool runs
here — does not. The CLI got one argv entry, matched no flag, and because it had
no unknown-flag branch, silently kept the 90-day default and reported "✓ All 14
register entries were re-verified within the last 90 days": a true-sounding
sentence about a threshold the user had just overridden. Fixing either half alone
leaves a silent wrong answer or a loud one; both are fixed, and a guard now
rejects any template that packs a flag and its value into one variable.
`knowledge-refresh` also read one register and wrote another: step 6 named an
unanchored `knowledge/best-practices.json` while the CLI reads
`${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/…`, which for an installed plugin is the cache. The
validation gate then ran the cached test against the cached register — green no
matter what was written. The two copies were byte-identical that day, which is
exactly why it was invisible.
`campaign` vouched for repos it could not read. `add /finnes/ikke` returned
`added` + exit 0; `refresh-tokens` then put the phantom in `swept[]` with a
0-token delta and left `skipped[]` empty, so the machine-wide bill claimed
coverage of three repos on a machine with two. Paths stay tracked — an unmounted
volume is a legitimate absence — but are reported as `addedUnverified`, and the
command names them.
Two class sweeps, both measured rather than assumed. `posture` was the single
scanner (1 of 14) whose fatal catch exited 1, which ux-rules defines as a normal
WARNING grade — a crash indistinguishable from a result. And all 13 payload
writers failed on a `--output-file` whose parent did not exist, which on a fresh
machine turned `campaign`'s first run into "the ledger may be corrupt"; they now
share `scanners/lib/write-output.mjs`.
Predicted breadth was too wide for the first time in five sessions: 6 of 8 CLIs
predicted to lack unknown-flag rejection, 4 measured. `drift` and `fix` already
reject them, via a construct the grep did not recognise — a grep matches an
implementation, the invariant is a behaviour. The sweep was rewritten to run each
CLI with a bogus flag and read the exit code.
Suite 1453 → 1469/0. Frozen snapshots untouched. `optimize-lens-cli` and
`token-hotspots-cli` share the unknown-flag defect and are deferred to the v5.14
argument-handling chunk with their positional-swallow arm; the count is recorded
in the guard rather than rounded down to zero.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012NHWjN8EnoxSqRvMTLK2NE
Dogfooding the four read commands (posture, tokens, manifest, whats-active)
surfaced four defect classes, all in the seam between what a command template
promises and what the scanner behind it actually does.
M-BUG-40, fifth arm: posture wrote four temp files it could never read back.
#49 closed the $$/cross-block class in four commands, but posture survived it —
and so did the guard written to prevent exactly this. The guard compared each
$$ path to the block that created it, so a path written once and then read via
prose had no second occurrence to flag. Measured live: written from PID 21614,
read attempted from PID 23772. The invariant is now blanket (no $$ in any temp
path), which also caught fix.md and feature-gap.md.
M-BUG-43: 6 of 7 scanners write their payload to stdout when --raw/--json is
set even when --output-file was given, and the templates redirected only
stderr. Measured: posture 255 182 B, whats-active 35 922 B, drift 28 316 B,
manifest 23 825 B, tokens 8 768 B. fix and feature-gap never read the file they
wrote, so both recovered one letter grade from a quarter-megabyte dump.
tokens swallowed --json and --with-telemetry-recipe: documented, never
threaded, so --json returned the humanized payload where the docs promise
byte-stable v5.0.0 output.
M-BUG-42: manifest's render contract asked for {load}; the payload carries
loadPattern, so the Load column rendered blank for all 96 rows.
Four new tests (1449 -> 1453), each verified red before the fix. The
render-contract test checks {field} names against a live payload from a
fixture, since a hardcoded key list would drift. Frozen v5.0.0 snapshots
untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VGCk9o27eWo9uXLjkZTXEq
Dogfooding `plan` + `implement` against a throwaway config surfaced one root
defect with many arms: the command templates treat consecutive fenced blocks as
one shell. They are not. Every ```bash fence runs as its own Bash call in its own
process, so a variable set in one block is empty in the next, and `$$` is a
different PID (measured: 21710 vs 22109).
The planner agent confirmed the sharpest arm at runtime, reporting that
`Mode: $RAW_FLAG` "arrived literally unsubstituted" — `--raw` was documented in
three command files while being functionally dead. A machine sweep found the same
root in 20 places across 9 files, well past the two the written fasit predicted:
- `$RAW_FLAG` read from non-shell agent prompts (analyze, plan, implement)
- `$TMPFILE` read across blocks (tokens, manifest, whats-active,
plugin-health) — each command could not read the file it had just written
- `$GLOBAL_FLAG` across blocks (fix)
- `$TODAY` never assigned in any block (campaign), passing
`--reference-date ""` to a write CLI in six places
- three `$$` temp paths handed to the Read tool (fix), which expands neither
All now follow the hardened drift.md pattern: a fixed literal path, or a
re-derivation inside each block that needs it.
Also fixed, all confirmed against ground truth rather than inferred:
- `implement` printed a rollback ID it never captured (the timestamp lived only
inside a command substitution) — the one message a user reads after a bad run
- `plan` reported "No analysis results found" for valid sessions, because Read
was pointed at a glob it cannot expand; now uses Glob and verifies the
analysis report exists before spawning the agent
- five phase commands wrote state.yaml with two of four required fields; since
the agent writes all four, a follow-up write silently deleted the rest
- `implement` promised rollback deletes created files; rollback deliberately
leaves them (M-BUG-26 still open) — the doc, not the engine, was wrong
- `implement` claimed a score delta with no pre-change measurement
- `verifier-agent` was told to write a report it has no tool to write
- dead `Task` tool name in always-loaded rule context; planner-agent template
demonstrated the inline file content its own line 110 forbids
The sweeps land as tests/commands/command-shell-state-shape.test.mjs, verified
red before the fix and proven able to fail by reintroducing the defect. Two
existing tests asserted the old bash-block mechanism rather than the intent and
were updated. Suite 1449/0; frozen v5.0.0 snapshots and all scanner code
untouched.
Not fixed, deliberately: neither command scope-gates its actions to the audit
target. The generated plan included an edit to a real file under ~/.claude,
outside the throwaway target, because the skill/agent scanners are machine-wide.
That is a design change, not a side fix.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0195udHgCcFegzm7ecKku2Yc
DEL B chunk `interview` (+ discover/status/cleanup/help). Fasit written before
the run predicted 8 defects and refuted 4 candidates; all 8 confirmed, all 4
refutations held, and three predictions turned out too narrow.
- M-BUG-36: `drift --list` reached the command as 0 bytes. drift-cli accepted
--output-file but list mode ignored it, and the listing goes to stderr, which
the command discards per ux-rules rule 2. Fixing the caller alone would not
have helped.
- M-BUG-37: feature-gap's "Create backup" step ran fix-cli without --apply.
Dry-run is the default, so no backup existed (backupId: null) while the
command went on to edit config believing it could roll back.
- M-BUG-38: fix-cli told users to recover with scanners/rollback-cli.mjs, which
does not exist. Dead reference in the one message read after a bad fix.
- M-BUG-21 fourth arm: five templates carried literal [--global]/[--full-machine]
inside executable bash blocks. A bracketed placeholder does not start with a
dash, so every scanner's arg loop takes it as the scan target.
- interview and analyze never said which session they act on; interview could
rewind a finished session; cleanup interpolated an unvalidated id into rm -rf
(an empty id deletes every session); status advertised a `resume` command that
does not exist and documented an `all` argument it never parsed.
TDD: 9 red tests first, including a machine sweep for dead /config-audit
references and for bracketed flags in bash blocks. Suite 1432 -> 1441/0.
Frozen v5.0.0 snapshots untouched; --raw/--json contracts unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01UGvA1uUQn2hPBPMaCKK6x3
Dogfooding `/config-audit plugin-health` against a fasit registered before the
run: 11 of 12 predictions confirmed, 1 refuted with evidence, 0 deviations.
The command's default path could not produce the report it documents.
M-BUG-21 (third arm): the argument loop ended in
`else if (!args[i].startsWith('-')) targetPath = args[i]` with no unknown-flag
branch, so `--output-file /tmp/x.json` was dropped and its value became the scan
target. Worse than in drift-cli: a non-existent path discovers no plugins, so the
scanner answered "No plugins found" (info) with exit 0 — a reassuring answer, not
an error. Unknown options and a value-less `--output-file` now exit 3.
M-BUG-33: the scanner had no `--output-file` and its default-mode report goes to
stderr, which `commands/plugin-health.md` discards with `2>/dev/null` before
telling the agent to read stdout. Zero bytes captured.
M-BUG-34: per-plugin rows and the grade formula never left `scan()` — the only
grade code, `formatPluginHealthReport`, had no caller — and cross-plugin findings
were flattened behind a `category` they share with per-plugin findings. The
mandated table and Cross-Plugin section were unbuildable, so the command had to
fabricate them. `scanDetailed()` now returns them; `scan()`'s frozen v5.0.0
envelope is unchanged by construction.
M-BUG-35: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json` was flagged as an unknown file. It is
the documented catalog location, and `"source": "./"` makes the repo root its own
plugin, so one `.claude-plugin/` legitimately holds both.
Also: `commands/posture.md` ran both optional scanners in default mode under
`2>/dev/null` and read stdout — the same class as feature-gap.md:133 in the fix
chunk. A CLI-side flag fix does not close its callers.
Tests 1420 -> 1432, red first. Frozen v5.0.0 snapshots untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XhhZ8zg1amR7YCAPqiZWdt
implement.md spawns implementer agents in parallel batches, all appending to
the same implementation-log.md. Dogfooding showed agents satisfying 'Append
result to:' with a full-file Write — the last writer clobbered 4 of 6 entries.
Pin the mechanism in both contracts: append with Bash >> heredoc, never the
Write/Edit tool on the shared log. Shape tests pin the instruction in both
files (empirically verified: agents given the >> instruction appended safely).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Claude Code subagent harness instructs spawned agents NOT to write
report/summary/findings/analysis .md files — the parent reads the final
text message. Verified live: analyzer-agent skipped Write entirely and
returned the report inline, so analysis-report.md never landed on disk
and the plan/interview/status phases would find nothing to read.
New contract (orchestrator-writes pattern): analyzer-agent returns the
complete report as its final message; the analyze command saves it
verbatim to the session directory before presenting the summary.
Same class exists in plan/feature-gap/optimize/scanner agent pairs —
deliberately left for their own dogfood chunks (plan is judged as-is
first per the pipeline sequence).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CTontYwY5JGS4nL2AuiASy
Wave 5 Step 15. Threads --raw plumbing through all seven action
command templates and adds a shape test covering structural plumbing
plus help.md's plain-language vocabulary.
- commands/fix.md: --raw flag parsed; fix-plan rendering groups by
userActionLanguage; humanized title/description/recommendation are
rendered verbatim from the cross-referenced scan envelope.
- commands/rollback.md: terminology pass — "manifest" → "list of
changes" in user-facing copy; the file name manifest.yaml is kept
as the machine contract; --raw threaded through.
- commands/plan.md: --raw forwarded to the planner-agent's prompt;
agent now instructed to group actions by userImpactCategory and
lead with userActionLanguage; bash block added for flag parsing.
- commands/implement.md: --raw forwarded to the implementer-agent's
prompt; progress-log lines now reference the humanized titles
already present in the action plan.
- commands/cleanup.md: --raw accepted as no-op (cleanup is
file-management only, no findings prose); bash block added.
- commands/help.md: full plain-language pass — "PreToolUse" and
"frontmatter" jargon removed from user-facing copy; new
vocabulary table surfaces the humanized userImpactCategory and
userActionLanguage labels ("Configuration mistake", "Conflict",
"Wasted tokens", "Missed opportunity", "Dead config" / "Fix this
now", "Fix soon", "Fix when convenient", "Optional cleanup",
"FYI"); --raw documented as global pass-through flag.
- commands/interview.md: --raw accepted as no-op; "unused hooks"
question phrased as "unused automation that runs at specific
events" in user-facing copy.
tests/commands/action-commands-shape.test.mjs (new, +6 tests, 780 → 786):
- structural: bash block + Read tool + --raw/$ARGUMENTS plumbing
across all 7 files
- help.md vocabulary: ≥3 userImpactCategory labels and ≥3
userActionLanguage phrases present
- help.md jargon: no bare "PreToolUse" or "frontmatter" in copy
Wave 5 Step 14. Threads the humanizer vocabulary through the remaining
six audit/analysis command templates and adds a shape test that locks
the structure plus a pair of anchor must-contains.
- commands/drift.md: --raw pass-through; new/resolved/changed-finding
rendering instructions reference userActionLanguage and
relevanceContext rather than raw severity.
- commands/plugin-health.md: --raw pass-through; finding rendering
groups by userImpactCategory and leads with userActionLanguage.
- commands/config-audit.md (router): replaces the 25-line A/B/C/D/F
prose ladder with a humanized stderr-scorecard reference + three
userActionLanguage-grouped "What you can do next" branches; --raw
threaded through both scan-orchestrator and posture invocations.
- commands/discover.md: --raw pass-through; finding-summary rendering
groups by userImpactCategory.
- commands/analyze.md: --raw pass-through; analyzer-agent prompt now
instructs grouping by userImpactCategory and leading with
userActionLanguage; humanized title/description/recommendation
strings rendered verbatim, no paraphrasing.
- commands/status.md: phase-label humanization table — current_phase
machine field name preserved, user-facing labels translated
("Looking at your config files", "Working out what to recommend",
"Asking what you'd like to focus on", "Putting together your action
plan", "Making the changes", "Double-checking everything worked");
--raw preserves verbatim machine field values.
tests/commands/group-b-shape.test.mjs (new, +8 tests, 772 → 780):
- structural: bash block + Read tool + --raw/$ARGUMENTS plumbing
across all 6 files
- findings-renderers: humanized field reference + no grade-prose
- anchor must-contains per plan: config-audit.md ⊇
userImpactCategory|userActionLanguage; drift.md ⊇ --raw|humanized
- status.md: current_phase preserved + ≥3 humanized phase labels
Wave 5 Step 13. Threads the humanizer vocabulary through five audit/
analysis command templates and adds a shape test that locks the
structure in place.
- commands/posture.md, tokens.md, feature-gap.md (findings-renderers):
reference userImpactCategory/userActionLanguage/relevanceContext;
remove hardcoded A/B/C/D/F-to-prose tables (humanizer owns the
grade-context vocabulary now via the stderr scorecard headline).
- commands/manifest.md, whats-active.md (inventory CLIs): add --raw
pass-through for CLI-surface consistency. --raw is a no-op in these
CLIs, but the flag is threaded through so users get uniform behaviour.
- All five files: --raw flag parsed from $ARGUMENTS and passed verbatim
to the underlying scanner CLI when present.
tests/commands/group-a-shape.test.mjs (new, +5 tests, 767 → 772):
- structural: every file has a bash invocation block, Read tool
reference, and --raw/$ARGUMENTS plumbing
- findings-renderers only: at least one humanized field referenced;
no hardcoded "[grade] grade is..." prose tables
Kjell Tore Guttormsen
