R1+R2 as one chunk — both KRITISK rows of the Q3 severity table sit on the
restore path, and neither closes alone.
R1: rollback-engine.mjs verified every checksum before AND after each write,
resolved the legacy backup root and reported createdNotRemoved — and none of it
was reachable. Measured: 16 files under scanners/ carry a process.argv entry;
the engine was not one of them. commands/rollback.md drove the restore as model
prose: an ESM import block a template cannot execute, ad-hoc `cp` offered
underneath as the runnable path, and "(checksum verified)" pre-rendered three
times in the success output. `cp` establishes no checksum, so the verification
was a property of the template rather than of the run — on the one surface that
runs when the user is already in trouble.
R2: implement.md Step 3 hand-built its backup (mkdir, cp, a date-derived id, a
manifest typed out in the template) while parseManifest knew one frozen sample
of that format, pinned by a HAND-WRITTEN fixture instead of by the template's
own text. Rename a key and parseManifest returns zero files while rollback
reports success.
Fixing only R1 leaves the new CLI parsing a prose format; fixing only R2 leaves
a clean format with no runnable entry.
- scanners/rollback-cli.mjs — --list / --create / --restore / --delete over the
existing engine, on the shared requireValidArgs gate. Exit 0 done, 1
outstanding (gate refusal with nothing written, or a backup that covered fewer
targets than given), 2 a file failed, 3 could not do the job. A gated restore
is 1, not 3: "this write leaves your project" is a verdict about a write that
WAS examined, and it rides in the payload where a command under 2>/dev/null
can act on it.
- createBackup gains `created` (recorded, never copied — no backup can hold a
file that does not exist) and `skipped`, so a backup covering fewer files than
asked is no longer indistinguishable from a clean one.
- implement.md Step 3 and rollback.md now call the CLI. parseManifest's
implement-format branch stays: nothing writes that shape now, but every backup
made before this chunk is on disk in it.
- backup-restore-contract.test.mjs checks every field rollback.md renders
against a payload produced by RUNNING the CLI. That is what replaced
"(checksum verified)".
20 guards seen red against the original state before any production code, then
each against its own defect. Two holes that surfaced there were mine: the
implement assertion matched `--create` as a substring of `--created` and stayed
green when the call was removed; and mutating the argv gate showed
requireValidArgs sets exit 3 by itself, so a CLI can report that it could not
parse its arguments and still run the restore underneath — that case is now
asserted on the bytes.
Suite 1752 -> 1777, 0 fail. Frozen tests/snapshots/v5.0.0 untouched. Dogfooded
through the templates' own command lines against a sandboxed HOME, including the
machine-wide arm: refused with the file unchanged, then restored under
--approve-scope.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Logq8GGWKhtyDem63FTEnG
`write-scope.mjs` has existed since M-BUG-41, but only one writer ever called
it. Measured 2026-08-12: 9 files under `scanners/` write to disk, 1 imported
the gate; 21 command templates, 17 mention a write, 5 call `write-scope-cli`.
Five templates paraphrasing one policy is the shape that put the lever table in
five copies (#61) — one level up.
The defect was never "8 ungated writers = 8 bugs". Four of them write the
plugin's own bookkeeping and must STAY ungated: a gate that fires on every run
gets switched off, and then it guards nothing. The defect is that nothing
declared WHICH, so the question was answered by reading, and answered
differently each time it was asked.
`tests/lib/write-gate-coverage.test.mjs` makes the answer structural: every
writer either imports the gate or holds an EXEMPT entry naming where the bytes
land. Seen RED against today's tree before the fix (4 ungated writers), and
each of its four assertions was separately seen red against its own defect.
Two premises in the plan text were falsified by measuring them first:
- `scan-orchestrator` was carried as "plugin-managed, legitimately exempt".
`--save-baseline` derives its path from the SCAN TARGET, so `--global`
lands `~/.claude/.config-audit-baseline.json` — user-scope, require-ok. It
is gated. `lib/baseline.mjs` is the genuinely exempt one.
- the first sweep scored 9 writers with a regex that could not match
`writeFileSync(`, so `lib/backup.mjs` — a real writer — read as clean. The
guard covers sync and async forms, strips comments before matching, and
asserts non-emptiness so a regex that stops matching cannot make every
other assertion vacuously green (#63, #64).
Gated: fix-engine, rollback-engine, campaign-export-cli, scan-orchestrator.
All five call sites share ONE reduction, `evaluateWriteTargets` — four copies
of classify/strongestGate/dedup is the drift this exists to prevent.
`campaign export` still DISCLOSES rather than refuses: cross-repo is by design
there, and tightening it into a refusal would break the feature. A dry run is
still not a write, so it is never gated (#63). A refusal is a verdict about a
config that WAS examined, so it rides in the payload and keeps the 0/1/2 exit
contract (#62) — and the verdict now reaches the success payload too, since
stderr is discarded by `2>/dev/null` (F3's class).
commands/fix.md carries `--approve-scope` from the answer the user gives, with
the rule stated where it can be read: classifying is not approving.
Dogfooded end to end: a target outside the session root refuses with zero bytes
written, then applies under `--approve-scope`.
Suite 1703 -> 1707/0. Frozen v5.0.0 + default-output snapshots: 0 changed files.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Pkn22uGCgk6QZA738zNmHL
Pipeline step 4 dogfood. `/config-audit rollback` could not see a single one of
the four real backups on this machine, and reported "Backup not found" for one
that was sitting right there.
Four defects, one root: nothing agreed on where a backup lives or what its
manifest looks like.
- M-BUG-22 `lib/backup.mjs` resolved `~/.config-audit/backups` (pre-v2.2.0)
while every command, agent and doc uses `~/.claude/config-audit/backups`.
The auto-backup hook and fix-cli wrote to the first, implement to the second,
rollback read only the first. Canonical root now, with the legacy root kept
readable so older backups stay listable and restorable (`legacy: true`).
- M-BUG-25 `parseManifest` understood only the engine's quoted `original_path:`
spelling, but implement hand-builds its manifest with `- backup:`/`original:`/
`sha256:`. Every implement-made backup parsed to zero files and restoreBackup
returned `{restored: [], failed: []}` — a success-shaped no-op. Both formats
parse now, and a manifest with unparseable entries throws instead of
pretending to succeed.
- M-BUG-23 both session hooks watched `~/.config-audit/sessions`, which does not
exist; sessions live under `~/.claude/`. "Check for active sessions" had never
fired once. It fires now.
- M-BUG-24 the suite called createBackup() against the developer's real home —
it had left nine stray backups there, and cleanupOldBackups() deletes past ten.
Root is overridable via CONFIG_AUDIT_BACKUP_ROOT; both test files use it.
Rollback still cannot delete files implement CREATED — no backup can hold a file
that never existed. It no longer does so silently: manifests carry a `created:`
list, restoreBackup returns `createdNotRemoved`, and rollback.md requires the
report. Automatic deletion is a destructive action and needs its own design.
Verified against backup 20260717_032636 on a throwaway copy: all three files
restore byte-exact (sha256 match), zero writes outside the copy, backup dir
unmodified. Suite 1382 -> 1398/0; frozen v5.0.0 snapshots untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SejM9RQAa1Hfuq7Ek2WfFr
