`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
`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
