The bounded-cost NFR asks for explicit ceilings on BOTH axes - max
conversation turns and max discovered dimensions. The turn axis got
MAX_CONV_TURNS, a ledger-backed reader and a PreToolUse enforcer. The
discovery axis got one sentence in Phase 4.5 prose ("append candidates only
while the whole list stays at or below maxDimensions: 8") with no constant
of its own, no reader, and no test that a run exceeding it is caught. That
is the brief_reviewer_iter_cap shape the operator decision warned about: a
cap nothing reads.
checkDimensionCeiling() is the reader, exposed on the CLI as
--check-dimensions N (exit 0 within, exit 1 rejected), and Phase 4.5 step 3
now calls it once the final list is settled instead of merely describing the
bound.
Three deliberate choices:
- The ceiling IS MAX_TOTAL_DIMENSIONS, the constant that sizes the turn
budget. Both axes read one settings.json:16 value, so they cannot end up
enforcing different numbers - a second constant is how that drift starts.
- An unreadable count is REJECTED ('abc', null, undefined, {}, -1, NaN,
non-integers). A cost ceiling that waves through what it cannot measure is
not a ceiling.
- --check-dimensions requires no run id, effort or VOYAGE_STORM_ENABLED.
Phase 4.5 never calls the budget gate - that is why its skip-guard reads
the flag directly - so the ceiling check must not inherit the gate's
preconditions.
The mitigation the review already verified still holds and is unchanged:
MAX_TOTAL_DIMENSIONS bounds actual retrieval cost regardless of how many
dimensions discovery appends. What was missing was anything that FAILS on a
list over the bound, and now a run over it is rejected by exit code.
Review finding 96a3ee51152dfe72aca703f771843f2f3639e7b6 (MINOR).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
allowTurn() appends BEFORE the turn runs, so during granted turn N the
ledger holds N records. The hook denied at `used >= budget`, which blocked
every tool call of the FINAL granted turn: the primitive granted B turns
and the harness permitted B-1. Worse, an exhausted run therefore always
terminated through an exit-2 tool denial instead of the graceful "cap
exhausted" exit at commands/trekresearch.md - and the prose says in as
many words that exit 2 is not exit 1, so the model was pushed out through
the one exit it is told NOT to treat as a cap.
The review recommended denying at `used > budget`. Taken alone that fixes
the count and breaks the hook: once the O_EXCL claim (previous commit)
makes a breached ledger impossible, `granted > budget` can no longer fire,
and the case this hook exists for - the loop consults the gate, is denied,
and issues the tool call anyway - would be allowed. A deny branch that
cannot be reached is a dead security claim, which is the same thing S82
removed two of rather than leave standing.
So the denial itself became a record. allowTurn() appends a tombstone
{runId, exhausted: true} when it denies for budget, and the hook denies on
the tombstone. Both properties now hold at once:
granted == budget, no tombstone -> turn B is in flight -> ALLOW
tombstone present -> the gate already said no -> DENY
granted > budget -> breached, any cause -> DENY
A tombstone is not a turn: readLedger reports {granted, exhausted}
separately so it can never consume budget. allowTurn short-circuits on an
existing tombstone, so a hammered gate neither re-walks every slot nor
grows the ledger. The tombstone write is best effort on purpose - the
denial is already the correct answer, so a ledger that cannot take the
record must not turn a denial into a grant.
The parallel-boundary test now asserts GRANTED turns rather than raw
ledger lines, because the denied callers legitimately add tombstones.
Review finding 8eb53458ac3efec778094f9f03b09e1cc1077a09 (MINOR).
Operator decision: tombstone over the literal recommended_action.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
countTurns-then-appendFileSync is read-then-write. N callers that all
observe used == budget-1 all decide to grant, and the bound is exceeded
by N-1. The comment above allowTurn asserted "Append-only: never
read-modify-write" and named the concurrent case - Phase 4.5/5 may spawn
several agents in a single message - as the reason it had to be. The
decision path was exactly what the comment denied, so the concurrency
claim had nothing under it.
Each grant now creates <data root>/trekresearch-loop-claims/<runId>-<slot>.claim
with flag 'wx' (O_CREAT|O_EXCL) before appending. The kernel picks the
winner per slot, slot numbers are bounded by the budget, and each can be
created exactly once - so total grants for a run cannot exceed the budget
however many callers arrive together. The ledger count now only says
where to start looking for a free slot.
Two of the three tests are deterministic and do not race anything: they
assert the invariant directly by pre-creating claims, including the state
a mid-append competitor leaves behind (ledger 7, slots 1-8 claimed, budget
8 -> deny). That matters because the third test - six real concurrent shim
processes at the boundary - passed even BEFORE the fix, since process
startup jitter serialised them. A race test that passes by luck is not
evidence, so it ships as a real-world regression guard next to the two
that are.
Stated rather than left to be discovered: claim files are empty, at most
budget per run, and never cleaned - the same standing as the ledger, which
also grows for the life of the data root. Reusing a runId across runs, or
two runIds colliding after filename sanitisation, both deny a turn, which
is the safe direction for a budget control.
Review finding 3994491ef1fdba6e0e3645b5b713cbdbdeb2b328 (MINOR).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
An unreadable ledger returned 0 from countTurns in BOTH the primitive and
the hook, so a run whose ledger existed but could not be read (EISDIR,
EACCES, EIO) was handed the full budget again on every call - unbounded.
research-loop-cap.mjs argues against exactly that three lines above the
code that did it, and its missing-DIRECTORY case already failed closed.
The unreadable-FILE case now agrees with it.
Only ENOENT still counts as zero turns spent: that is the legitimate
first-turn state, and the reason this cannot just throw on any read
failure.
The hook no longer carries its own countTurns. It imports the primitive's
exported readLedger(), the same way it already resolves the data root
through resolveDataRoot() - a reader and a writer with private copies of
the counting rule is how a hook ends up enforcing a different bound than
the gate it backs. In scope + cannot count now exits 2 with a message
that says counting failed, not that the budget is spent.
Fail-closed stays scoped to the loop: a test pins that an unreadable
ledger in an OUT-of-scope session still exits 0, because a PreToolUse
hook that over-blocks bricks every session on the box.
Also dropped the existsSync pre-check before the read - readFileSync's
own ENOENT carries the same information without a second syscall that
can disagree with the read that follows it.
Review finding 5e1c6230f48ead38fa77cd8f4b06bfdc2b5b7bbf (MINOR).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
A fractional TREKRESEARCH_MAX_CONV_TURNS below 1 cleared the `n <= 0`
guard on its raw value and only then floored, so '0.5' and '0.9' became
0 and the budget became 0 x MAX_TOTAL_DIMENSIONS = 0: every turn denied,
the loop silently dead rather than bounded.
README.md:229 and docs/architecture.md:15 both promise that invalid
values fall back to 3. docs/command-modes.md:42 enumerated "empty,
non-numeric, zero, or negative" and happened to sidestep the case; the
enumeration is now exhaustive about it.
Measured before: '0.5' -> 0, '0.9' -> 0, '2.7' -> 2, '' / 'abc' / '-2'
/ '0' -> 3. Measured after: '0.5' -> 3, '0.9' -> 3, '2.7' -> 2, and
'Infinity' -> 3 (it is not a cap either).
A cap of 0 is not a narrower cap, it is an off switch. The tests pin
both directions: the fraction falls back, and allowTurn cannot report a
budget of 0 under it.
Review finding fc516799e6042e246a4b62d81903ac27c2efab84 (MINOR).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA is empty in the Bash tool's process env, and the Phase 5
bash snippet is the cap's only caller. resolveLedgerPath() returned null there
and allowTurn() failed closed, so the budget gate denied turn 1 of every real
run: the loop this delivery exists to bound could never spend a turn, and the
pre-registered measurement could not be run at all.
resolveDataRoot() is now the single root for everything the loop writes --
CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA when the harness sets it, ~/.claude/voyage when it does
not. Three consumers resolve through it, which is the point: the cap ledger,
the PreToolUse hook's scope-marker lookup, and the command's bash snippets.
A writer and a reader that resolved the root separately are what made the
enforcement hook allow unconditionally in every real run while CLAUDE.md and
docs/architecture.md called it enforcing.
Same root cause, same commit:
- Marker write and remove now share ONE absolute-path guard and one root; the
write requires a non-empty CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID before composing the path
(unset, the marker was named `.json`, which no lookup matches and no TTL
sweep cleans up).
- The per-turn gates resolve VOYAGE_ROOT with a plugin-cache fallback and
reserve exit 2 for "gate could not run". Interpolating an empty
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} ran `node /lib/...` -> exit 1, which the contract read
as "privacy gate says no" -- an unsatisfiable rewrite loop no query could
clear.
Two now-unreachable deny branches are removed rather than left as dead safety
claims (allowTurn's no_plugin_data_dir; the hook's uncountable-ledger deny).
The fail-closed stance stays where it is still real: a ledger that cannot be
WRITTEN denies the turn.
Verified end-to-end through the real bash snippets and the real hook with both
variables stripped and HOME sandboxed: marker written under the fallback root,
8 turns spent, 9th denied, hook exits 2, and exits 0 again after removal.
Note: the fallback exit-2 branch fires against the installed v5.9.1 cache,
which predates lib/util/research-loop-cap.mjs -- correct behaviour, and it
clears when the plugin is reinstalled.
Review findings 2670c10a, fbd6d534, 93550dfb.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011vPSXe88qp5aqWUqbDNWoF
