`has_todo = "TODO" in text` — a bare whole-file substring. The new L0 check
`placeholder-guard-coupling/check.sh` ENUMERATES placeholder idioms as data
(`SEED = ["TBD","TODO","FIXME",...]`) because detecting them is its entire job, so
the harness classified a 32-assertion executable check as a TODO scaffold.
Consequence: R-STATE-03 — SAFETY-CRITICAL — reported `exec=1 scaffold=1` and
`not-derivable`, because status.py requires all of a requirement's tagged tests to
be proven. A safety requirement mis-reported by a substring match, plus a standing
--strict-coverage conflict that a previous engineer worked AROUND by rewording
prose instead of fixing the detector.
Replaced with two REDUNDANT structural signals, derived from the corpus (all 43
tests read), not invented:
1. `# STATUS: scaffold` with the state as the FIRST token after `STATUS:`. Exactly
3 tests declare it — onboarding-completeness, alerting, gitops-drift — and they
are exactly the three real scaffolds. 19 others declare EXECUTABLE/RUNNABLE, so
a loose `.*scaffold` would have matched prose.
2. A TODO/FIXME marker CARRYING A MESSAGE in the body, where the body starts after
the header comment block. A marker that is the ENTIRE content of a quoted
literal is data, not a note, and is blanked before the scan. Every genuine
scaffold marker in the corpus carries a message, so mid-body comments still count.
The line-322 intent is preserved exactly: each file is classified on its own
structure, either signal in either file sets scaffold + annotation_conflict, the
`executable: "true"` annotation is consulted only AFTER the body verdict, and
ambiguity still only downgrades. Vocabulary stays TODO/FIXME only — TBD/PLACEHOLDER
are excluded because two checks use them in real executable code.
NON-VACUITY, and the redundancy is the point: deleting the `# STATUS: scaffold` line
from all three real scaffolds still catches all three via the body rule. The decisive
perturbation is the reverse — the exact file that caused the bug, degraded to a
TODO-only body while KEEPING its `STATUS: EXECUTABLE` header, its idiom-naming header
prose and its `executable: "true"` annotation, is caught as a scaffold WITH the
annotation conflict raised. The annotation still cannot outrank the body.
TAGGING: the agent RECOMMENDED KEEPING `R-STATE-03` on placeholder-guard-coupling and
reversed my lean, on a ground I had missed and which is load-bearing:
ci/touched-requirements.sh maps `bootstrap/*` -> R-STATE-03, and `run.sh
--requirements` resolves R-IDs to test dirs THROUGH THESE LABELS. Removing the tag
would reopen the exact merge-gate hole a984442 closed. It also measured the
counterfactual — with the tag removed R-STATE-03 becomes `stale-proof`, not `proven`
— so the tag is not what holds PROVEN at zero.
R-STATE-03 before -> after: `exec=1 scaffold=1` / not-derivable + strict conflict, to
`exec=2 scaffold=0` / not-derivable with an ACCURATE reason (no ledger row for the L0
check; dr-restore is stale-proof).
LEDGER MECHANISM CONFIRMED CORRECT, not worked around. R-STATE-02's node-loss proof
(sha 57d4df8c) went stale because a984442 touched its evidence set — attributed
precisely to the single path `ci/touched-requirements.sh`. Fail-closed and by design.
Re-proving needs a real L3 run recorded from a clean tree at HEAD-or-later: a
live-cluster action.
OBSERVATION FOR LATER (not changed): scan_implementation counts
ci/touched-requirements.sh as implementation evidence for EVERY R-ID it names, so any
edit to that dispatch table invalidates every proof it mentions. Both current
stale/not-derivable verdicts trace to that one file. Fail-closed is the right
direction; whether a CI path-map should be implementation evidence is a separate call.
VERIFIED BY ME: `status.py --selftest` PASS (8 new assertions, both directions);
`--status --strict-coverage` exit 1 -> 0; `--layer l0` 11/11; the three
`STATUS: scaffold` files are exactly the three real scaffolds; kyverno L0 29/29 and
the full L0 stage green IN THE CONTAINER (the agent saw the stage skip on the host,
where the pinned kyverno CLI is absent). Full CI gate PASS. Counts unchanged:
coverage 48/51, scaffold-only 4, PROVEN 0 (stale 1).
Refs R-TEST-01, R-TEST-04, R-TEST-05, R-STATE-03.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
jakman85andClaude Opus 5
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