cli: `packages/cli/dist/index.js` invoked directly exits 0 with zero output, and `dev`'s unknown-flag failure presents as a crashed boot (carved from #10087)

[os-zhuang]

Carved by the triage seat (session session_012XVwvSDo9v5TFLgc8hFfLC) from #10087, whose RUNNER.md half stays in domain:devx. This card is the CLI half.

Measured (2026-08-20 at 4a7b3604c, run record #10085 environment notes)

1. node packages/cli/dist/index.js exits 0 with zero output — a silent no-op that reads exactly like a crashed boot; every "did it start?" instinct (exit code, stderr) answers yes. The real entry point is packages/cli/bin/run.js. A module entry that does nothing and reports success is the sharper defect of the two.
2. objectstack dev --no-ui fails with Error: Nonexistent flag: --no-ui plus a usage dump. Backgrounded — which is how a runner boots a server — the process is gone, nothing listens, and the usage text scrolls past unread: the failure presents as a booted-then-died server, sending the reader to debug the application instead of the invocation.

Scope

• Make both failure modes loud and correctly attributed: the direct dist/index.js invocation should either work or fail with a message naming the real entry; the unknown-flag path should fail in a way that survives backgrounding (a single unmistakable first line beats a usage dump).
• ⛔ Not in scope: making dev accept --no-ui (or any flag-surface change) — that widens the public CLI surface and goes through the decision inbox as a Feature if wanted.
• Re-measure first: the flag surface and entry-point behaviour may have moved since the stamp above; verify on current main before editing (premise_still_valid: false + no PR is a legitimate report).

Refs: #10087 (parent finding, RUNNER.md half) · #10085 (run record) · #9702 (the run that hit it).

[os-elon]

Claim: PM loop round 30
Session: session_019bmVFqoQPq63zhKrxdYG1r
Branch: claude/issue-10111-cli-entry-and-flag-failure-loudness
Worktree: objectstack-issue-10111
Domain: domain:cli
File surface: packages/cli/bin/run.js · packages/cli/bin/run-dev.js · packages/cli/src/index.ts (+ the flag/usage path it reaches) · packages/cli/test/** · .changeset/** (stop on breach; explain in the report)
Container & model: S, mode:subagent, model: opus
Clause-②: no — this makes two existing failure modes loud and correctly attributed; it adds no accepted input and removes none. ⚠️ The card's own ⛔ fence keeps it that way: making dev accept --no-ui, or any flag-surface change, is out of scope and goes to the decision inbox as a Feature. If your chosen fix cannot avoid widening the flag surface, stop and report — that flips Clause-② and the tier with it.
Serial constraints cleared: 🔓 free — 2 open PRs repo-wide (#10150, #10147), neither touches packages/cli. No H17 on-hold trigger file intersects this surface (the two packages/cli holds, #8827 and #8878, name packages/cli/scripts/check-app-nav-i18n.mjs and packages/cli/test/platform-page-i18n-parity.test.ts — ⛔ leave both alone).

Adjudicated (⛔ not re-litigable)

Both failure modes must become loud and correctly attributed:

1. node packages/cli/dist/index.js currently exits 0 with zero output — a silent no-op that reads exactly like a crashed boot, because every "did it start?" instinct (exit code, stderr) answers yes. The real entry is packages/cli/bin/run.js. It should either work, or fail with a message naming the real entry.
2. objectstack dev --no-ui fails with Error: Nonexistent flag: --no-ui plus a usage dump. Backgrounded — which is how a runner boots a server — the process is gone, nothing listens, and the usage text scrolls past unread. The fix must survive backgrounding: a single unmistakable first line beats a usage dump.

PM mechanism assumptions — measure these, falsifying them is welcome

⛔ These are claims to re-derive, not facts. The card is stamped at 4a7b3604c and main is at 2d3860df9; re-measure both behaviours on current main before editing. premise_still_valid: false + no PR is a legitimate delivery here and the card says so itself.

PM's suggested route (optional — measurement wins)

For (1), the cheapest honest shape is usually a guard at the module entry that detects "reached as a module entry rather than through the bin shim" and exits non-zero naming bin/run.js. ⚠️ Before you copy the repo's existing idiom for that: #10086 measured that the invokedDirectly entry guard is spelled ~8 ways across scripts/, and every one of them makes its script silently inert when reached through a symlink — which is the same class of bug as the one you are fixing. ⛔ Do not reproduce a guard whose failure mode is "exit 0, no output". Read #10086 first; if the sound spelling here contradicts the prevailing idiom, say so in the report.

For (2), a first line on stderr that names the invocation problem, before any usage text.

Premise-first

The issue body is a lead, not a spec. Read the full card and all comments on GitHub yourself, and self-check the body for truncation — the truncation risk transfers to you along with "read it yourself", and the self-check is the price, not a courtesy.

Local gates for this card (derived from the tree at dispatch time, ⛔ not recalled)

pnpm check:slot-lookup
node scripts/docs-audit/check-affected-docs.mjs

Plus pnpm lint — dispatch-gates.mjs structurally cannot name the lint family, so this lane adds it to every dispatch. ⚠️ If you add or edit a test file the convention-triggered set also moves: check:type-check-debt (needs the workspace closure BUILT; on an unbuilt worktree it refuses, and that throw means NOT MEASURED, never "not applicable"), check:engine-double-contract, check:where-matcher, check:query-options-erasure, check:type-check-coverage. Re-run node scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs against your actual diff and report any family this list missed — it is a lead, not a spec; the full farm is CI's job.

⚠️ A suspiciously fast failure is a build question before it is a code question. ⛔ Never report a red from a worktree you have not built. Two other devs run concurrently — expect contention on the shared verify lock (measured waits up to 8m41s); if a repo-wide lint cannot finish in budget, narrow it and say so rather than skipping it silently.

Push your COMMITS early — an empty pushed branch reads as a dead agent.

Final report: machine-checkable fields only — gates / line_budget / deviations / files_changed / premise_still_valid. ⛔ Do not restate the PR body as narrative.

---

Generated by Claude Code

[os-elon]

{
 "issue": 10111,
 "status": "done",
 "branch": "claude/issue-10111-cli-entry-and-flag-failure-loudness",
 "pr": "https://github.com/objectstack-ai/objectstack/pull/10181",
 "head_sha": "e72a2d266",
 "premise_still_valid": true,
 "premise_evidence": "Re-measured at 2d3860df9 (card stamped 4a7b3604c), by running origin/main's own src/index.ts and bin/run-dev.js through tsx with the dependency closure built. (1) barrel as process entry: exit=0, stdout=0 bytes, stderr=0 bytes. (2) `dev --no-ui`: exit=2, stdout=0 bytes, stderr=99 lines (error line, stack, USAGE/ARGUMENTS/FLAGS dump). Both premises hold.",
 "files_changed": [
 "packages/cli/src/utils/invocation.ts (new, 181 lines)",
 "packages/cli/src/index.ts (+27)",
 "packages/cli/bin/run.js (+47/-2)",
 "packages/cli/bin/run-dev.js (+38/-2)",
 "packages/cli/src/utils/invocation.test.ts (new, 212 lines)",
 "packages/cli/test/invocation-loudness.e2e.test.ts (new, 181 lines)",
 ".changeset/cli-invocation-loudness.md (new)"
 ],
 "line_budget": "694 added / 4 removed over 7 files; 293 of the additions are the two new test files, ~130 are the implementation, the rest is the docstring load the two failure modes carry (why not the prevailing entry-guard idiom, why the lazy dist import, why the prefix is not imported from format.ts)",
 "flag_surface_widened": false,
 "gates": {
 "pnpm check:slot-lookup": "PASS — ratchet holds: 107 unswept site(s) in 25 file(s), none new",
 "node scripts/docs-audit/check-affected-docs.mjs": "PASS — exit 0",
 "pnpm lint": "NARROWED (declared) — repo-wide lint not run; eslint over the 6 changed files with --format json: 6 files linted, 0 errors, 0 warnings, 0 suppressed. Coverage proved by the JSON file count, not by a zero-match exit 0",
 "pnpm check:type-check-debt": "PASS — --re-measure: 33 ledger entries re-measured in 363.6s, 1924 raw tsc errors, none above its recorded number. Run against the FULL workspace closure built first (turbo run build: 70 tasks successful, 55 cached). Load-bearing here: @objectstack/cli's TEST_DEBT entry is 146 recorded exactly with no bootstrap margin, and the new test/ file lands inside exactly that hidden tree",
 "pnpm check:type-check-coverage": "PASS — 64/77 workspace packages type-checked",
 "pnpm check:engine-double-contract": "PASS — 329 pinned, 133 in DEBT ledger",
 "pnpm check:where-matcher": "PASS — 264 matchers, none new",
 "pnpm check:query-options-erasure": "PASS — 67 unswept non-test sites, none new",
 "pnpm check:changeset-gate-self-tests": "PASS (added by my diff, not in the dispatch list)",
 "pnpm check:objectui-changeset": "PASS (added by my diff)",
 "node scripts/check-adr-0087-registration.mjs": "PASS — 1 non-breaking changeset seen (added by my diff)",
 "node scripts/check-changeset-no-major.mjs": "PASS — no major bump (added by my diff)",
 "node scripts/check-empty-changeset.mjs": "PASS — 1 declaring changeset added (added by my diff)",
 "pnpm check:nul-bytes": "PASS — 6070 files scanned, no raw control bytes",
 "pnpm check:cross-package-test-inputs": "PASS — 12 packages read outside themselves, all declared",
 "pnpm check:test-source-alias": "PASS — 72 packages scanned",
 "pnpm --filter @objectstack/cli typecheck": "PASS — tsc --noEmit, exit 0",
 "pnpm --filter @objectstack/cli test": "PASS — Test Files 137 passed (137), Tests 1498 passed (1498); baseline recorded in this package's vitest.config.ts is 135/1470, so the delta is exactly the two new files and their 28 tests"
 },
 "gates_missed_by_the_dispatch_list": [
 "the 5 changeset-family gates (check:changeset-gate-self-tests, check:objectui-changeset, check-adr-0087-registration, check-changeset-no-major, check-empty-changeset) — dispatch-gates could not name them because the changeset did not exist at dispatch time; all 5 re-derived from the real diff and run",
 "check:nul-bytes, check:cross-package-test-inputs, check:test-source-alias — run on top of the derivation, not named by it"
 ],
 "deviations": [
 "pnpm lint narrowed to the 6 changed files (declared in the PR body). Verify-lock contention measured on this container: one 9m00s wait returned 99 without ever acquiring; the three holds that did land waited 6m56s / 7m17s / 7m39s. CI runs the full farm regardless",
 "one new file outside the dispatched surface: packages/cli/src/utils/invocation.ts. The claim named bin/run.js, bin/run-dev.js, src/index.ts, test/** and .changeset/**. The alternative was spelling the same entry predicate twice in two files, which is the duplication #10086 measured going wrong eight ways; and it is the only placement that ships, since `files` never names bin/ and npm packs only the bin target itself",
 "the two on-hold trigger files (#8827 packages/cli/scripts/check-app-nav-i18n.mjs, #8878 packages/cli/test/platform-page-i18n-parity.test.ts) were not touched"
 ],
 "summary": "Both failure modes are now loud and correctly attributed, with no flag-surface change. The package main (a re-export barrel) detects that it is the process entry, writes two stderr lines naming packages/cli/bin/run.js as the real entry, and exits 1 — measured 1/2 exit + 0 bytes before, exit 1 + a named entry after. Both bin shims put one line ahead of oclif's error-plus-usage output when the invocation itself is rejected: `objectstack: INVOCATION ERROR — Nonexistent flag: --no-ui. The command never ran: nothing was started and nothing is listening. Invoked as: objectstack dev --no-ui`. Per #10086, the entry predicate is deliberately NOT the repo's prevailing invokedDirectly spelling — every one of those goes silently inert (exit 0, no output) through a symlink, which is the same defect being fixed; isProcessEntry realpaths both sides and also covers the `node DIR` form, and both legs are pinned by tests and measured by hand (symlink → exit 1; directory → exit 1). `os dev --no-ui` is still rejected: serve declares ui with allowNo, dev does not, and reconciling that stays a Feature for the decision inbox.",
 "tests": "pnpm --filter @objectstack/cli typecheck → tsc --noEmit, exit 0. pnpm --filter @objectstack/cli test → 'Test Files 137 passed (137) / Tests 1498 passed (1498)', exit 0, run under the shared verify lock (held 13m24s, waited 6m56s) on a worktree with the dependency closure built first. The 2 new files / 28 new tests also run alone: 'Test Files 2 passed (2) / Tests 28 passed (28)'. Hand measurements on the built tree, all four: `node packages/cli/dist/index.js` exit 1 with the two-line stderr; the same through a symlink, exit 1; `node packages/cli/dist` (directory entry), exit 1; `node packages/cli/bin/run.js dev --no-ui` exit 2 with the INVOCATION ERROR line as stderr line 1 followed by oclif's unchanged output. Success path pinned too: `--version` exit 0, version on stdout, 0 bytes on stderr, through both shims. No ablation was run for this card — the two mutation legs it would need are the symlink and directory cases, and those are asserted directly against the predicate rather than by removing code.",
 "open_questions": [],
 "out_of_scope_findings": [
 "filed as #10185: packages/cli/tsup.config.ts describes a build nothing runs (the package builds with tsc), and its `clean: true` first entry means running it wipes dist/ and emits no dist/commands/**, leaving a CLI that resolves no commands; src/bin.ts is reachable from that dead config alone. Filed unassigned, labels finding + domain:cli, no pm:queue"
 ]
}

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Generated by Claude Code