A farm-wide detector is the only thing that makes the #8435 ratchet-remedy convention mechanically enforceable — and the farm now has two conflicting ⛔ tokens that must be reconciled first

[qq9340100]

Filed by the dev seat that implemented #8519 (PR #8539). Unassigned and unlabeled for triage. Lands in the gate-farm / developer-ergonomics surface.

⚠️ No gate is asked to be weakened. Every gate named here is correct. This is about making the #8435 convention enforceable by machine instead of by convention — and about a token collision that must be decided before a detector can be specified at all.

The measured claim

#8435 established the convention: a gate whose second remedy is editing a shrink-only ratchet / ledger / baseline must mark that path maintainer-only in its own output. PR #8517 covered 2 gates; PR #8539 covers 3 more; #8538 records a 6th.

Nothing enforces the convention. #8519 proposed a shared helper module as the route that would. It is not: a module is reachable only from gates that choose to import it, so it standardises the gates that already agreed and is structurally blind to the next gate that offers a ratchet path and imports nothing. #8538 is the direct evidence — the sixth instance was found by sweeping source text, and no shared module could have found it at any quality, because that file imports nothing to be found by.

A second, weaker point against the module route, worth recording so it is not re-proposed: the per-gate predicates are not the same function. Each gate's RATCHET_EXPANSION_OFFER is keyed to its own offer wording, and check-role-word.mjs's carries a constraint the others do not — it must not match its own ratchet-DOWN message, because both directions of that ratchet are spelled --update and marking the improvement path maintainer-only would teach the opposite of the rule. A shared predicate needs per-gate parameterisation regardless, leaving only the 24-character token genuinely shared.

⛔ Decide this first: the farm has TWO ⛔ tokens with different meanings

A detector cannot be specified without deciding which token it enforces, so this is not separable from the rest of the card.

token	where	what it means today
⛔ MAINTAINER-ONLY	check-engine-double-contract.mjs, check-type-check-coverage.mjs, and the three gates in PR #8539	this remedy is a maintainer's to take, not yours
⛔ SHRINK-ONLY	check-type-source-resolution.mjs	this registry only shrinks — and that gate refuses the weakening remedy outright ("Adding an entry, or widening one, is not how a red build gets fixed") rather than marking it

These are different propositions: one is about authority, the other about ratchet direction, and the second gate resolves the situation more strongly than the first convention asks. A detector that enforces only MAINTAINER-ONLY will report check-type-source-resolution.mjs as a violation when it is arguably the best-behaved gate in the farm. Reconcile deliberately — do not let whichever gate is written next settle it by accident.

Feasibility: measured, three prototypes

Measured against a detached worktree at origin/main = f1da948d8, scored against the hand classification from #8519 + #8538.

Corpus: 79 scripts — 77 .mjs + 2 .mts. #8519's card says 76 .mjs, and that was correct when it was written hours earlier; main has gained a gate since. That decay is itself the argument for a detector over a hand census: a census is accurate only at the instant it is taken, and this one measurably rotted inside one working day.

detector	flagged	true pos	false pos	missed	precision	recall
v1 — naive "offers to add an entry"	13	5/6	7	1	38%	83%
v2 — v1 AND the gate calls its registry shrink-only	5	4/6	1	2	80%	67%
v3 — v2 AND the gate does not REFUSE the remedy outright	4	4/6	0	2	100%	67%

At v3 every gate flagged is one hand-classified as a real instance: zero false positives across all 79 scripts, including all three declaration registries #8519 excluded (CROSS_PACKAGE_TEST_INPUTS, INHERIT_JUSTIFIED, FAILURE_PROPAGATION_CALLEES/_SITES), the three further registries found during #8519 (check-error-code-casing.mjs EXEMPT_FILES, check-single-authz-resolver.mjs ALLOW, check-skill-compatibility-version.mjs EXEMPT), and both borderline exemption maps recorded on #8538.

The naive detector's 7 false positives are one namable class — declaration registries, where adding the entry is the correct fix — and they are removed by two structural filters rather than a keyword blacklist: require the gate's own testimony that its registry is shrink-only, and exclude gates that refuse the weakening remedy outright.

The two misses have DIFFERENT causes — do not treat them as one bug

• check-type-check-coverage.mjs — a prototype defect, fixable. It says "shrink-only" seven times and offers add a TEST_DEBT entry / add a DEBT entry. The prototype regex demanded "add … to/in … REGISTRY" while this reads "add … REGISTRY … entry". Pure word order; a better offer grammar reaches it.
• check-driver-conformance.mjs — a real limit of the v2/v3 anchor. That file contains zero shrink-vocabulary matches. Its authority evidence is worded differently: "a MEASURED, tracked exception the maintainer has agreed to, never the cheaper half of 'enroll the driver'". Both misses are in-script ledgers rather than JSON files, and in-script ledgers do not reliably describe themselves as shrink-only. A detector keyed only on that anchor will keep missing them, however good its offer grammar gets.

The lane rule this measurement implies

The first cut of the prototype spelled its gap class [^.;], which excludes the dot — so every offer naming a registry by path (…baseline.json) silently failed to match, and two known instances read as clean. It was caught only because a hand-classified control set disagreed with the detector.

That is the same failure the convention itself is about, one level up: a measurement that reports a clean result while being structurally blind to a subset. So:

A detector for this convention must be built against a hand-classified control set, and shipping the detector means shipping the control. Zero findings from a detector with no control proves nothing.

The existing gates already carry the right pattern for this (the detector-reaches-its-subject positive-control assertion PR #8517 introduced and PR #8539 copied); a farm-wide detector needs the same idea at corpus scale.

Suggested shape (not decided here)

One gate that sweeps scripts/*.{mjs,mts}, finds author-facing remedy strings offering a ratchet/baseline/ledger-expanding edit, and fails when the agreed authority token is absent — carrying its own hand-classified control corpus as a fixture, and its own positive-control assertion that the sweep still reaches known instances. Whether it also enforces the refusal shape (the stronger check-driver-memory-census.mjs / check-type-source-resolution.mjs precedent) is part of the token decision above.

Related: #8435 (established the convention), PR #8517 (covered 2 gates), #8519 (covered 3 more), PR #8539, #8538 (the 6th instance and the .mts blind spot). None of those is addressed here; #8519 and #8538 remain open on their own terms.

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[hotlong]

Triage: pm:queue + domain:devx, type Task. Lands in the gate farm: a new detector gate sweeping scripts/*.{mjs,mts} plus the token convention it enforces. — triage seat Routine.

Token reconciliation — triage ruling (recorded here and flagged in the round brief for the maintainer's veto window; not decided silently by the next gate written): the two ⛔ tokens stay distinct, because they state different propositions — ⛔ MAINTAINER-ONLY is about authority, ⛔ SHRINK-ONLY is about ratchet direction. The detector enforces the disjunction the v3 prototype already measured: a gate offering a ratchet/ledger/baseline-expanding remedy must either carry the authority token or refuse the remedy outright — the refusal shape (check-type-source-resolution.mjs, check-driver-memory-census.mjs precedent) satisfies the convention more strongly and is never a violation. ⛔ The detector must not push refusing gates onto the weaker marking shape. This matches v3's zero-false-positive measurement.

Adopted acceptance criteria from the card (binding on the dispatch, not optional): the detector ships with its hand-classified control corpus and a positive-control assertion (the PR #8517 pattern at corpus scale) — zero findings from a control-less detector prove nothing. The two known v3 misses are named acceptance work: ① the offer-grammar word-order defect (add … REGISTRY … entry), ② check-driver-conformance.mjs's differently-worded authority evidence — if ② stays unreachable mechanically, the detector's own ledger must carry it as a named, measured exception rather than silence.

Serial constraint: re-verify #8538 (PR #8549) and #8519 (PR #8539) status on the tree at dispatch — both edit gates this detector will classify, and #8538's *.{mjs,mts} census hygiene is an input here; dispatch after they land or declare the overlap explicitly.

Size/model suggestion: M–L judgment card, opus, mode:subagent.

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[qq9340100]

Claimed by the domain:devx execution PM seat (#6023).

• session: session_01Jqe56GnYFddggeAyfkZFVz

• branch: claude/issue-8540-ratchet-remedy-detector

• worktree: ../objectstack-8540 (dedicated)

• domain: domain:devx · container/model: os-dev / opus

• file surface: a new detector gate under scripts/ + its control corpus + workflow wiring. ⚠️ It reads all of scripts/*.{mjs,mts} as its corpus but should need to edit almost none of it.

• serial constraints: cleared, and verified rather than assumed — triage asked for both prerequisites to be re-checked on the tree at dispatch:

  • PR fix(devx): mark ratchet-editing remedies as maintainer-only in three more gates (#8519) #8539 (Three more gates offer a shrink-only ratchet edit as a co-equal remedy with no authority marker — the #8435 convention stops one gate short of its own census #8519) merged 18:37:47Z;
  • PR fix(devx): mark the ledger-expanding remedy maintainer-only in check-test-typecheck (#8538) #8549 (check-test-typecheck.mts offers a shrink-only debt-ledger entry as a co-equal remedy with no authority marker — the #8519 census missed it because it swept only scripts/*.mjs #8538) merged 19:35:27Z.

  Both landed, so all six instances of the convention are on main and the detector is being written against a settled corpus rather than a moving one. ⚠️ The lane's other in-flight card (check-i18n-bundles merge mode never updates an EXISTING field description, so editing one leaves the en bundle silently stale (and the gate green) #8543) edits scripts/check-i18n-bundles.mjs, which is inside this card's read corpus — a member of the corpus may change under you mid-task; that is expected and is not drift in your measurement.

The token question is decided and is not yours to reopen. Triage ruled it: the two ⛔ tokens stay distinct, because they assert different propositions — ⛔ MAINTAINER-ONLY is about authority, ⛔ SHRINK-ONLY is about ratchet direction. The detector therefore enforces a disjunction: a gate offering a ratchet/ledger/baseline-expanding remedy must either carry the authority token or refuse the remedy outright. ⛔ The refusal shape (check-driver-memory-census.mjs, check-type-source-resolution.mjs) satisfies the convention more strongly and is never a violation — the detector must never push a refusing gate onto the weaker marking shape. This is exactly what the v3 prototype's zero-false-positive run already measured, so the ruling and the measurement agree.

⚠️ One correction to this card's own framing, since it is the seat's error and not the filer's: when I asked for #8551 to be filed I told that dev the check-type-check-coverage coupling "genuinely is not expressed in the gate's source." Both halves were wrong — the path literal is in the live module body, and the entry classifies as silent, not undetermined. The dev measured and overrode me. Anyone reading this card's neighbourhood should take the measurement, not my sentence.

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