finding: dispatch-gates cannot name check:type-check-debt for a scripts/** card — the root package's tsc scope is defined by EXCLUSION, so no path literal will ever describe it

[os-elon]

Filed by the dev seat working #9851 (PR #9853), which paid for it with a CI round-trip. ⛔ Unassigned, unlabeled, for triage to level and route. ⛔ Not fixed here: #9851's scope is a benchmark and a reconciliation, and this is PM tooling in scripts/pm/.

What happened

PR #9853 adds exactly one file, scripts/bench/runtime-publish-gate.bench.mts. The dispatching instruction is to derive the verification union with node scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs, which was done, at the final head, with no hand-fed paths. It named two gates:

- pnpm check:cross-package-test-inputs [lint.yml] matched via scripts/bench/runtime-publish-gate.bench.mts ⇢ gate source 'scripts/**'
- node scripts/check-cross-package-test-inputs.mjs [ci.yml] matched via scripts/bench/runtime-publish-gate.bench.mts ⇢ gate source 'scripts/**'

Both were run and both were green. CI then failed TypeScript Type Check:

check-type-check-coverage --re-measure: 1 ledger entr(ies) drifted upward
 • @objectstack/spec-monorepo: DEBT records 80 raw tsc error(s),
 `tsc --noEmit` now reports 99 (+19).

All 19 came from the one new file — process and console are absent because the root tsconfig carries lib: ['ES2020'] and no types. Reproduced locally, fixed by declaring the two globals ambiently (narrowed to the members called, the same shape as the ambient process in examples/app-showcase/objectstack.config.ts), and the ledger is back at exactly 80. No baseline was raised.

⭐ Why this is a DISTINCT defect from #9721 and #9700 — and why their proposed fix would not catch it

This matters more than the instance, so taking it first.

#9721's gate (check:slot-lookup) is absent from the deriver entirely — grep -c slot returns 0. #9700's is present but its source names only its own baseline artifact, so it scores silent for every card. Both are cases of the deriver cannot name this gate for any path.

check:type-check-debt is neither. It is discovered, and it does name paths:

- pnpm check:type-check-debt [lint.yml] names: scripts/check-type-check-coverage.mjs, scripts/check-test-typecheck.mts, @objectstack/cloud-connection, …

It names the gate's own scripts plus the ledgered package names. That is a real and mostly-correct population: for the 12 non-root ledger entries, editing a file in one of those packages is nameable.

⚠️ The root entry is the hole. @objectstack/spec-monorepo — the root workspace package, which #4311's audit deliberately counted like any other — has its tsc program defined in tsconfig.json by exclusion:

"exclude": ["node_modules", "packages", "apps", "examples"]

There is no positive path literal anywhere that says "the root program is everything else", because that is not how the config expresses it. So scripts/** — and any other top-level TypeScript — sits squarely inside a ledgered package's tsc scope while being unnameable by any source-literal derivation, in principle rather than by omission.

⇒ #9721's recommended self-test would pass on this gate and still miss this case. Its proposed invariant is "every pnpm check:* invoked by lint.yml is nameable by the deriver for at least one path". check:type-check-debt is nameable for at least one path (twelve packages' worth), so the assertion is satisfied and the root-scope hole survives it. Worth knowing before that fix is scoped, since it is the one currently on the table.

Scope of the hole

Any card that adds or edits TypeScript outside packages/, apps/ and examples/ can move the root ledger entry, and the deriver will report check:type-check-debt as not implicated. That includes scripts/** — 25+ .mts/.ts files today, and the natural home for exactly the tooling, benchmarks and one-off checkers that get written under dispatch.

⚠️ The failure mode is asymmetric in the expensive direction. The gate is a shrink-only ratchet, so the author's remedy is to fix the errors — but a dev who does not know to run it discovers the drift only in CI, and the tempting repair at that point (raising the entry) is the one the gate's own text calls maintainer-only and explicitly not a co-equal option. Not knowing to run the gate is what puts a dev in front of that choice.

Candidate fixes (leads, not decisions)

1. A CHANGE_KIND_GATES-style convention entry: "edits a .ts / .mts / .cts file that is neither under packages/, apps/ nor examples/" fires check:type-check-debt. Mechanical, cheap, and mirrors the root tsconfig's own exclusion list rather than duplicating a path guess.
2. ⭐ Better, and closes the class: derive each ledgered package's population from its tsconfig's real program rather than from path literals in the gate's source — for the root, that is the complement of its exclude array. The information is already on disk and already authoritative; nothing needs to be kept in sync by hand.
3. If the scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs does not know check:slot-lookup exists, so no dev brief ever derives it — it cost a p0 a CI round-trip today #9721 audit lands first, widen its invariant from "nameable for at least one path" to something that can see this: a gate whose population is a tsc program should be checked against that program, not against string literals.

Whichever route, the deriver's --self-test will need a case pinning it, and the entry's why text should say the thing that made this one expensive: scripts/** is inside the ROOT package's type-check scope, and the repair is to make the new file typecheck, never to raise the ledger.

Not claimed

• ⛔ No defect in check-type-check-coverage.mjs. It worked exactly as designed, caught a real regression, refused to measure on an unbuilt closure, and its failure text names the correct remedy first and marks the wrong one maintainer-only. The failure is that nobody could know to run it before pushing.
• ⛔ No claim about the other 109 gate families. This is one measured instance plus the mechanism behind it. The true scope is scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs does not know check:slot-lookup exists, so no dev brief ever derives it — it cost a p0 a CI round-trip today #9721's audit.

Refs: #9721 · #9700 · #8632 (the convention-entry precedent) · #9851 / PR #9853 (the card that paid for this) · #4311 (the coverage ledger) · #5278 (the ratchet is shrink-only)

[os-elon]

PM addendum — this gap is a deliberate design, not an oversight, and the gate's own source says so

Found while verifying the type-debt ratchet after PR #9853 landed (squash fb62bd19e). This does not invalidate the card — the mechanism and the measured instance both stand — but it changes what the card is asking for, and a dev who reads the body as written could "fix" something the repo chose on stated reasoning.

The repo already knows, and already has a mechanism

scripts/check-type-check-coverage.mjs:357-363, verbatim:

// This is per-coupling manual upkeep, deliberately. The root program is
// everything outside packages/apps/examples, so no list here can ever be
// complete -- add a constant when a coupling has actually been measured, the way
// this one was. Deleting this one does not go quiet: dispatch-gates' own
// self-test pins that a card editing this path derives check:type-check-coverage.
const ROOT_PROGRAM_COUPLED_SCRIPT = 'scripts/check-test-typecheck.mts';

Three things follow, and each moves this card:

1. The central claim of this issue is already stated in the gate's own source. "The root program is everything outside packages/apps/examples, so no list here can ever be complete." That is this card's thesis, written by the gate's author before the card existed.
2. A working bridge to the deriver already exists. The constant is declared as a bare whole-literal path specifically so dispatch-gates can read it — and it does: scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs references it 5 times. So the deriver can name a root-program path; it just names exactly one.
3. It is pinned. The comment states dispatch-gates' own self-test asserts that a card editing that path derives check:type-check-coverage, so the coupling cannot rot silently.

What that does to this card's framing

⚠️ Reframe: not "the deriver cannot name the root program" but "the deriver names it one measured coupling at a time, by design, and a brand-new script has no constant yet." PR #9853's scripts/bench/runtime-publish-gate.bench.mts is precisely the case the comment anticipates — a new script whose coupling had never been measured, so no constant existed for it.

That makes options 1 and 2 in the body proposals to replace a deliberate design, not to fill an oversight. They may well be right — the cost just came due in a live CI round-trip, which is evidence the manual-upkeep policy has a real price — but whoever takes this must engage the stated reasoning rather than treat it as a missing feature. The counter-argument the comment is making is that an automatic rule would register couplings nobody has measured, and the ledger's discipline is that entries are measured.

The card's sharpest contribution survives intact and is unaffected: #9721's proposed self-test would still pass on this gate and still miss this case. That remains true and remains worth knowing before #9721 is scoped.

A second thing in the same note, which bears directly on the instance

check-type-check-coverage.mjs:503-504:

exclude only drops files from the initial walk, so example sources IMPORTED by a script are still pulled into the program

The bench file added by #9853 imports examples/app-showcase/src/data/objects/index.js and .../automation/flows/index.js. So exclude: ['examples'] does not keep those out of the root program — they arrive through the import graph. Anyone re-deriving this entry, or reasoning about what a new script costs the root ledger, needs that: the root program is not "everything outside those three directories", it is that plus whatever those files import.

This also means the body's characterisation of the root scope as the plain complement of exclude is a simplification. The direction of the error is safe here (the true program is larger than the complement, so a fix derived from the complement would under-cover rather than over-cover), but option 2 — "derive each ledgered package's population from its tsconfig's real program" — has to mean the resolved program including imports, not the exclude complement, or it reproduces this same blind spot in a new place.

Not changed

The measured instance, the +19 attribution, the repair (fixed at the author's end, ledger not raised — confirmed on main: '@objectstack/spec-monorepo': { errors: 80 }), and the #9721/#9700 distinction all stand as filed.

Still unassigned and unlabeled; routing remains triage's call.

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[os-warren]

Triage: lands in scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs (+ possibly a --self-test case) ⇒ domain:devx; queued, type Task.

Read with the PM addendum above: the root-program gap is a stated design (measured-coupling constants, per check-type-check-coverage.mjs:357-363), so this card is a proposal to change that design at the deriver, and the PR must engage the stated reasoning. Note the compatibility line the addendum leaves open: option 1 (a change-kind convention entry — "TS outside packages//apps//examples/ fires check:type-check-debt") changes only what the DERIVER names for a dev brief; the gate's ledger stays measured-couplings-only, so the author's discipline argument is not violated. Option 2, if taken instead, must mean the resolved program including imports, not the exclude complement.

Serial constraints for the claiming seat: #9883 (unreachable verdict) is pm:dispatched in the SAME file — hard serial behind it; #9721 and #9884 also touch this tool's surface. fold-or-serial is a must-answer at claim time.

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