fix(driver-sql): canonical ISO-8601-Z audit timestamps on SQLite (ADR-0074)

[os-zhuang]

Problem

On SQLite the driver's two write paths disagreed on how they stored the builtin created_at/updated_at audit columns:

• INSERT relied on the column default defaultTo(knex.fn.now()) → CURRENT_TIMESTAMP → '2026-06-26 10:23:40' (space-separated, no millis, no zone).
• UPDATE stamped toISOString().replace('T',' ').replace('Z','') → '2026-06-26 10:23:40.246' (space-separated, with millis, no zone).

Both are timezone-naive. A zone-less, space-separated string is not ISO-8601, so Date.parse (V8) reads it as local time. On a non-UTC runtime a stored UTC wall-clock silently shifts by the host offset when read back — corrupting every new Date(updated_at) comparison. This surfaced as the objectos kernel freshness probe never evicting on a UTC+8 self-hosted EE: a shifted updated_at landed before the absolute builtAtMs, so the per-env kernel reported "fresh" and publishes/installs/config toggles didn't take effect until the LRU TTL expired. (The cloud consumer was already hardened defensively; this is the deeper storage-side fix.)

Note: the "INSERT stores …Z" framing only held for caller-stamped tables (e.g. sys_metadata writes ISO-Z via toISOString()) — and update() then clobbered that back to the naive format, which is the actual mechanism. A SQL-level ORDER BY updated_at (objectql metadata load) also means fixing only update() would mix formats on disk (space 0x20 < T0x54) and mis-order rows, so insert and update had to change together.

Fix (packages/plugins/driver-sql/src/sql-driver.ts)

• update() → SQLite stamps new Date().toISOString() (canonical ISO-8601 with Z).
• create() / bulkCreate() / upsert() → new stampInsertTimestamps() fills missing created_at/updated_at with the same canonical instant. Applied app-side (not via a DDL default) so existing tenant databases are fixed immediately — a column-default change only affects newly created tables.
• upsert() → created_at is now insert-only (a conflicting merge() never overwrites it; updated_at still advances).
• formatOutput() → idempotent tolerant reader repairs any legacy/raw zone-naive audit timestamp to ISO-8601-Z on read (interpreting the stored wall-clock as UTC). No data migration needed; mirrors the existing Field.date/numeric read-repair. Field.datetime-typed audit columns stored as epoch-ms INTEGER pass through untouched.

Postgres/MySQL are unchanged (native now() stores a real zone-aware TIMESTAMP).

Verification

• New regression suite sql-driver-timestamp-format.test.ts (10 cases incl. the freshness-probe regression, idempotent read-repair, no on-disk mixing, upsert created_at immutability).
• driver-sql full suite: 217 pass. The 3 date/time tests flagged as at-risk don't actually pin the updated_at format and pass unchanged.
• Downstream green: objectql 64 (optimistic locking via updated_at + integration), service-analytics 164 (created_at bucketing), dogfood gate 173, service-messaging 129, service-job 36, service-settings 128, service-storage 48.
• eslint clean; tsup DTS (type) build passes.

Docs / release

• ADR-0074 (docs/adr/0074-canonical-audit-timestamp-storage-on-sqlite.md), building on ADR-0053.
• Changeset: @objectstack/driver-sql patch.

Follow-up (scoped out, tracked separately): user-declared datetime fields with a NOW() default still take the naive CURRENT_TIMESTAMP default on SQLite.

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
spec	Ready	Preview, Comment	Jun 26, 2026 10:57am

[github-actions]

📓 Docs Drift Check

This PR changes 1 package(s): @objectstack/driver-sql.

8 hand-written doc(s) reference the affected code and may need an implementation-accuracy re-verification:

• content/docs/concepts/core/plugins.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)
• content/docs/concepts/implementation-status.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)
• content/docs/concepts/terminology.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)
• content/docs/getting-started/glossary.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)
• content/docs/guides/driver-configuration.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)
• content/docs/guides/packages.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)
• content/docs/protocol/objectos/index.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)
• content/docs/protocol/objectos/lifecycle.mdx(via @objectstack/driver-sql)

Advisory only. To re-verify, run the docs-accuracy-audit workflow scoped to these files:
node scripts/docs-audit/affected-docs.mjs origin/main → pass the list as args.docs.