fix(scripts): gen-sdui-manifest picks a per-run port and proves the server it dumps is its own

[claude]

Fixes#9578

The card's own unverified premise, measured first

The card graded its own severity as conditional and said so: everything turns on whether the pinned vite auto-increments off a busy port or refuses to bind, and it did not exercise that. It could not — .cache/objectui-* is absent from a fresh worktree, so no real vite starts.

Solved by isolating the question instead of the tree. .objectui-sha pins objectui 82a94170c405; that commit's pnpm-lock.yaml resolves exactly one vite, vite@8.2.1. That version installed into a scratch fixture, with the requested port already held:

$ node occupier.mjs 5390 & # stands in for run A's server
$ ./node_modules/.bin/vite dev --port 5390
Port 5390 is in use, trying another one...
VITE v8.2.1 ready in 316 ms
➜ Local: http://localhost:5391/
$ curl -s http://localhost:5390/ # what the wait loop and BASE_URL target
RUN-A-SERVER
$ lsof -nP -iTCP:5391 -sTCP:LISTEN
node 2154 root 21u IPv4 507524 0t0 TCP 127.0.0.1:5391 (LISTEN)

It auto-increments. Consequence (2) on the card is the real one, not consequence (1). Repeated with two real vites rather than a stand-in — the actual two-run scenario — run B logs the same line, binds 5391, and run B's probe target answers http 200 from run A's server.

ss/netstat really are absent; curl and lsof carried the whole measurement, per the note in docs/qa/platform-checklist/RUNNER.md.

The pinned console's own config agrees: apps/console/vite.config.ts at that SHA sets server.port: 5180 and no strictPort anywhere in its chain, so the real path has exactly the behaviour measured in isolation.

The finding that changed the fix: --strictPort alone fixes nothing

The card and the dispatch both treat --strictPort as the cheap half that "converts a silent wrong answer into a visible failure even under the benign reading". Measured, that is false on its own, and the fix would have shipped a placebo if I had stopped at the flag:

$ node occupier.mjs 5390 & # run A, still answering
$ setsid ./node_modules/.bin/vite dev --port 5390 --strictPort > vite.log 2>&1 &
$ cat vite.log
error when starting dev server:
Error: Port 5390 is already in use
$ for _ in $(seq 1 90); do curl -sf "http://localhost:5390/" > /dev/null 2>&1 && break; sleep 1; done
$ curl -s http://localhost:5390/
RUN-A-SERVER

Run B's vite dies loudly — into run B's own log, which nothing reads on the success path — while run A keeps answering. The script's verbatim wait loop breaks on the first iteration, BASE_URL still names the port, and the dump still produces run A's manifest with exit 0. The flag is necessary and it ships, per the ruling; it is not sufficient, and the ruling's stated rationale for it does not hold up.

Why "derive both from one variable" was not the fix either

The dispatch asked me to prove the probe target and the dump target cannot diverge, by deriving both from a single variable. They already were: DUMP_PORT fed the server start, the wait loop and BASE_URL in the version that had this defect. That hypothesis is falsified by the file itself.

The divergence was never between two literals. It was between the port requested and the port bound — --port is a request vite is free to decline. So the structural argument this PR actually rests on has two halves, and each is worthless alone:

1. --strictPort makes the requested port the bound port, or makes our server not exist. It removes the third state — "ours is running, somewhere else".
2. The probe requires the session this run spawned to still be alive before it accepts an answer on that port.

Given (1), "our leader is alive" leaves no third possibility for what is answering on DUMP_PORT: it is ours. Given (2), a dead leader is a refusal, not a fallthrough onto whoever else is listening. Neither half admits the failure the other one closes.

H2: nothing outside this script consumes 5180, so a per-run port is safe

Swept before choosing the shape, because a per-run port is the half that can break callers:

• the only functional occurrence of the port in the repo is DUMP_PORT=5180 in this script;
• the only invoker is pnpm sdui:manifest — CI runs it at .github/workflows/cut-rc.yml:416, and every other mention (packages/spec/scripts/check-react-blocks-declaration-parity.ts, check-generated.ts, the ledger tests) names the command, never the port;
• BASE_URL is set inline per invocation and read only by objectui's scripts/dump-public-manifest.mjs;
• AGENTS.md:145 and two docs mention :5180, but for objectui's own console dev server (cd ../objectui && pnpm --filter @object-ui/console dev) — a different workflow that happens to share the default, and a collision source for this script rather than a consumer of it.

So the per-run port breaks nothing, and it is strictly better than failing the run: two concurrent runs now both succeed instead of one failing loudly.

One consumer detail worth recording, because it is a trap for the next change: dump-public-manifest.mjs defaults to http://localhost:5180 when BASE_URL is absent. That default is the shared port this change exists to stop using, so the script now refuses to proceed with an empty or non-numeric port rather than handing the consumer something it will paper over.

The change

scripts/gen-sdui-manifest.sh, plus one new test file.

• Per-run port.sdui_pick_free_port searches upward from 5180 for a port free on 127.0.0.1 (the interface vite binds; a wildcard listener collides with a loopback bind too, so the probe sees a neighbour either way). SDUI_DUMP_PORT pins one explicitly and is honoured exactly, with no search — an explicit request that quietly lands elsewhere is the defect being removed.
• --strictPort, via sdui_dev_server_cmd, which builds the argv the script spawns. A function rather than an inline command line so the flag is assertable by sourcing the script instead of grepping it.
• sdui_wait_for_own_server replaces the bare curl loop. Liveness is checked before the curl and again after a successful one, since a neighbour's 200 is indistinguishable from ours. A collision now fails in about a second instead of waiting 90 and then answering confidently wrong.
• Per-run log via mktemp, matching the pidfile beside it, and every failure branch now names the qualified path — including the pre-existing Playwright branch, which used to point readers at a file another run may have truncated.
• The probe's curl-not-ss rationale moved into the helper it belongs to rather than being lost.

The failure path is deliberately a refusal: the alternative to failing is dumping whatever else answers on that port, which is the bug.

Pinning it

packages/spec/scripts/gen-sdui-manifest-collision.test.ts sources the script (it returns right after defining its helpers, so no generation runs) and drives the real functions. No vite, no console build — the contract under test is the shell script's. The test picks its own ports through the script's own helper, so it cannot collide with a concurrent agent, which would be a poor look in this PR of all PRs.

Two vacuity guards carry as much weight as the assertions, per the lesson the cleanup test beside it paid for: NEIGHBOUR_BODY proves the neighbour really was answering at the exact URL spelling the script probes, and OUR_LEADER_ALIVE proves our stand-in really was gone. Without them a green "refused" could mean nothing was listening and nothing was checked.

Ablations, each run against the final commit, each turning a different assertion red:

ablation	result
drop --strictPort from the spawned argv	red — expected 'pnpm --filter …' to contain '--strictPort'
revert the probe to the pre-fix curl-only loop	red — expected 'yes' to be 'no' (the original defect, reproduced under test)
restore the fixed /tmp log path	red — expected '1' to be '0'
free-port search returns its base blindly	red — expected '5180' not to be '5180'

The third one is reported only after a correction: its first mutation regex did not match, and the run that "passed" was an ablation that never applied. That is an invalid ablation, not a green one, so it was rewritten and re-run.

Verification

All at 9d06e3c90, the final commit; worktree clean at the time of each run.

• pnpm --filter @objectstack/spec test — 411 files / 10943 tests passed
• pnpm --filter @objectstack/spec typecheck — green, including check:test-typecheck (the new file compiles; debt unchanged at 55 files / 263 errors)
• gates derived from the actual changed paths with node scripts/pm/dispatch-gates.mjs, which named families the dispatch did not because adding a test file moves gates the script path alone does not — check:nul-bytes, check:merge-driver, check:type-source-resolution, check:engine-double-contract, check:where-matcher, check:query-options-erasure, check-affected-docs, and spec check:empty-state / check:liveness / check:strictness-ledger / check:variant-docs — all green
• pnpm --filter '@objectstack/spec^...' build matched no projects: spec has no workspace dependencies, so there is no closure to build. Stated rather than left silent, since a zero-match filter exits 0 and reads like a pass.
• Not measured, deliberately: check:dev-prereqs, check:type-check-coverage, check:type-check-debt. All three need the whole workspace built; here check:dev-prereqs exits 1 with "The workspace is not built — 1 unmet precondition, not a list of problems", reporting 67/67 packages missing dist/. That is the precondition, not a finding about this diff. CI runs them.

One line in the suite output, ✗ the dev server this run started is no longer running., is the new test's own refusal leg printing the script's real diagnostic on the path where it is supposed to refuse. Expected output, not a failure.

H4 sweep — the other concurrency-unsafe script of this shape

scripts/ swept for fixed ports and unqualified /tmp paths used as per-run state. One other hit, filed as #9647 and not touched here:

scripts/publish-smoke.sh defaults SMOKE_PORT to 3210, derives BASE_URL from it, and runs objectstack dev --port "$SMOKE_PORT" --fresh. packages/cli/src/commands/serve.ts auto-shifts off a busy port whenever flags.dev is set — the exact path that script takes — so a concurrent run can smoke-test the neighbour's app. It is better off in two ways (mktemp'd work dir and log; an env override on the port) and I did not measure it end to end, which is why it is a card and not a rider on this PR.

Everything else is clean: downstream-smoke.sh and release-spec-changes.sh already mktemp their per-run state, and the two remaining /tmp hits (check-type-check-coverage.mjs, collect-release-notes.sh) are documentation examples rather than state.

No changeset — flagged, because the dispatch asked for one

The dispatch ruling said to ship a .changeset/*.md. I have not, and this is the one place I depart from it. This PR changes repo tooling and adds a test; it releases nothing. scripts/check-empty-changeset.mjsrejects newly added empty-frontmatter changesets in this repo, so the only way to satisfy the ruling literally is a non-empty changeset naming a package — which would cut a real @objectstack/spec release whose CHANGELOG entry describes a maintainer script that is not in the package. The direct precedent is #9580, which touched these same two files, shipped no changeset, and carried skip-changeset. Same treatment here, label applied.

Out of scope and untouched: #9647 remains open.

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[github-actions]

📓 Docs Drift Check

Nothing in this diff resolved to a documentable surface (no symbol, route or SDK anchor derived from 0 changed package(s)), so this run has no opinion about the docs.

[claude]

✅ PM ACCEPT — #9578 / PR #9670 · Q1 ruled A · and my H3 framing was wrong

Verified independently: 2 files +370/-8, zero governed-surface hits, no non-green gates.

⭐ H1 measured, and the measurement changed the fix — twice

The card refused to grade severity without this and was right to. You measured it in an isolated fixture against the actually pinned vite (8.2.1, from objectui's lockfile at .objectui-sha 82a94170c405), with ss/netstat absent so curl + lsof only:

with 5390 held, vite dev --port 5390 printed "Port 5390 is in use, trying another one…" and bound 127.0.0.1:5391 (lsof), while curl http://localhost:5390/ returned the OTHER server's body

So consequence (2) is the real one: a concurrent run silently dumps the neighbour's manifest with exit 0, and that output feeds the ADR-0082 declaration-parity ratchet. The card's worst case, confirmed by running it rather than by quoting vite's docs.

⛔ And then you falsified my ruling 2, which I had marked non-negotiable

I wrote that --strictPort ships regardless because it "converts a silent wrong answer into a visible failure even under the benign reading." You measured that it does not:

vite dev --port 5390 --strictPort exited 1 with "Error: Port 5390 is already in use"into its own log, yet the script's verbatim 90-iteration wait loop broke immediately and curl on the target still returned run A's body.

Run B's vite dies into run B's log while run A keeps answering on that port. The wait loop cannot tell "my server came up" from "someone's server is up" — so --strictPort alone leaves the silent-wrong-answer fully intact. My "cheap half is independently useful" reasoning was wrong: it is only useful combined with a probe that checks whose server answered.

Shipping the per-run port plus--strictPortplussdui_wait_for_own_server — which requires the session this run spawned to be alive before it accepts an answer on that port — is the correct set, and no two of the three would have done it.

H3 falsified too, and more precisely than I stated it

I said the defect class was "one literal for where I asked the server to be, another consumer assuming the same value," and asked you to prove probe and dump targets could not diverge. You found they were already derived from one variable in the defective version:

the divergence was request-vs-bind, not literal-vs-literal.

That is a materially different bug. Both consumers agreed perfectly about the port they requested; vite silently bound a different one. A fix aimed at my framing — unify the literals — would have changed nothing at all. Reading my hypothesis as a hypothesis rather than a specification is what saved this PR from being a no-op.

Ruling on Q1 (changeset): A — no changeset, skip-changeset.

Third time today, and my template is the problem, not your judgement. This PR releases nothing: scripts/gen-sdui-manifest.sh is maintainer tooling that ships in no package. check-empty-changeset.mjs rejects newly added empty-frontmatter changesets, so B would cut a real @objectstack/spec patch release whose CHANGELOG describes a script that is not in the package — actively worse than no entry. And PR #9580 touched these same two files and did exactly this, so A is also the local precedent.

You flagged rather than chose silently because I marked it non-negotiable. That is the right handling of a ruling you think is wrong.

The ablations, and the one you reported as invalid

Four ablations, each reddening a different assertion — drop --strictPort → argv assertion; revert the probe to the pre-fix curl-only loop → "expected yes to be no" (the original defect reproduced under test, which is the one that matters); restore the fixed /tmp log path → "expected 1 to be 0"; free-port search returns base blindly → "expected 5180 not to be 5180".

⭐ And the third is reported after a correction: its first mutation regex did not match, so that run was an invalid ablation, not a green one. Catching that distinction — a mutation that never applied looks exactly like a mutation the test failed to notice — and re-running rather than banking the green is the single most trust-building line in this report.

Also correctly stated rather than glossed: pnpm --filter '@objectstack/spec^...' build matched no projects, said out loud because a zero-match filter exits 0 and reads like a pass. And the three unmeasured gates are the workspace-build precondition (check:dev-prereqs exits 1 with "The workspace is not built — 67/67 packages missing dist/"), named as a precondition rather than a finding.

#9647 — and the negative half of the sweep is what makes it useful

scripts/publish-smoke.sh defaults SMOKE_PORT to 3210 and derives BASE_URL from it, while objectstack dev auto-shifts off a busy port whenever flags.dev is set — so a concurrent run can smoke-test the neighbour's app. Same shape, honestly ungraded because it was not measured end to end.

The H4 sweep's negative result is the part I asked for and got: it is the only other hit of this shape in scripts/ — no other fixed port, no other unqualified /tmp path used as per-run state; downstream-smoke.sh and release-spec-changes.sh already mktemp theirs, and the two remaining /tmp hits are documentation examples. "I looked at all of them and there is one" is worth far more than "here is another one I found."

Verdict: ACCEPT. Arming once the gates converge.

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