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docs(standards): (scope) is the component, never the ticket number - #354

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docs(standards): (scope) is the component, never the ticket number#354
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@LukasWodkaLukasWodka commented Aug 26, 2026

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Four PRs failed closing-ref today for the same reason — .github#349, #350, #352, #353 — and all four were fixed by retitling. That's a missing rule, not four mistakes.

The collision

The canon says commit subjects are type(scope): summary, "referencing the ticket (backend#1234)". Read quickly, (scope) looks like the ticket slot — so sessions write sec(2157): ….

closing-ref then reads a bare number in the title as a promise to close that ticket, and fails unless the body carries Closes <owner>/<repo>#N. For partial work that keyword would be actively wrong. All four PRs were partial work, all four correctly said Part of tracebloc/backend#N, and all four went red for saying so.

The canon's own example is already the qualified form (backend#1234), not a bare number. What it never says is that the number doesn't belong in the subject, and that a bare one carries a specific machine meaning.

Why not loosen the gate

The gate is right, and its failure message is one of the better ones in the fleet — a title reference is inert, and it can't tell which repo owns a bare number, so it would happily accept a link to any repo at that number. The defect is the convention pointing one way while the check reads the other. Fixed on the convention side.

Verification

  • classify reports IN_SYNC — canon and CLAUDE.md agree
  • standards-sync selftest 31 checks, 0 failed

Follows the same route as .github#350: the canon changes here, and the 19 CLAUDE.md copies pick it up on the next standards-sync dispatch with create-prs: true.


Note

Low Risk
Prose-only updates to engineering standards with no runtime, auth, or data-path changes.

Overview
Updates the org-wide Branches & PRs bullet on naming and commits in org-standards.md and the synced block in CLAUDE.md.

The change spells out that (scope) in type(scope): summary is the component (e.g. mint-scope, kanban), not the issue number, and that a bare number in a PR title (e.g. sec(2157): …) is treated by the closing-ref check as a promise to close that ticket unless the body has Closes <owner>/<repo>#N. For partial work, the canon now says to use Part of tracebloc/backend#N in the body and keep the ticket number out of the subject.

This is documentation-only alignment with existing gate behavior (not a change to closing-ref itself); downstream CLAUDE.md copies pick it up via standards-sync.

Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 1a279df. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.

Four PRs in one day failed `closing-ref` for the same reason -- .github#349,
#350, #352, #353 -- and all four were fixed by retitling. That is a rule the
canon is missing, not four mistakes: a finding that recurs across PRs becomes a
rule rather than a fifth hand-fix.
THE COLLISION. The canon says commit subjects are `type(scope): summary`,
`referencing the ticket (backend#1234)`. Read quickly, `(scope)` looks like the
ticket slot, so sessions write `sec(2157): ...`. `closing-ref` then reads a bare
number in the title as a PROMISE to close that ticket and fails unless the body
carries a closing keyword -- which for partial work would be WRONG to add. Every
one of the four was partial work correctly saying `Part of tracebloc/backend#N`,
and every one went red for saying so.
The canon's own example is already the qualified form (`backend#1234`), not a
bare number; the gap is that it never says the number does not belong in the
subject, and that a bare one has a specific machine meaning. Both are now
stated.
WHY NOT LOOSEN THE GATE INSTEAD. The gate is right and its failure message is
excellent -- a title reference is inert, and it cannot tell which repo owns a
bare number, so it would accept a link to any repo at that number. The defect is
the convention pointing one way while the check reads the other.
Verified: `classify` reports IN_SYNC (canon and CLAUDE.md agree), standards-sync
selftest 31 checks / 0 failed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@LukasWodkaLukasWodka self-assigned this Aug 26, 2026
@LukasWodka
LukasWodka requested review from aptracebloc and saadqbal and removed request for saadqbalAugust 26, 2026 14:54

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Reviewed — accurate and useful. Clarifies that (scope) in type(scope): summary is the component (mint-scope, kanban), never the ticket number, because a bare number in the title (sec(2157): …) is read by closing-ref as a promise to close that ticket and fails the check unless the body carries Closes <owner>/<repo>#N. That matches the actual closing-ref behavior, and the guidance (number in the subject only when the PR truly closes it; otherwise Part of tracebloc/backend#N in the body) is correct. Same sentence added identically to CLAUDE.md and org-standards.md. Docs-only, green.

Approving.

— drafted with Claude Code

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Good rule, and the right two lines to spend on it — sec(2157): as the worked example is exactly the shape that bites, because a bare number resolves against this repo and the ticket lives in backend.

One refinement for whenever this text is next touched, non-blocking: "the check fails unless the body carries Closes <owner>/<repo>#N" describes the fix correctly but the mechanism slightly loosely. The gate reads GitHub's computed closingIssuesReferences, not body text — so a body that carries the keyword and the ref but not adjacently (Closes the interim half of tracebloc/backend#2327) satisfies the sentence as a reader might parse it and still computes zero links. Following your line literally produces the right result; it's the loose reading that fails. Worth "immediately followed by" if you're ever back in here. 👍

@LukasWodka
LukasWodka merged commit a28adf2 into developAug 27, 2026
18 of 19 checks passed
@LukasWodka
LukasWodka deleted the docs/pr-title-ticket-convention branch August 27, 2026 02:56
LukasWodka added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 27, 2026
…356)
* fix(2284): the gate tolerates a review that never came, and says so
Two absences were one verdict, and they mean opposite things.
`PENDING` covered both "Bugbot is still running" and "Bugbot never showed
up", and the timeout failed both identically. A check that STARTED and never
finished is a review that BROKE -- worth blocking on. A check that never
appeared is Bugbot dropping the PR, which this repo cannot fix, retry, or
wait out.
Measured 2026-08-26 on human-authored PRs, well past p50 164s / max 635s:
six of nine never got a check at all -- .github#349 (57 min), #350 (55),
#352 (40), #353 (37), #354 (32), e2e-test-agent#273 (2h+) -- while #351,
opened BETWEEN two of them, was reviewed in three minutes. Not latency, not
the seat limit, not the author. backend#2114 closed COMPLETED saying "no
discriminator survives the data"; the drop is still live.
`bugbot run` cannot recover it: Cursor refuses on a seat limit and the App
will not be given one (decision, 2026-08-26).
So requiring this context while failing UNCLAIMED would block roughly two
thirds of PRs for the full wait and then fail them with no remedy -- the
gate would look broken while behaving exactly as written.
WHAT THIS IS NOT: it is not a pass. UNCLAIMED exits 0 so the context can be
required, and every other word says the head is UNREVIEWED -- its own banner,
its own summary line, and an explicit "read the diff yourself". The honest
report is "nothing looked at this", not "this is clean".
PENDING still blocks, and that asymmetry is the whole change.
Also corrected: the vocabulary comment said "Only PENDING is waitable",
which this makes false. `main` now READS `WAITABLE` rather than restating it.
79 selftest assertions (4 new through `main`, since the exit code is the
behaviour and `evaluate` alone cannot show it). Registry: 1 stale marker
fixed, 5 mutations added -- the collapse in both directions, the tolerance
leaking onto PENDING, the tolerance removed, and the banner reading as a
pass.
Part of tracebloc/backend#2284
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* test(2284): pin the UNREVIEWED banner, which no assertion covered
The mutation `the UNREVIEWED banner reads as a pass` came back UNCAUGHT.
Every other assertion in this suite checks a verdict or an exit code, and
the banner is neither -- it is the one line a human skimming the summary
actually reads, and the only thing standing between "exits 0" and "looks
clean".
Three cases: the UNCLAIMED headline says UNREVIEWED, does not contain the
word pass, and a genuine pass still does.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* style: hoist the selftest imports ruff flagged
E402/E401 from the banner test added in the previous commit. `make lint` is
where I should have run it before pushing, not after.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* fix(2284): the threshold is applied before the head is classified
Bugbot on #356, High: `evaluate` returned UNCLAIMED as soon as the head had
no Bugbot check, without applying the open-finding threshold to the threads it
had ALREADY loaded one block earlier. So the tolerance this PR adds for a
dropped review would launder a finding that had already come -- review head A,
get a High, push head B, Bugbot never claims B, and the gate reports
UNREVIEWED-but-not-blocked over an open High at exit 0.
The same hole was in PENDING, and fixing only the branch Bugbot named would
have left its twin. So `blocking` is now computed before `bugbot_check` is
consulted at all, and an absence of either kind with a blocking finding is a
FAIL that names the finding and does NOT wait -- the answer would not change.
Both absence verdicts now also state that the threshold was checked, so the
report says which question was answered.
The tolerance itself is intact and asserted: a Low on an unreviewed head is
still UNCLAIMED, exit 0, and so is a resolved High -- otherwise the remedy the
FAIL message names would not clear it.
Not a shipped bug: `required_conversation_resolution` is true on every train
branch, so the merge was blocked anyway. It was a gate naming the wrong reason,
which is the failure mode this file exists to prevent.
One renderer (`_finding_lines`) feeds both paths, because two would drift and
one of them would quietly stop saying OPEN (rule 9).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
LukasWodka added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 27, 2026
…e truthful (backend#2556) (#360)
* fix(closing-ref): re-run when the title changes, and let a child PR be truthful (backend#2556, backend#2616)
Two defects in one gate, fixed together because either alone leaves the other's
remedy unusable.
BACKEND#2556 -- THE GATE READS THE TITLE AND NEVER RE-RUNS WHEN IT CHANGES.
`closing-ref` decides its verdict from the PR title and body; the callers
triggered on `[opened, reopened, ready_for_review, converted_to_draft]`, and
`edited` is the only event GitHub fires when either field changes. So the two
inputs the gate reads were the two inputs that could change without re-running
it. That is a bypass, not a gap: open a PR titled `chore: tidy up`, the gate
records NOTHING_NAMED and goes green, then retitle it to `fix(1234): ...` with
nothing linked -- no event fires, the green stands. It also made the remediation
unusable in the other direction: 20 sync PRs had to be cleared with 20 manual
`gh run rerun` calls (backend#2555). Same one-word fix, same reason, as
`fr-gate-caller.yml` (backend#1945).
A CONSEQUENCE THAT HAD TO BE GUARDED, not discovered later. Every trigger this
workflow had was reachable only on an OPEN PR, so `set-status` writing Status
unconditionally was always correct. `edited` is not: GitHub fires it when a
MERGED PR's title or body is edited, and this is the one board writer in the
fleet that does not compare pipeline rank. Without the new guard, fixing a typo
in a shipped PR's description would drag its card from `Prod` back to
`Code review`. Both jobs are now `if: ...state == 'open'`.
BACKEND#2616 -- ONE SATISFYING FORM, AND A CHILD PR CANNOT TRUTHFULLY USE IT.
The checker read `closingIssuesReferences` and nothing else, and that field is
populated only by a closing keyword. So a PR whose title named a ticket had
exactly one satisfying form: promise to close it. For this org's most common
shape -- a parent ticket with several child PRs titled `type(NNNN): ...`, none
of which finishes it -- the only remedies were a FALSE `Closes`, or deleting the
number from the title, which passes the check by removing the traceability the
check exists to enforce. Four PRs in one day took the second (.github#349, #350,
#352, #353) and #354 wrote that workaround into the canon.
A declared NON-CLOSING body reference now satisfies the title, reported as its
own state (`MENTIONED`) so a green run still says which promise was made. The
closing link stays the stronger form, and `WRONG_REPO` is decided BEFORE any
body reference is consulted -- a truthful `Part of tracebloc/backend#304` must
not mask a `Closes#304` that closes `.github#304` on merge.
DERIVED, NOT RESTATED (rule 1). The non-closing vocabulary is PARSED out of
`org-standards.md`, which already declares the org's partial-work form. Add
`Refs <owner>/<repo>#N` to the canon and the gate accepts it with no code
change. The derivation fails closed in both directions: an unreadable canon and
a canon declaring no non-closing form are separate cannot-tells (exit 2), never
a silent reversion to closing-only -- reverting is the defect itself. GitHub's
closing keywords are the one list here that cannot be derived from this org, so
they are named, cited, and used only to subtract.
The canon and CLAUDE.md carried two statements this change makes false -- that
the check fails unless the body carries `Closes`, and to keep the number out of
the subject. Both are rewritten; classify() reports IN_SYNC.
EVIDENCE
closing-ref-gate-selftest 156 assertions, all passed (was 109)
closing-ref-gate-mutations 53 mutations, 0 stale, 0 uncaught (was 36)
ruff / actionlint / shellcheck / house-rules clean
standards-sync selftest 60 checks, 0 failed
The mutation harness now rewrites the two WORKFLOW files as well as the checker:
`edited` and the open-state guards are guarantees declared in YAML, and rule 5
does not exempt a guard for living in a different language.
Part of tracebloc/backend#2556
Part of tracebloc/backend#2616
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* test(closing-ref): an escaped Unreadable reddens a case instead of killing the suite
The multi-word-keyword mutation was scored UNCAUGHT for the right reason: it made
`evaluate` raise, which killed the suite mid-run, and the harness refuses to
count a broken harness as coverage. `evaluate` grew a path that can raise for a
NEW reason (the derivation from org-standards.md coming back empty), so the
positive cases now go through a wrapper, exactly as `value` already does for
every other call.
Part of tracebloc/backend#2616
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* test(closing-ref): the derived-vocabulary cases report a refusal instead of crashing
`value` returns the exception TEXT on a refusal, and a string is iterable -- so a
case that walked the derived list iterated characters and raised IndexError on the
space in "RAISED Unreadable: ...". Normalised once. Found by the multi-word-keyword
mutation, which is the job: it was scored UNCAUGHT for breaking the harness rather
than being caught by a case.
Part of tracebloc/backend#2616
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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@LukasWodka@saadqbal@aptracebloc