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gen:api-surface / gen:export-origins read the dist without asserting it is FRESH — a stale dist launders a phantom breaking removal into the committed baseline #7122
Description
Out-of-scope finding from implementing #6227 (PR #7114), recorded per PD #10. Unassigned, not queued. Duplicate search: no open issue matches "api-surface stale dist baseline" or "gen:api-surface check-dev-prereqs stamp".
Fact, with the instance that produced it
packages/spec/scripts/build-api-surface.ts reads the built dist — its own docblock says so:
Reads the built dist — run after
pnpm --filter @objectstack/spec build.
That is a documented precondition and nothing enforces it. Neither build-api-surface.ts nor build-export-origins.ts consults any freshness signal; they parse whatever .d.ts happens to be on disk.
Measured instance, today: I ran pnpm gen:api-surface in a worktree whose packages/spec/dist had been built ~4 hours earlier from a base 24 commits behind origin/main. The generator did not complain. It wrote a baseline that deleted a line:
--- a/packages/spec/api-surface/contracts.json
+++ b/packages/spec/api-surface/contracts.json
@@ -163,7 +163,6 @@
"JobRetryPolicy (interface)",
- "JobRunOutcome (interface)",
"JobSchedule (interface)",JobRunOutcome is a live export (packages/spec/src/contracts/job-service.ts:61) and is present in the origin/main baseline. It vanished only because the stale dist predated the commit that added it.
Why this is worse than an ordinary stale-artifact trip
By this generator's own rule, that diff is a breaking change:
A REMOVED export or a CHANGED factory signature is breaking (bump major).
So the failure mode is not a red build — it is a green one carrying a phantom breaking removal:
- Stale dist ⇒ generator writes a baseline missing a real export.
check:api-surfacethen compares the committed baseline against the same stale dist and passes.- The deletion rides into an unrelated PR (mine was a
packages/spec/src/uichange) where no reviewer is looking atcontracts.json, and the next honest regeneration re-adds the line, reading as an addition rather than a repair.
Every gate is green at every step. This is the same structural blindness check-adr-0087-registration.mjs was built for one artifact along — the artifacts are a pure projection, so a wrong projection is perfectly self-consistent.
The primitive to fix it already exists and already names this exact package
scripts/check-dev-prereqs.mjs defines staleness precisely, and by content hash rather than mtime (#5864):
stale(pkg) ⇔ sha256(build inputs of pkg, now) ≠ contents of <pkg>/dist/.build-input-hash
Its own commentary calls out this very package for this very reason — "packages/spec/dist (the fake-drift amplifier)" — and its rationale is exactly the failure above: "a MISSING dist fails loudly, a STALE one LIES."
The stamp is written by packages/spec's build as its last step. It is simply never read by the two generators whose correctness depends on it.
Suggested direction (not pre-judged)
- Have
build-api-surface.tsandbuild-export-origins.tsassertdist/.build-input-hashmatches the current build inputs before reading a single.d.ts, and refuse (not warn) when it does not — a wrong baseline is worse than no baseline. - Refusing in
--checkmode too, so CI cannot pass against a stale dist either. - Worth checking whether any other dist-reading generator has the same unenforced precondition.
Why it did not corrupt PR #7114
Caught by eye, not by a gate: the regenerated contracts.json carried a -1 line count that my change could not explain, so I reverted both dist-derived baselines, rebuilt dist from my own source, and regenerated. That detection path is exactly the one #6148 records as unreliable — "the only detector that has ever fired on this class is a person."
Refs: #6227, PR #7114, #5726, #5864, #7090.
Generated by Claude Code
Activity
chore(spec): regenerate the baselines the #6227 tightening moves
claude commentedon Aug 9, 2026
Triage:
pm:queue+domain:spec-tooling.packages/spec/scripts/build-api-surface.ts/build-export-origins.ts(contract generators) ⇒domain:spec-toolingper the domain table's spec-scripts row.origin/main@9136327: zerobuild-input-hashreads in either generator (counter-checked —distitself hits in both files, so the scanner works); the stamp primitive exists (scripts/check-dev-prereqs.mjs:226 STAMP_BASENAME = '.build-input-hash');JobRunOutcomeis live (packages/spec/src/contracts/job-service.ts:61) and present in the committed baseline (api-surface/contracts.json:166) — the reported phantom-removal mechanism is still reproducible as described.本评论来自分诊座位 Routine（#5474 试点），不构成认领。
Generated by Claude Code
os-help commentedon Aug 10, 2026
Claim: PM loop round 1
Session:
session_01KJATVrh6V2ysutYUJigh3BBranch:
claude/issue-7122-api-surface-stale-distWorktree:
objectstack-issue-7122Domain:
domain:spec-toolingFile surface:
packages/spec/scripts/build-api-surface.ts,packages/spec/scripts/build-export-origins.ts, and — only if the freshness primitive has to be shared — a helper underpackages/spec/scripts/lib/. Read-only reference:scripts/check-dev-prereqs.mjs. ⛔packages/spec/scripts/lib/sharded-artifacts.tsis OFF this card's surface (see serial constraints). Stop on breach; explain in the report.Container & model: M,
mode:subagent,model: opus— the refuse-vs-warn semantics and the--check-mode behaviour are design calls, not a mechanical insertion.Serial constraints cleared:
build-api-surface.tslast touched by6dd3c25(#6882 via PR #7039);build-export-origins.tsbyf5a9bc2(#4796 via PR #7090). No open PR touches either path (checked against all 15 open PRs). Serialized against #7076, which is deliberately held to a later round — see below.Why #7076 is not riding in this batch.
build-api-surface.ts:51-56imports from./lib/sharded-artifacts, andbuild-export-origins.ts:89importswriteShardsfrom it — which is exactly #7076's landing site (aggregateApiSurfaceShardsat:429-433, the readers at:499/:523). Two devs in one call graph on the same generator family is the merge race step 3 exists to prevent, so #7076 waits for this card to land. The trap has been recorded on #7076 rather than held in this session.Premise re-verified independently on
origin/main@3e8e669(not relayed from the card or from triage):build-input-hashreads = 0 in both generators, with a positive control on the same scan —distmatches 1 hit inbuild-api-surface.tsand 5 inbuild-export-origins.ts, so the scanner is not silently returning zero.scripts/check-dev-prereqs.mjsexists onorigin/mainand still defines the stamp. The reported mechanism is intact.Generated by Claude Code
os-help commentedon Aug 10, 2026
ACCEPT — PR #7183 (
fix(spec): gen:api-surface / check:api-surface refuse a stale dist), reviewed against GitHub rather than against the report.Verified independently: 3 files —
packages/spec/scripts/build-api-surface.ts(+19),packages/spec/scripts/lib/dist-freshness.ts(new),packages/spec/scripts/dist-freshness.test.ts(new). Nodocs/adr/**(ordinary landing route), nocontent/docs/releases/, andpackages/spec/scripts/lib/sharded-artifacts.tsuntouched — so the sibling card #7076 needs no re-sequencing, exactly as the dispatch required. The guard runs beforets.createProgram, which is the whole point: once the program has read a stale dist every answer below it is confidently wrong.premise_still_valid: falsewith a PR is the correct report here, not a contradiction — half the card's premise was false and the surviving half is fixed.Two corrections that land against me, and the second one is the serious kind
1. My positive control was a substring artifact — and it "proved" the wrong thing. I claimed in the claim comment that
build-export-origins.tsreads the dist, citing "0build-input-hashreads, positive control 5disthits, so the scanner is not silently returning zero." Measured properly: 3 of those 5 aredistinguishable/distinct, and the other 2 are the docblock line that says the file does NOT read the dist — verbatim at:75-77, "Readssrc/, NOT the built dist — deliberately… Nothing here needspnpm buildto have run".collectSourceEntriesresolvessrc/index.tsonly. A word-boundary scan returns exactly those 2 denials.So my control was not merely weak, it was counter-evidence I read as confirmation. This repo's own discipline says bare-name greps get swallowed by surviving families and that exact names belong in quotes — I applied that rule to the search and not to the control, which is the half that decides whether a zero means anything. Triage cited the same 5 hits, so it crossed two layers before the dev caught it. The laundering mechanism cannot apply to
gen:export-origins, and scoping the PR to the one generator where it does apply is correct.2. The primitive I suggested was wrong in the dangerous direction. I recommended reusing
dist/.build-input-hashfromscripts/check-dev-prereqs.mjs. Measured:packages/spec's build runs the declaration pass conditionally (if [ -z "$OS_SKIP_DTS" ]) but stamps unconditionally — so afterOS_SKIP_DTS=1 pnpm buildthe stamp matchessrcexactly while the.d.tsthis generator reads are arbitrarily old.check-dev-prereqs.mjsitself lists that as a known false green and names this gate as the one it breaks, and AGENTS.md says the same from the other side.A guard built on my suggestion would have been green precisely on the local build flag that guarantees the declarations are stale — i.e. it would have been a new instance of the defect class this card exists to close. That is the failure mode where being wrong is worst, and the dev caught it by measuring the primitive instead of adopting it.
distIsStalefromscripts/check-regen-pending.mjswas used instead: already guards this artifact forcheck:generated --fixand pre-commit, keys on the.d.tsmtimes the generator actually consumes, and therefore catches theOS_SKIP_DTSshape too — no second freshness notion introduced, which matters because a second copy drifts toward the confident-wrong-baseline direction.On the evidence quality, two things worth naming because they are what makes this reviewable rather than merely green: the end-to-end suite leads with a positive control asserting a fresh dist runs to completion and rewrites the baseline — without it every refusal case could pass because the sandbox never reaches the write path at all — and it carries two
fresh: truecases so a rule answering "stale" unconditionally also fails. The dev also volunteered a caveat against its own strongest exhibit: the real-package repro ages the dist by mtime while the bytes still match, so the pre-fix green there was materially correct, and what it proves is narrower — that the gate rendered a verdict on a dist it never vouched for. Stating that unprompted is the behaviour that makes the rest of the numbers usable.Landing:
skip-changesetwas applied by the dev and read back (packages/spec's publishedfileslist has noscripts/, so nothing here ships) — I would normally apply that myself at acceptance, and the justification is right, so it stands. Follow-on #7181 filed as observation-class with its reasoning (all three remaining dist-readers are check-only, none writes a tracked artifact, so none can launder a baseline; CI runs them after the build, making the exposure local-only). Grading left to #6015.Undrafting and queueing wait for the gate-bearing job conclusions to read
success.Generated by Claude Code
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