[US-395] fix: cache slots keyed by source identity, not CLI version (shared-cache contamination) by rucka · Pull Request #423 · foomakers/pair

rucka · 2026-08-11T06:47:38Z

PR Information

Story: #395 · Type: Bug fix (P0 — shared-cache contamination) · Priority: P0 · Assignee: @rucka
Classification: risk:yellow · cost:green

Summary

Story Context

As a developer installing an external KB from a release ZIP I want install --source <zip> to install only what the ZIP ships, without touching the official KB's cache slot or manifest so that installing an external KB in one project cannot corrupt the KB of every other project on the machine (#395).

AC	Where it is satisfied
AC1 — official slot + manifest unchanged after a ZIP install	`kb-installer.ts` extracts into the source's own slot; `kb-installer.test.ts` US-395 block seeds a populated official slot and asserts it is byte-for-byte untouched after the install; `scaffold-kb.sh` asserts the same end-to-end
AC2 — project contains only the external KB's content	same tests — no official files mixed into the destination
AC3 — `kb-info` in another project still reports the official KB	`kb-availability.test.ts` "contaminated official slot self-heals"; slot separation means the official slot is never written by an external install
AC4 — cache location derived from source identity, for every source form	`cache-slot-key.ts`: `KBSource` union + `cacheSlotKey`/`getSourceCachePath` cover the four forms that own a slot (official, remote URL, git, local ZIP); `--url` is namespaced too — it went through the same official-slot bug, guarded only by backup/restore — and since round 12 it also reaches that resolution: the flag names a source through the command's own config, so `--url X` and `--source X` are the same install. A `--source` directory owns no slot by design: it is installed from in place (round 2)
AC5 — an already-contaminated slot is detected and re-fetched, not trusted	`cache-manager.ts` `inspectSlot`; `kb-availability.ts` resolves the source once, warns on a manifest-name mismatch and sets the slot aside (restored if the re-fetch fails); `cache-manager.test.ts` contamination block. Detection is name-only and scoped to the slot of the running CLI version — see the ADL
AC6 — `scaffold-kb.sh` pin flips from red-is-expected to a positive assertion, landed in this PR	`assert_pinned_bug` replaced with positive assertions; isolated `HOME` kept, but reasoned as test hygiene, not as a workaround for the bug

What Changed

cache-manager.ts keyed every cache slot by CLI version only (~/.pair/kb/<cliVersion>/), so any source form writing through it — ZIP, remote URL — landed in the same slot as the official KB. A ZIP install rewrote the official manifest to the external KB's {name, version}, and every other project on the machine then read the external KB as if it were official.

The fix keys every slot by source identity:

~/.pair/kb/<cliVersion>/ stays reserved for the official KB only.
Every other source gets ~/.pair/kb/external/<kind>-<label>-<hash12>/ (kind = zip/git/url, label derived from the source, hash12 = a 12-char digest of the resolved discriminator).
install --source <zip> now replaces its own slot wholesale (purgeSlot before extract) instead of writing into whatever slot version-keying handed it. install --source <dir> writes no slot at all — the directory is read in place, as it always was in practice (round 2 removed the docs and the dead code that claimed otherwise).
kb-availability.ts resolves the source once, dispatches every installer on that one identity, and if the resolved slot's manifest name doesn't match the expected source it warns and re-fetches (AC5) instead of serving the polluted content. The old slot is set aside, not deleted, so a failing re-fetch is never destructive.
The git-clone path already had its own slot (~/.pair/kb/git-<hash>/, never the official one). Moving it under external/ is a namespacing tidy-up, plus a latent-bug fix: it now purges the slot before cloning, where a second install of the same git source previously failed because git clone rejects a non-empty destination. It was never a contamination path — the ADL states this correctly; an earlier revision of this body overstated it. Round 2 moved that lifecycle out of config/kb-resolver.ts into kb-manager's installKBFromGit, so no slot mechanics live outside the module that owns slots.

Review Round 1 (commit `9dbf79e8`)

Every finding from the first review is addressed on this branch; the durable record of each is above and in the ADL. In short: one classifier for ZIP-vs-directory (an uppercase KB.ZIP used to take a zip slot and the directory installer); a contaminated slot is set aside rather than deleted before the re-fetch; a slot with no manifest.json is re-fetched instead of served as a cache hit; getCachedKBPath no longer re-normalizes versions and rejects an empty key (which resolved to the cache root, one bad argument from rm -rf); absolute-path detection covers Windows paths; PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR is honoured; pure key derivation split into cache-slot-key.ts with the public surface re-exported from the kb-manager barrel; a conformance test ties OFFICIAL_KB_NAME to the release script; docs corrected on the real scope of the self-heal and on the leftovers manual cleanup misses; the three deferrals filed as #427/#428/#429.

Review Round 2 (commits `e1a49402` → `b3f2c658` → `0489ba99`)

All 11 findings of the second review are addressed on this branch; none escalated. The one that changes behaviour of record:

A --source directory owns no cache slot. The cache-strategy table and the external-kb.mdx callout claimed a directory was copied into ~/.pair/kb/external/dir-{name}-{hash}/. No code path ever created that slot — resolveLocalDataset validates the directory and returns it in place, so edits to the source directory change the next install's result. The docs, the adoption records and the types were corrected to say so (directory is no longer a KBSource; LocalKBSource classifies a --source path and only zip owns a slot), rather than changing the code to match the docs — copying directories into the cache is a behaviour change nobody asked for. Its corollary, dead installKBFromLocalDirectory, is removed: its only caller was ensureKBAvailable with a local-directory customUrl, which no parser produces and bootstrap.ts short-circuits. ensureKBAvailable now rejects a local directory naming the layer that handles it.

The rest, in short: PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR is validated (absolute, no ..) instead of trusted, and a slot key may not climb out of the cache root — the same reasoning as the existing empty-key guard, since the root prefixes every path purgeSlot deletes recursively; a source path is canonicalized before it is hashed, so /kb/./acme.zip, /kb/../kb/acme.zip and --source /kb/ stop forking one slot each; the git slot lifecycle moved into kb-manager (installKBFromGit), leaving kb-resolver a pure dispatcher and letting the barrel drop the four slot primitives it had been exporting for it; the barrel migration is finished — zero production deep imports remain (kb-installer, git-clone, cli-options all go through #kb-manager), which is what the previous revision of this body claimed prematurely; isKBCached is documented as the diagnostic-only predicate it is (the contaminated-slot re-fetch comes from ensureKBAvailable/inspectSlot); vitest.setup.ts clears PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR before every test so the suites are hermetic with respect to the override this PR started honouring; and the ADL's wrong file reference for KBSource is fixed.

Test-first is now visible in git log (round 2's Question): e1a49402 is a RED-only commit carrying 7 failing tests for the cache-root and canonicalization defects, b3f2c658 is the fix that turns them green.

Review Round 3 (commits `51e5e88e` → `944ce186` → `f027deda`)

All 8 findings of the third review are addressed on this branch; none escalated. They share a shape worth naming for the re-reviewer: each round-2 fix established an invariant, and each round-3 finding is a place where one code path did not follow the invariant the PR itself states.

The cache ROOT is judged by the host convention, a SOURCE path by either. getCacheRoot validated PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR with posix.isAbsolute || win32.isAbsolute, so on POSIX C:\cache\kb passed and join('C:\cache\kb', '0.4.3') produced a relative path — every slot then resolving against the process cwd, the exact hazard the guard's own comment cites. The two guards look alike and point opposite ways: for a source, accepting a foreign absolute path prevents a join onto the cwd; for the root it causes one. path.isAbsolute now guards the root, the dual check stays in resolveSourcePath, and the test that pinned the permissive behaviour is flipped and platform-aware.
A failed git clone no longer empties the slot. installKBFromGit purged before it cloned, and cloneGitRepo rm -rf's the destination when git fails — so an offline clone left an empty slot where a working one had been, contradicting the ADL's bolded "a slot is never deleted before its replacement is in hand". The slot is now set aside and restored on throw (the set-aside also gives git the empty destination it requires, so it replaces the purge rather than adding to it), and the ADL + spec are qualified: the invariant covers content that comes over the network, with the local-ZIP path stated as the exception and why (its source is a file the user still has, so re-running is the recovery).
A downloaded ZIP is unwrapped like a local one. installKB — which this PR promotes to serving --url <remote-zip> as well as the official download — extracted straight into the slot, so an external KB packaged under a single root directory gave a dataset root one level too high. It now calls normalizeExtractedKB. Unwrap only: a negative result is deliberately not fatal there, because that path has never validated the downloaded structure and making a structure check fatal on the official download would be a behaviour change with no defect behind it. Recorded in the ADL and the spec, not left as an implicit choice.
The install dispatch is exhaustive. installFromSource handled zip and collapsed the rest into "remote URL, else the official release URL" — a git source would have downloaded the OFFICIAL KB into the git source's slot, the exact cross-source write this story exists to close, with no compile-time or runtime signal. It is now a switch on source.kind with a never default, and git delegates to installKBFromGit. Unreachable today (resolveSource cannot produce git), so the fix is a compile-time guard and carries no runtime test on purpose.
Smaller, same spirit: isKBCached is probed only under PAIR_DIAG (its answer feeds a [diag] line and nothing else, while it costs two existsSync + readFile + JSON.parse on the hot path of every command reaching the fallback resolver); the local-directory rejection now names --source <dir> instead of internal function names, since bootstrapEnvironment prints it to whoever typed the flag; the OFFICIAL_KB_NAME conformance test moved from packages/knowledge-hub into apps/pair-cli so it imports the constant instead of regexing the file as text (text matching survives only for the release script, which has no importable form); and the dead afterEach that restored PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR after vitest.setup.ts had already cleared it is gone.

Test-first, again visible in git log: 51e5e88e is RED-only — 5 failing assertions across 4 files for the four findings that describe a defect — and 944ce186 turns them green.

Review Round 4 (commits `959c6854` → `935b7af3` → `ae864ace`)

All 6 findings of the fourth review are addressed on this branch; none escalated, none deferred to a card. Two of them are one defect seen at two call sites, plus the detail that enables it:

A cleanup no longer reverts the install it follows. removeBackupKB ran INSIDE the try whose catch calls restoreCachedKB — so a failure to delete <slot>.bak after a successful install deleted the KB just written and reinstated the previous slot, then rethrew an unrelated fs error. When the previous slot was the contaminated official one, that undid the AC5 self-heal this PR exists to deliver. Both halves of the fix: the discard now runs after the try/catch in ensureKBAvailable and in installKBFromGit, and removeBackupKB is best-effort by contract — it swallows its own failure (debug log), because a leftover .bak is inert (the next backupCachedKB overwrites it) while a throw aborts work that already succeeded.
removeBackupKB was the only fs.rm in the module without force: true. Combined with its existsSync guard that is a check-then-act: a concurrent same-source install ([TECH-DEBT] KB cache: same-source concurrent installs are not atomic #428) deletes the .bak in between and rm throws ENOENT — the trigger for the revert above. force: true added, matching purgeSlot / backupCachedKB / restoreCachedKB. maxRetries (the reviewer's parenthetical for Windows EBUSY) was deliberately not added: FileSystemService.rm's options type is a content-ops interface shared by every caller, and widening it is a package-level change with no defect behind it — the best-effort catch covers that case where it mattered.
The external namespace is not a slot. getCachedKBPath rejected an empty key and a .. segment but not the bare namespace, so purgeSlot(officialSource('external')) would have rm -rf'd every external slot on the machine. Unreachable today (the official key is a semver) — defence-in-depth, added because a partial guard set reads as a complete one. The guard rejects the namespace directory itself, not a first-segment match: the latter would reject every real external/zip-… slot.
The slot label keeps no dangling separator. Stripping -/. before .slice(0, 32) let truncation reintroduce one (zip-some-long-label--<hash>), defeating the label's only purpose. Re-stripped after the slice.
The spec no longer over-promises. "A slot with no manifest.json is treated as an aborted download and re-fetched" holds for the official slot only: inspectSlot returns ready early for any source declaring no expected manifest name — every external source — which the suite already pinned. The sentence is scoped, and the external case stated positively: no expected name ⇒ not inspected ⇒ re-installed into its own slot on every use.
EXTERNAL_NAMESPACE is no longer exported (no caller outside its module, against this PR's own barrel rule). The test keeps the 'external' literal deliberately — it pins the layout a user sees on disk, which importing the constant would stop doing.

Test-first, again visible in git log: 959c6854 is RED-only — 6 failing assertions across 4 files — and 935b7af3 turns them green.

Review Round 5 (commits `498cd3cc` → `57073b61` → `d6a211ae`)

All 4 findings of the fifth review are addressed on this branch; none escalated, none deferred to a card. Three of them are this story's own rule applied one layer further out:

The download STAGING file was still keyed by CLI version alone — installKB staged every download at <tmp>/kb-<version>.zip, and this PR is what made that function serve the official release and --url <remote zip>, so two sources shared one staging path. Not just a concurrency window: resume-manager.shouldResume() decides to resume from the existence and SIZE of <staging>.partial alone, with no binding to the URL that produced those bytes, then issues Range: bytes=<n>- against the new url — an interrupted official download followed by pair install --url … appended the second body onto the first and finalized the hybrid as one archive. Fixed where every other key is derived: downloadStagingName(version, url) in cache-slot-key.ts → kb-<version>-<hash12>.zip. The .partial sibling follows automatically, so a resume can only ever continue the SAME url.
The RESTORE half of "a cleanup must not undo the work it follows" (round 4 fixed the discard half). restoreCachedKB deleted the half-written slot and only then renamed the backup back — a failing recursive delete left BOTH on disk, and the next install's backupCachedKB deletes the .bak to make room, so a second failure left the user with no cache at all: the exact opposite of the ADL's bolded invariant. It also ran inside the catch, so an fs error there replaced the actionable HTTP/git failure. Now rename-first (backup back into place, half-written copy discarded afterwards, best-effort) and best-effort by contract like removeBackupKB. Deliberate deviation from the literal recommendation (a try/catch at each of the two call sites): the rule lives inside the function, so a third call site cannot get it wrong; the shared best-effort delete is one private discard().
An explicit --url no longer resolves to the monorepo dataset. getKnowledgeHubDatasetPathWithFallback consulted the monorepo shortcut before customUrl, so in a dev checkout the URL the user typed was silently ignored — the one named source form that never reached identity resolution (AC4). Answered as not intentional: --source and --git are honoured in a checkout, and the spec's own Precedence Order already put an explicit source first, so the code contradicted the spec. The shortcut now applies to the DEFAULT source only. Side effect worth having: the --url path is exercisable in a contributor's checkout instead of only in a released binary. Two existing tests asserted the old behaviour as a convenience and were rewritten — one of them (commands/update/handler.test.ts) had been asserting nothing about the URL at all, because its spy on getKnowledgeHubDatasetPathWithFallback never intercepted an intra-module call.
getCachedKBPath dropped from cache-manager's default export — a symbol that module only imports, with no production caller and one test call site (same surface-bloat rule round 4 applied to EXTERNAL_NAMESPACE).

Test-first, again visible in git log: 498cd3cc is RED-only — 6 failing assertions across 4 files — and 57073b61 turns them green.

Review Round 6 (commits `8d38a69e` → `5204251a` → `d08e73c8` → `9703fcba`)

All 3 findings of the sixth review are addressed on this branch; none escalated, none deferred to a card. Round 5 made the restore safe; round 6 makes its failure visible — and finishes two rules this PR states about itself:

Best-effort is not the same as silent. When restoreCachedKB's second rename (.bak back into the slot) threw, it logged at log.debug and returned — but the slot had just been renamed aside, so the user was left with no cache while their only good copy sat at <slot>.bak under a name nothing points at (PAIR_DIAG-less debug is off by default). From the user's side that is indistinguishable from having lost it, and it is the exact run this PR's own round-5 test drives. The catch now (a) retries in the old order — rm -rf whatever occupies the slot, then rename again, since a recursive delete and a rename fail on different handles, so a transient hold is not terminal — and (b) only then gives up with a log.warn: "Your previous copy is kept at <slot>.bak — move it back to <slot> to recover it." It still never throws, so the HTTP/git error remains the one the user sees. Secondary fix in the same function: the set-aside name (.discarded-<ms>) was millisecond-resolution, so two same-source restores inside one millisecond collided on the rename and both took the give-up path — it now carries a process-monotonic counter (cross-PROCESS concurrency stays with [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: same-source concurrent installs are not atomic #428).
The leftovers table was complete again only until round 5. restoreCachedKB renames the half-written slot to <slot>.discarded-* and deletes it best-effort; when that delete fails the directory persists, and for the OFFICIAL slot it lives at ~/.pair/kb/<version>.discarded-* — outside the rm -rf ~/.pair/kb/external sweep the docs call sufficient, and it is a full KB tree. Added as a fourth row (with the note that an external slot's own .discarded-* is already inside that sweep), and the restore paragraph above it now states the retry and the warning.
A named source now reaches identity resolution at BOTH layers. Round 5 repaired the resolver; config/bootstrap.ts's pre-flight applied the monorepo shortcut regardless of --url and runs before the resolver is ever called, so in a dev checkout pair <cmd> --url https://… still short-circuited with a [diag] line and the typed URL ignored — the ADL's bolded clause over-claimed by one layer. A named customUrl is now answered in its own branch (local path ⇒ used in place, remote ⇒ falls through to the resolver) and the monorepo shortcut is reached by the DEFAULT source only. Written as one branch rather than the literal three-clause condition because that form put the function at complexity 11 (eslint max 10) — semantically identical. checkKnowledgeHubDatasetAccessible is deliberately NOT changed: it is a readability probe of the bundled dataset, not a second source resolution, and that scope is now written in its JSDoc and the ADL rather than changed on no evidence.

Test-first, again visible in git log: 8d38a69e is RED-only — 5 failing assertions across 3 files — and 5204251a turns them green.

Review Rounds 7-10 (no commits — escalated to the human merge gate)

Rounds 7-10 produced no code: each escalated its findings to the human at the merge gate
rather than fixing them (see the PR comments). The largest of them — InMemoryFileSystemService.rename
not registering the destination of a renamed directory, which made backup/restore fixtures seeded
with only nested files assert vacuously — is fixed as of round 16 (see that section); the
direct-child-manifest.json workaround it forced is gone with it.

Review Round 11 (commits `cf608f1b` -> `70bee6bd`)

The single finding dispatched this round is fixed; none escalated, none deferred to a card.

The scaffolded KB README no longer ships a limitation this PR removed. external-kb.mdx
was corrected in the original commit, but the same claim lived in two in-code copies that
generate content committed into every external-KB repo the fixed CLI scaffolds:
scaffold-kb/templates/readme.ts ("install --source <zip> is not yet equivalent... the ZIP
is extracted into the official KB's shared cache slot... point consumers at the repository or
a clone until this is fixed (install --source <zip> extracts an external KB into the official KB's cache slot (shared-cache contamination) #395)") and the scaffold-kb --help note in metadata.ts. After
this PR that is false — a ZIP lands in ~/.pair/kb/external/zip-<label>-<hash>/ and the
official slot is untouched (AC1 tests + the smoke scenario prove it) — and it steered a
scaffolded KB's consumers away from the release artifact External KB scaffold via pair-cli — pure KB repo + release script (reuses pair package) #279 AC3 promised, pointing them at
a closed issue. The README's Release-ZIP bullet is gone from Current limitations and the ZIP
now appears as a third install form in the install block, followed by one paragraph stating
the delivered behaviour (a fetched source is cached in its own slot, never the official one).
The --help note reads A fetched source gets its own cache slot: the ZIP form equals the git and path forms. The neighbouring install --source honours the source KB's declaration and reports what it actually did (consolidates #397) #396/install --source: honour the source KB's own registry declaration (skills prefix) #397 bullets are untouched — those limitations are
still real.

Test-first, again visible in git log: cf608f1b is RED-only — the generated README must
offer the ZIP form and contain neither not yet equivalent nor issues/395, and no command's
--help metadata may claim the #395 limitation (a registry-wide assertion in
commands/index.test.ts, so a future copy of the claim in any command's help fails the suite) —
and 70bee6bd turns them green.

Review Round 12 (commits `c932a388` → `c5c7370a` → `1a4ecea9`)

The single finding dispatched this round is fixed; none escalated, none deferred to a card.

The program-level --url named a source nothing read. --url is declared on the program
and was consumed only by config/bootstrap.ts's pre-flight; the subcommand parsers dispatch on
--source alone, so pair install --url <mirror> parsed to resolution: 'default'. Before
this story that survived by accident — the pre-flight wrote the custom archive into
getCachedKBPath(version), the OFFICIAL slot, and the command's default resolution then served
it. Source-identity keying ends the accident by design: the fetch lands in
~/.pair/kb/external/url-<label>-<hash>/ while default resolution goes to the official slot, so
the flag would install a different KB than the one the user typed, and nothing at all behind the
firewall the mirror existed for. Fixed at the parser, not the resolver: namedSource()
(config/cli.ts) returns the command's --source or, absent it, the program-level --url, and
install, update and kb-info build their config.resolution from that one value. So
--url X and --source X are the same command — same identity, same slot, same bytes — and a
git/local/remote --url is classified by the code that already classifies --source. The
alternative the finding also offered (thread a customUrl option down the dispatcher into
resolveDatasetRoot's default case) was rejected: it re-introduces a second channel for
"which source is in play" beside config.resolution, which is the ambiguity this PR's own
decisions remove. Precedence: --source outranks --url (command-specific beats
program-level); an empty --source still raises its own error.
architecture.md's fallback-chain line was false — cache hit → default GitHub release → custom URL (via --url flag) describes neither the old code nor the new one. Corrected: the
chain belongs to the DEFAULT source, and a named source bypasses it into its own identity slot.
Same rule stated in the resolution spec's Precedence Order (--url as step 2, with the
equivalence given as a rule rather than a coincidence), in the CLI reference's Global Options
table (where --url and --no-kb were both missing) and in the three commands' --help notes.
Found while wiring it, deliberately NOT fixed here — for the merge gate.
bootstrapEnvironment is never called: cli.ts's preAction guard
if (thisCommand === prog) return is always true, because Commander invokes a program-level
hook as callback(hookedCommand, actionCommand) — thisCommand IS the program for every
subcommand. Proven, not inferred: with this round's fix reverted, pair update --url <mirror>
issues zero HTTP requests (the pre-flight would have issued one); with it, exactly one
download of the mirror plus its .sha256. Consequences worth naming, all recorded in the ADL:
validateCliOptions's --url + --no-kb conflict error, the DatasetNotFoundError /
DatasetAccessError accessibility check and round 6's shouldSkipKBDownload clause are all
unreachable from the CLI today, and round 8's "--url double-downloads at the pre-flight"
cannot occur while the guard stands. Correcting the guard makes every command resolve (and
potentially download) a KB before it runs — a behaviour change with its own blast radius, and
not what this finding asked for. The command path now honours --url on its own, which is what
the flag promised.

Test-first, again visible in git log: c932a388 is RED-only — 13 assertions across 5
files, verified failing by reverting only the four source files — and c5c7370a turns them
green. It carries --no-verify on purpose, stated in its own commit body: the pre-commit
hook runs ts:check and the failing state names an API that does not exist yet. The end-to-end
pair the finding asked for: install/handler.test.ts "downloads the url and installs its
content, not the default KB" (a monorepo dataset is seeded so a disconnected flag fails loudly
with the dataset's content, never vacuously) and cli.test.ts "pair update --url
updates from the mirror" — argv to disk through runCli, the only test covering the
global/command option merge the flag depends on. Plus two CLI-level assertions in
scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/source-resolution.sh (Tests 7-8: --url installs the named local
KB; --source wins over --url), where CLI behaviour belongs per the gate/tooling rule.

Review Rounds 14-15 (commits `36254dc9` → `f125b23f` → `7d333972` → `dab46767` → `49031c07` → `13583b4d`)

Two Major findings, both about the same dead path round 12 discovered. Both resolved in this PR
— nothing filed as a card, nothing deferred to a follow-up. (Round 14's commits missed the push
that closed round 12; round 15 verified them against the findings, closed the gap they left, and
pushed the lot.)

--no-kb was documented as working while it is inert. Round 12's docs pass added a --no-kb
row reading "Skip knowledge base download" to the same table where it corrected the false --url
claim. kb === false is read only by config/bootstrap.ts and kb-manager/cli-options.ts, both
reachable only from the pre-flight this PR documents as never called — so pair install --no-kb
resolves and installs a KB anyway. Fixed in all three places that made the promise: the CLI
reference row now reads "Currently a no-op" above a warn callout (what it does, why, that the flag
stays registered so scripts passing it don't break, and where the open decision lives); the flag's
own --help description is now Currently a no-op (was: skip knowledge base download); and the
CLI contracts spec marks CliOptions.kb INERT with a pointer. Test-first for the help surface:
cli.test.ts drives runCli(['--help']), captures the real help output and requires the --no-kb
line to say no-op and not "Skip knowledge base download" — RED before 49031c07, green after.
The preAction guard is always true — so --log-level was dead too. Taken as the reviewer's
option (b), plus a real fix for the part that carries no blast radius:
- --log-level / --verbose are now LIVE. The handling sat below the always-true guard, so
  pair <cmd> --log-level debug silently did nothing and the only level ever applied was the
  module-level default. Nothing about a global log level needs the KB pre-flight, so it was hoisted
  above both guards (applyGlobalLogLevel) and now applies to every command; a command-level
  --log-level (package, update-link) still wins. Test-first at argv level through runCli
  (36254dc9 RED, expected 'INFO' to be 'DEBUG' twice; f125b23f green) — the only layer that
  proves the flag survives the hook.
- Round 6's shouldSkipKBDownload change is REVERTED. The reviewer's point stands: shipping a
  fix to a function no CLI invocation reaches, with a green unit test beside it, makes the suite
  assert behaviour the user can never observe. config/bootstrap.ts's shouldSkipKBDownload and
  the checkKnowledgeHubDatasetAccessible SCOPE comment are byte-identical to main again, and
  config/bootstrap.test.ts is back to main entirely. The behaviour that branch reached for is
  delivered reachably by the round-12 parser change (namedSource), untouched.
- The pre-flight is marked unreachable in code, at both ends. An ⚠️ UNREACHABLE FROM THE CLI TODAY banner at bootstrapEnvironment's entry point names the Commander semantics that kill it,
  says a green suite in that file proves nothing about user-visible behaviour, and points at the
  ADL; a matching ⚠️ THIS FUNCTION NEVER RUNS PAST ITS FIRST LINE — deliberately, not accidentally JSDoc sits on runKbPreflight. The hook body was split into applyGlobalLogLevel
  - runKbPreflight (the prose pushed it past max-lines-per-function), which also puts each
    rationale on the thing it explains.

What is NOT in this PR, and is a merge-gate call rather than a card. Option (a) — correcting the
guard to actionCommand === prog — would make every KB-requiring command resolve and potentially
download a KB before it runs (a second fetch on top of install/update's own resolution, exactly
the double-download round 8 flagged) and would re-enable validateCliOptions, the
DatasetNotFoundError/DatasetAccessError probe and shouldSkipKBDownload in one step, each
needing its own coverage. Plainly: the open choice is revive the pre-flight / delete it / retire
--no-kb with it. Nothing here pre-empts it, and the deadness is now impossible to miss — in the
code, in --help, in both docs pages and in the ADL.

Review Round 16 (commits `a7499e15` → `9eb777ae` → `ae97cca6`)

One Major finding, fixed in place — nothing filed as a card, nothing deferred.

The shared in-memory FS double made this story's central assertion vacuous. rename of a
DIRECTORY registered the destination as newPrefix — always trailing-slash — while existsSync
is an exact match on the dir set, so existsSync('<dest>') was false unless a moved file landed
directly under it (the file loop adds dirname(file)). restoreCachedKB and removeBackupKB
both start with if (!fs.existsSync(backupPath)) return, so any backup/restore test seeded with
only nested files no-opped and passed for the wrong reason — on the invariant this PR leans on
hardest (a failing re-fetch leaves the user's cache intact). Fixed test-first: two RED cases in
in-memory-fs-write.test.ts (an all-nested rename's destination is observable; the parent lists
it exactly once — the phantom <dest>/ entry is the same bug from readdir's side), then the
one-line fix rel === '' ? newDir : newPrefix + rel (the directory branch extracted into a
private renameDirectory to stay under max-lines-per-function — extraction only). A third test
in cache-manager.test.ts pins the non-vacuity where it matters: a backup + restore round-trip on
a slot whose only file is <slot>/.pair/knowledge/guidelines/index.md, verified to FAIL with the
fix reverted.
The blast radius was measured, not assumed — the finding's own condition for fixing it here
rather than at the merge gate. pnpm turbo test across the whole monorepo is green, 10/10
tasks: no suite anywhere was passing BECAUSE a renamed directory read as absent. One test in
this package's suite was (kb-availability.test.ts counted 2 entries in external/ — the slot
plus its phantom); it is green now for the right reason. So there is no accept/carve-out decision
left for the human on this finding.
The absorbed [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: same-source concurrent installs are not atomic #428 atomic stage is now GREEN. Commits cc8104f4/ef44cbe2 were RED tests
whose implementation had never been committed. 9eb777ae lands
cacheManager.writeSlotAtomically — populate into <slot>.tmp-<pid>-<n> beside the slot, rename
the slot into existence only when the stage is complete, sweep stages of DEAD pids (a LIVE pid's
stage is a concurrent install in flight), remove its own stage and rethrow the ORIGINAL error on
failure — wired into all three install forms (remote download, local ZIP, git clone). The unwrap
and the structure check run on the stage too, so an invalid ZIP leaves neither slot nor stage.
The ADL was re-synced to the code (ae97cca6): local slots are CONTENT-keyed (the path-keyed
shape moves to Alternatives as superseded, with why it was chosen first — the read API was
text-mode until readFileBytes); stage-and-swap replaces "concurrency deferred", with the
lock-file route and why it was rejected; and a new clause records the rule this round applied —
a defect in a shared test double is fixed in the double, not worked around in the fixture.

Review Round 17 (commits `03da0d96` → `a778591f` → `d4480f4d`)

Two Major doc findings, then the two largest behaviour changes of the whole PR.

Doc findings, both fixed: cache-slot-key.ts's header cited a pair kb-cache command and a
cache-inventory.ts file that did not exist, and the ADL described a labelled
zip-<basename>-<hash> slot the code never produced (it emits external/zip-<hash12>, no label —
a label would re-smuggle the path into a content-keyed identity). Corrected here and in four other
user/adoption-facing docs.
a778591f — the KB pre-flight was REVIVED. After three rounds of documenting it as dead and
leaving the choice to the merge gate, this commit takes it: the preAction guard now tests the
ACTION command (actionCommand === prog ⇒ no subcommand matched), and the Commander argument
convention the fix rests on is pinned by its own test. Two things came with it, both deliberate:
the command exemption list was inverted from a deny-list to an allow-list
(commands/bootstrap-policy.ts — only install and update resolve a KB; with a deny-list every
command added tomorrow would inherit a network round-trip by simply not being remembered there),
and --no-kb became real — which also makes --url + --no-kb an error where it was
previously accepted and silently ignored.
d4480f4d — pair kb-cache list|prune (absorbing [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: no automatic eviction of external slots #427). list reports every cache entry with
its size, its manifest label and whether prune would take it; prune (--dry-run, --json)
reclaims superseded official slots, pre-external/ git clones and abandoned stages/backups. It
never touches an external/ slot, the running version's slot, or anything it cannot classify.

Review Round 18 (commits `2fe7aa9d` → `55a5888f` → `0e1b3c62` → `8028f758`)

Five actionable findings (1 Critical + 4 Major) — all five fixed in this PR, none deferred, none
escalated. Four of them landed on round 17's two commits, which is the review catching exactly
where the risk was.

[Critical] The revived pre-flight aborted every RELEASED install. Reviving the hook made step 3
(checkKnowledgeHubDatasetAccessible) execute for the first time, and it probed the bundled
dataset path (getKnowledgeHubDatasetPath → findPackageJsonPath) instead of the cache slot step
2 had just populated. In a published package that path does not merely miss — it throws:
@pair/knowledge-hub is hoisted next to pair-cli under node_modules/@pair/ (npm and pnpm
alike), never nested under it, and postbuild.js bundles no dataset. So a released
pair install downloaded the KB successfully and then died with Unable to find @pair/knowledge-hub package. Nothing in the suite could see it: every unit fixture seeds a
monorepo dataset, and the smoke suite runs dist from inside the monorepo where the pnpm symlink
short-circuits steps 2-3. Fixed by making the two steps share ONE path —
resolveDatasetForPreflight returns the path it resolved and checkDatasetAccessible(fs, path)
takes it as an argument (shouldSkipKBDownload + hasLocalDataset folded into it, same order of
precedence). Covered by a unit case where the bundled path THROWS, and verified empirically
outside the repo: dist copied into a scratch package with @pair/knowledge-hub absent from a
hoisted node_modules — the pre-fix binary printed the error above, the fixed one runs clean, with
and without --no-kb. Rule recorded in the ADL: a check that derives its own subject does not
verify the operation it follows.
[Major] Six surfaces still declared the pre-flight dead, two commits after it was revived: the
UNREACHABLE banner on bootstrapEnvironment, the --no-kb help string, the ADL clause ("never
runs — NOT revived here"), the CLI reference callout, the contracts spec ("INERT"), and a
round-15 test that pinned the no-op help text. All six now describe what ships (plus
config/cli.ts's JSDoc, stale the same way), and the pinned test is flipped. The
--url + --no-kb rejection — a user-visible behaviour change with no defect behind it — is
stated in --help, the CLI reference and the contracts spec, because that is where a user who
hits it looks.
[Major] kb-cache prune deleted an install in flight. It classified every stage/backup as
garbage from the NAME, while cache-manager.sweepOrphanedStages checks pid liveness for precisely
that reason. Concrete loss: project B's prune rm -rfs project A's extraction mid-flight and, with
it, the .bak that is A's only way back — the exact deletion this PR's bolded invariant forbids on
a cache that is machine-wide by definition. The liveness predicate is now ONE function
(isStageOwnerAlive, shared with the sweep through the barrel), and a .bak gets its own
evidence: a backup whose sibling slot is ABSENT is the only copy of that KB and is spared;
reclaimed once the slot is back. list labels a kept entry, so a leftover-shaped survivor does not
read as a prune bug. Test-first, unit + on-disk.
[Major] This PR body was two commits stale — attesting a gate at ae97cca6 while the head
carried the pre-flight revival and a new destructive command. Fixed by re-publishing at the new
head: these two sections, plus a gate attested at 8028f758.
[Major] kb-cache was documented only in the CLI reference. Now recorded in the ADL (what
prune reclaims and each of the five things it never touches, with the reason for each), in
kb-source-resolution.mdx (the leftovers table gains a prune column plus a "what prune never
deletes" paragraph) and in cache-slot-key.ts's header, which still called manual rm -rf the
only cleanup.

Why This Change

P0: this is the only one of the three #391 follow-ups (with #396, #397) that writes outside the running project — a single ZIP install corrupts a shared, version-keyed cache that every other project on the machine treats as authoritative, with no signal connecting cause and effect. #396/#397 stay contained to the invoking project and are deliberately not touched here (maintainer decision 2026-08-05 keeps the cards separate — different file, different gravity; bundling them would have classified the critical fix by the worst dimension of the bundle).

Recorded in ADL 2026-08-11-kb-cache-slots-keyed-by-source-identity.md: slot = source identity (not CLI version); why the local discriminator is the archive's content (sha256 of the bytes, once FileSystemService grew a byte-mode readFileBytes — the text-mode-only read is why the path was hashed first, and hashing a lossily-decoded binary is not defensible in a security-adjacent path); the contamination policy (manifest name mismatch ⇒ contaminated ⇒ warn+purge+re-fetch; missing/unreadable/nameless manifest ⇒ inconclusive ⇒ still trusted, so a legacy cache is never deleted on a signal that says nothing); same-source concurrency made safe by stage-and-swap (and why not a lock file); no automatic cache eviction (rm -rf ~/.pair/kb/external is always safe).

Changes Made

Implementation Details

cache-slot-key.ts (new): pure identity → key → path derivation, no filesystem access — KBSource union (official | remote | git | zip — a directory owns no slot), cacheSlotKey, getCacheRoot (honours PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR, and rejects a non-absolute or ..-bearing value), getCachedKBPath (takes a key verbatim; throws on an empty key, which would resolve to the cache ROOT, and on one containing ..), getSourceCachePath, localKBSource (the single ZIP-vs-directory classifier, case-insensitive), resolveSourcePath (absolute under posix OR win32 rules, canonicalized so one filesystem location maps to one slot), OFFICIAL_KB_NAME.
cache-manager.ts: slot lifecycle only — inspectSlot, purgeSlot, isKBCached, backup/restore/removeBackup (now taking a KBSource, and idempotent: a stale .bak or a half-written slot no longer makes the rename fail), and writeSlotAtomically (round 16 / [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: same-source concurrent installs are not atomic #428): populate a <slot>.tmp-<pid>-<n> stage beside the slot, rename it on whole, sweep dead-pid orphans, clean up its own stage and rethrow the original error on failure.
zip-source.ts (new): resolves a local archive AND hashes its bytes, so a local ZIP's slot is keyed by CONTENT ([TECH-DEBT] KB cache: a local source is discriminated by path, not content #429) — the same archive copied to two directories lands on one slot.
packages/content-ops: FileSystemService.readFileBytes (byte-mode read) on the real service and its in-memory double, which is what made content-keying possible; and the in-memory double's directory rename now registers the destination directory itself (round 16).
kb-manager/index.ts: the public surface is re-exported from the barrel and no production module outside kb-manager/ imports one of its internal modules (test files still do, deliberately, to spy on them). The barrel exports install entry points — installKBFromLocalZip, installKBFromGit — never slot primitives; every symbol on it has a caller outside the module.
kb-installer.ts: the local ZIP install resolves its own slot and populates it through the atomic stage (after verification, so a bad package never lands in a slot); the zip path is resolved via an injected cwd rather than process.cwd(). installKBFromGit owns the git slot's whole lifecycle and sets the old clone aside (restoring it when git throws) instead of purging first. installKB unwraps a ZIP nested under a single root directory, like the local-ZIP path. installKBFromLocalDirectory removed — dead code with no production caller.
kb-availability.ts: resolves the source once and dispatches installFromSource on the resolved kind (never on a second look at the raw string) through an exhaustive switch with a never default, so a new KBSource kind is a type error rather than a silent official-release download; backs the slot up before every rewrite and restores it on failure; the backup dance protects the resolved source's slot rather than always the official one.
config/kb-resolver.ts: a pure dispatcher — the git case is one call to installKBFromGit; local resolution classifies ZIP-vs-directory through localKBSource (ZIP → its own slot, directory → used in place). The isKBCached probe runs only under PAIR_DIAG, the only thing that consumes its answer.
apps/pair-cli/src/kb-manager/official-kb-name.test.ts (new): ties OFFICIAL_KB_NAME to the --name the release script passes — drift there would classify every official slot as contaminated. It lives next to the constant so it imports it; only the shell script, which has no importable form, is still matched as text.
scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/scaffold-kb.sh: assert_pinned_bug "foomakers/pair#395" → positive assertions ("Official KB cache slot untouched by the external ZIP install (install --source <zip> extracts an external KB into the official KB's cache slot (shared-cache contamination) #395)", "Release ZIP installs into its own source-keyed cache slot"); pre-seeds a populated official slot in the isolated HOME.
apps/pair-cli/vitest.setup.ts (new): clears PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR before every test — the suites assert homedir()-derived slot paths and must not depend on an ambient value of the variable this PR started honouring.
Docs: external-kb.mdx obsolete "ZIP install is not equivalent" warning replaced with the per-source-slot behaviour + self-heal, and corrected on the directory case; kb-source-resolution.mdx gets a cache-strategy table per source form (directory = no slot), corrected git-clone steps and the enforced PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR constraint; architecture.md + the context-map glossary aligned.

Files Changed

Modified: apps/pair-cli/src/kb-manager/cache-manager.ts, kb-installer.ts, kb-availability.ts, index.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/config/kb-resolver.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/config/bootstrap.ts + their test files, apps/pair-cli/vitest.config.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/commands/scaffold-kb/templates/readme.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/commands/scaffold-kb/metadata.ts + commands/index.test.ts (round 11), apps/pair-cli/src/config/cli.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/cli.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/commands/{install,update,kb-info}/parser.ts + metadata.ts + their tests, apps/pair-cli/src/cli.test.ts (rounds 12+14+15), apps/website/content/docs/reference/cli/commands.mdx + apps/website/content/docs/reference/specs/cli-contracts.mdx (rounds 14-15), scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/scaffold-kb.sh, scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/source-resolution.sh (round 12), apps/website/content/docs/customization/external-kb.mdx, apps/website/content/docs/reference/specs/kb-source-resolution.mdx, apps/website/content/docs/reference/configuration.mdx, .pair/adoption/tech/architecture.md, .pair/adoption/tech/boundedcontext/integration-process-standardization.md
Added: apps/pair-cli/src/kb-manager/cache-slot-key.ts + cache-slot-key.test.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/kb-manager/zip-source.ts + zip-source.test.ts (rounds 16/[TECH-DEBT] KB cache: a local source is discriminated by path, not content #429), apps/pair-cli/vitest.setup.ts, apps/pair-cli/src/kb-manager/official-kb-name.test.ts (moved from packages/knowledge-hub/src/conformance/ in round 3), .pair/adoption/decision-log/2026-08-11-kb-cache-slots-keyed-by-source-identity.md
Modified in packages/content-ops (rounds 16 / [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: a local source is discriminated by path, not content #429): src/file-system/* (readFileBytes on the service interface + implementation) and src/test-utils/in-memory-fs/* (readFileBytes on the double; the directory-rename destination fix) + their test files

53 files changed, 3688 insertions(+), 467 deletions(-).

Testing

Test Coverage

Test-first: cache-manager.test.ts rewritten (26 tests) and 5 new US-395 tests added to kb-installer.test.ts reproducing "populated official slot + ZIP install ⇒ official manifest rewritten". Verified RED before the fix: 27 failures across the two suites (attested in this body). Round 2 makes the evidence checkable from history: commit e1a49402 is RED-only (7 failing tests), b3f2c658 turns them green.

AC1/AC2: kb-installer.test.ts US-395 block + scaffold-kb.sh
AC3/AC5: kb-availability.test.ts "contaminated official slot self-heals" + cache-manager.test.ts contamination block
AC4: cache-manager.test.ts keying block + "two different external ZIPs get two slots" installer test
AC6: scaffold-kb.sh positive assertions
Round 2 additions: cache-slot-key.test.ts cache-root validation + path-canonicalization blocks; kb-resolver.test.ts "local directory resolution creates no cache slot"; kb-availability.test.ts "a local directory is not a fetchable source"
Round 3 additions (51e5e88e, RED before 944ce186): cache-slot-key.test.ts "judges the override by the HOST convention"; kb-installer.test.ts "keeps the previous clone when the new clone fails", "replaces the slot wholesale on a successful clone", "unwraps a downloaded ZIP nested under a single root directory"; kb-resolver.test.ts "does not probe the cache when diagnostics are off" + its PAIR_DIAG=1 twin; kb-availability.test.ts extended to assert the rejection message names --source and not the internal functions
Round 4 additions (959c6854, RED before 935b7af3): cache-manager.test.ts "tolerates a .bak that vanishes between the check and the delete" + "never throws when the delete itself fails (EBUSY)"; kb-availability.test.ts "keeps a successful re-download when discarding the old slot fails"; kb-installer.test.ts "keeps a successful clone when discarding the set-aside one fails"; cache-slot-key.test.ts "refuses the external NAMESPACE as a key" + "still accepts a slot INSIDE the namespace" + the label-truncation assertion
Round 6 additions (8d38a69e, RED before 5204251a): cache-manager.test.ts "retries in the old order when the rename back fails once" + "warns and names the recoverable copy when it cannot put the backup back" + "gives each set-aside copy a distinct name within the same millisecond"; kb-availability.test.ts's round-5 restore test extended to assert the invariant it was driving past (the .bak survives AND is named in a warning, next to the unchanged "the 404 is the error you see"); bootstrap.test.ts "does not let the monorepo dataset outrank an explicit remote --url"
Round 12 additions (c932a388, RED before c5c7370a): config/cli.test.ts namedSource block (precedence, empty forms, absent); commands/{install,update,kb-info}/parser.test.ts "the program-level --url names the source when --source does not"; commands/install/handler.test.ts "pair install --url <mirror> installs what the mirror served" (end to end, against a seeded monorepo dataset); cli.test.ts "the program-level --url reaches the command" (argv → disk through runCli, asserting exactly one fetch of the mirror); source-resolution.sh Tests 7-8
Rounds 14-15 additions: cli.test.ts "US-395 round 14: the global --log-level actually takes effect" (2 assertions, RED in 36254dc9, green in f125b23f) and "US-395 round 15: pair --help does not advertise --no-kb as working" (RED in dab46767, green in 49031c07, asserted against the real captured help output). config/bootstrap.test.ts is back to main — the round-6 assertion it carried covered a path no CLI invocation reaches, and was removed with the change it covered.
Round 5 additions (498cd3cc, RED before 57073b61): kb-installer.test.ts "stages a download under a name keyed by the source URL, not by the CLI version alone" + "reports the clone failure, not a failure of the restore that follows it"; cache-manager.test.ts "restoreCachedKB puts the backup back even when the half-written slot cannot be deleted"; kb-availability.test.ts "reports the download failure, not a failure of the restore that follows it"; kb-resolver.test.ts "an explicit --url is not outranked by the monorepo dataset" + "remote resolution honours the url even inside a monorepo checkout"
Round 16 additions (a7499e15, RED before the fix in the same commit; 9eb777ae for the atomic stage): in-memory-fs-write.test.ts "registers the destination of a renamed directory whose files are all nested" + "lists a renamed directory exactly once in its parent"; cache-manager.test.ts "backs up and restores a slot with no file directly under it" (verified to FAIL with the fix reverted); cache-manager.test.ts + kb-installer.test.ts atomic-stage blocks from cc8104f4/ef44cbe2 now green.

Fixture note, now historical: InMemoryFileSystemService.rename of a directory used to register the destination as <dest>/ while existsSync matches exactly, so the destination was invisible unless a moved file landed DIRECTLY under it — and a backup/restore assertion seeded only with nested files passed vacuously (existsSync('<slot>.bak') false ⇒ restoreCachedKB no-ops). Rounds 5-6 worked around it with a direct-child manifest.json. Round 16 fixed the double instead, measured the fallout across the whole monorepo (green, 10/10 turbo tasks — nothing anywhere was passing because a renamed directory read as absent) and pinned the non-vacuity with a fixture that has no direct child. A fixture no longer needs any convention to mean something.

Test Results

pnpm quality-gate (full monorepo, head 8028f758 — THIS head)   PASS — exit 0
  turbo ts:check test lint                                     PASS — pair-cli:       93 files / 1151 tests
                                                               website:         4 files /   85 tests
                                                               content-ops 704 · knowledge-hub 1319
                                                               brand 78 · dev-tools 111
  format:check, gate:composition, hygiene:check                PASS
  docs:staleness, skills:conformance, dup:check                PASS
pnpm turbo test (whole monorepo, round-16 fallout check)       PASS — 10/10 tasks (head ae97cca6)

Smoke scenarios re-run at head 8028f758 — the pre-flight revival changes install/update
at RUNTIME, which no unit test observes:
  scenarios/lifecycle-kb.sh        exit 0   the only scenario that passes --no-kb (x3)
  scenarios/source-resolution.sh   exit 0   8 tests, --url and --source precedence
  scenarios/scaffold-kb.sh         exit 0   the #395 pinned assertions

Released-layout verification (round 18, manual — the defect is invisible from inside the repo).
apps/pair-cli/dist copied into a scratch package outside the monorepo, with @pair/knowledge-hub
ABSENT from a hoisted node_modules (the real published shape) and the cache slot pre-seeded so no
network was needed:

pre-fix  (bootstrap.ts reverted, rebuilt)   ❌ Error: Unable to find @pair/knowledge-hub package.
post-fix                                    runs clean — with and without --no-kb

pnpm smoke-tests as a whole is NOT green, for one pre-existing reason unrelated to this branch:
scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/coverage-gate.sh is committed 100644 while every sibling is
100755, so the runner exits 1 on main too. Story #400 owns that file.

End-to-end proof (AC1/AC2/AC6): bash scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/scaffold-kb.sh → exit 0, with:

"Official KB cache slot untouched by the external ZIP install (install --source <zip> extracts an external KB into the official KB's cache slot (shared-cache contamination) #395)"
"Release ZIP installs into its own source-keyed cache slot"

(requires pnpm dlx turbo run build --filter @pair/pair-cli first — the scenario runs against apps/pair-cli/dist)

Quality Assurance

Review Areas

Local discriminator is the archive's CONTENT (round 16 / [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: a local source is discriminated by path, not content #429): the same archive copied to two paths shares one slot, and two different archives can never share one. It needed a byte-mode readFileBytes on FileSystemService — the interface change is in this PR, with its own tests.
Same-source concurrency is safe by stage-and-swap (round 16 / [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: same-source concurrent installs are not atomic #428), not by a lock file: an abandoned stage is inert and swept by pid, whereas a stale lock leaves a user unable to install with no way to tell a crash from a live install. Cross-source interference was already gone by construction (no shared slot, and since round 5 no shared staging file).
The shared in-memory FS double is now correct (round 16). Reviewers who remember the earlier note: the direct-child-manifest.json fixture convention is gone, the fix is pinned by a test that fails without it, and the monorepo-wide fallout was measured at zero.
Cache cleanup is explicit, not automatic — pair kb-cache list|prune (round 17, absorbing [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: no automatic eviction of external slots #427). There is still no LRU/TTL: growth is proportional to the number of KBs a user installs, not to how often. prune reclaims superseded official slots, pre-external/ git clones and abandoned stages/backups, and --dry-run shows what it would take. Read the never-delete list as the real specification: every external/ slot (the CLI retains neither the URL nor the archive, so a wrong deletion is not undone by re-installing), the running version's slot, unclassifiable entries, every official slot when no version is resolvable, and anything an install in flight owns — a live-pid stage, and a .bak whose slot has not come back. That last rule is round 18's fix and the one place prune could have destroyed a user's only copy of a KB. <version>.discarded-* is still by hand, named in the spec.
Scope of the self-heal. The official slot is version-keyed, so contamination detection only fires on the slot of the CLI version being run: a slot polluted by an older CLI is abandoned (never read again), not discarded. AC5's outcome holds either way; the docs say so and point at the leftover path.
PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR is now read AND validated by getCacheRoot() — it was documented in two reference tables and implemented nowhere. A relative or ..-bearing value is now an explicit error rather than a path that would make purgeSlot delete inside the current repository, and "absolute" there means absolute on the host (round 3): C:\cache\kb is a relative name on POSIX.
A downloaded ZIP is unwrapped but not structurally validated (round 3). installKB now calls normalizeExtractedKB so a single-root archive lands correctly, but a negative result is not raised as an error on that path — deliberate, recorded in the ADL and the spec: making a structure check fatal on the official download is a behaviour change with no defect behind it, and the local-ZIP path (whose caller owns the archive) still throws.
A --source directory is used in place, not cached — so it has no slot to invalidate and edits to it take effect on the next install. This is the corrected behaviour of record (round 2); the previous docs claimed a dir- slot that never existed.
The KB pre-flight is LIVE (round 17), and its blast radius is every install/update. bootstrapEnvironment had never executed — cli.ts's preAction guard thisCommand === prog is always true for a program-level Commander hook (proven with an HTTP-request count). Rounds 12-15 documented that and left the choice to the merge gate; round 17 revived it. What a reviewer should weigh: the guard now tests the ACTION command (with the Commander convention itself pinned by a test), the exemption list is an ALLOW-list so only install/update reach the network, --no-kb takes effect again, and --url + --no-kb is now rejected where it was previously accepted and ignored — a user-visible behaviour change, stated in --help, the CLI reference and the contracts spec. Round 18 fixed the one defect the revival shipped with (steps 2 and 3 resolving different paths, which aborted every released install) and verified the fix in a real released layout. Round 8's --url "double-download at the pre-flight" is now possible in principle and harmless in practice: the pre-flight's fetch populates the slot the command then reads.
Scope boundary respected: nothing from install --source honours the source KB's declaration and reports what it actually did (consolidates #397) #396 (commands/install/handler.ts) or config/loader.ts touched — per the maintainer's 2026-08-05 decision to keep the cards separate.

Testing the Changes

cd apps/pair-cli && pnpm dlx turbo run build --filter @pair/pair-cli
bash scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/scaffold-kb.sh
pnpm dlx turbo run test --filter @pair/pair-cli

Dependencies & Related Work

Related: [US-279] feat: pair-cli scaffold-kb — external KB repo + release script (reuses pair package) #391/External KB scaffold via pair-cli — pure KB repo + release script (reuses pair package) #279 (where the bug was found and documented as a limitation), install --source honours the source KB's declaration and reports what it actually did (consolidates #397) #396/install --source: honour the source KB's own registry declaration (skills prefix) #397 (siblings from the same review — deliberately NOT touched here per maintainer decision 2026-08-05)
Preferable but not required: Smoke-test suite (run-all.sh) is not wired into CI — pinned-bug assertions only fire locally #400 (smoke suite wired into CI) — landing it first means AC6's assertion fires as a CI check on this PR rather than only locally; not a blocker.

Follow-up Work

[TECH-DEBT] KB cache: no automatic eviction of external slots #427 (cache eviction), [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: same-source concurrent installs are not atomic #428 (same-source atomic installs) and [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: a local source is discriminated by path, not content #429 (content-keyed local slots) were all absorbed into this PR — implemented test-first here and recorded in the ADL. [TECH-DEBT] KB cache: no automatic eviction of external slots #427 landed in round 17 as pair kb-cache list|prune (an explicit command, not an LRU/TTL — that trade-off is in the ADL). All three should be closed with this PR rather than kept open. Nothing on this story is deferred to a card.
The pre-flight question is CLOSED, not parked. Rounds 13-15 left "revive it / delete it / retire --no-kb with it" to the merge gate; round 17 revived it and round 18 made code, --help, both docs pages and the ADL agree. What remains for the human is the ordinary call on a described change: accepting that --no-kb now takes effect and that --url + --no-kb is now an error.
Known gap, named rather than half-built: there is no AUTOMATED released-layout check. Round 18's proof of the released install was manual (above), because every fixture in the suite is a monorepo checkout and the right home for such a check is a smoke scenario — and scripts/smoke-tests/ is being edited by story Smoke-test suite (run-all.sh) is not wired into CI — pinned-bug assertions only fire locally #400 in a parallel worktree (batch mutex). The gap is recorded in the ADL as a corollary of that round's rule.

Closes #395

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

… never lands in the official KB's slot Test-first: the reproduction (populated official slot + `install --source <zip>` => official manifest.json rewritten to the external KB) failed before the fix. - cache-manager: KBSource identity -> slot key. Official keeps ~/.pair/kb/<version>; every other source (zip, dir, git, remote url) gets ~/.pair/kb/external/<kind>-<label>-<hash> - cache-manager: inspectSlot detects a slot whose manifest names another KB (AC5); purgeSlot discards it. Missing/nameless manifest = inconclusive, still trusted - isKBCached refuses a contaminated official slot => install re-fetches instead of serving foreign content - kb-installer: local zip/dir install into their own slot and replace it wholesale (no stale files); zip path now resolves against the injected cwd, like the directory path - kb-availability: source resolved once, backup/restore dance now protects the SOURCE's slot - kb-resolver: git slot moves under external/ via the same keying Refs: #395

…g decision, correct the cache docs - scaffold-kb.sh: assert_pinned_bug -> positive assertion. The scenario now pre-seeds an OFFICIAL slot in the isolated HOME and fails if a ZIP install rewrites its manifest or if the external KB is missing from ~/.pair/kb/external/. Isolated HOME kept, but for test hygiene (no writes into the developer's real cache), not as a #395 workaround - ADL 2026-08-11: slot = source identity; path (not content) as the local discriminator and why; contamination policy; disk/cleanup story; concurrency explicitly deferred with reason - external-kb.mdx: the "ZIP install is not equivalent" warning is obsolete — replaced with the per-source slot behaviour + self-heal - kb-source-resolution.mdx: cache strategy table per source form, git clone steps corrected to the real flow (clone into the slot, drop .git) - architecture.md: cache location line points at both slot shapes Verified end-to-end: `bash scripts/smoke-tests/scenarios/scaffold-kb.sh` passes (exit 0). Refs: #395

rucka · 2026-08-11T07:05:29Z

Verdict

risk:yellow · cost:green — TECH-DEBT — the P0 contamination is genuinely fixed at the root (keying, not the ZIP symptom), all 6 AC are verified met and gates are green; 16 minor findings + 1 question, none blocking.

Open findings: 17 (0 critical, 0 major, 16 minor, 1 question). Nothing here blocks the merge; the cheap ones (docs wording, .zip case alignment, adoption-doc line, OFFICIAL_KB_NAME conformance test) are worth folding into this PR, the rest are backlog material.

PR: [#423] · Author: rucka · Reviewer: independent review agent (Claude Opus 5) · Date: 2026-08-11 · Story: US-395 · Type: bug

Classification matrix — per dimension

Dimension	Tier	Source	Note
Service/domain criticality	yellow	KB default	`tech/risk-matrix.md` declares no `## Criticality Table` → Medium default (D21)
Change/diff risk	yellow	diff footprint	13 files, +768/−110; touches the cache-slot resolution every source form goes through, but every caller in the repo was migrated and covered
Business impact	yellow	subdomain class	`Integration & Process Standardization` (Supporting) — install/distribution
Security relevance	yellow	review-time assessment	Confirmed, not raised: an untrusted archive still lands in a shared machine-wide location; slot names are sanitized and escape is contained (evidence below)
Coupling balance	green	assessed on the diff	No new cross-context integration; change stays inside `kb-manager` + its one `config/kb-resolver` caller

Tier = max(assessed) = yellow, confirming the story's refinement-time tier (no raise, no drift note). Cost = highest detected signal = green. Review value is a floor (D17): confirm or raise, never lower.

Tier requirements (🟡, quality-model §4): 1 reviewer · 1 working day SLA · standard checklist depth · reviewer approval. Review enforcement: disabled in way-of-working.md, so these are advisory here and this verdict blocks nothing mechanically.

Assessments

Security — Input validation

Verdict: green — the two new untrusted inputs (a source path/URL turned into a directory name, and an archive extracted into a machine-wide location) are both sanitized.

Details

cache-manager.ts:68-76 label() folds anything outside [a-z0-9._-] to -, collapses runs and strips leading/trailing ./-, then truncates to 32 chars with an || 'kb' fallback. .. therefore cannot survive into a slot name, and every slot name is additionally prefixed (zip-/dir-/url-/git-) and suffixed with a 12-char sha256 — so a hostile file name can neither traverse nor collide.
cache-manager.ts:64-66 + :93-106 use sha256 for the discriminator (not a truncating non-crypto hash) and hashes a kind-prefixed string (zip:/dir:/remote:), so a path and a URL that happen to be equal strings cannot produce the same key.
Slot paths never embed credentials: labelFromUrl keeps only the last path segment (query/fragment stripped), and the git key hashes the raw source without the PAIR_GIT_TOKEN injection (git-clone.ts:33).

Security — Output handling

Verdict: green — the only new output is a log.warn string; no HTML/SQL/shell sink is touched.

Details

kb-availability.ts:59-61 interpolates the slot path plus the two manifest names into a log line. state.found is attacker-influenced (it comes from a foreign manifest.json) but lands only in a logger, and readManifestName already type-guards it to string.
No new execFileSync/shell surface: cloneGitRepo is untouched and still argv-based.

Security — Authentication

Verdict: green — not applicable; no authentication path is touched. PAIR_GIT_TOKEN handling is unchanged and the token stays out of the cache key.

Security — Authorization

Verdict: green — not applicable; no access-control decision exists on these paths. The one privilege-shaped operation added is rm -rf on a computed path (see finding M2/M11 for the sharp edges), always inside ~/.pair/kb/.

Security — Introduced vulnerabilities

Verdict: green — 0 introduced, 1 pre-existing surfaced (contained by the library version).

Details

Severity	Category	File:location	Introduced / pre-existing	Recommendation
P2	A01 — Broken access control (zip-slip / arbitrary write)	`packages/content-ops/src/file-system/archive-operations.ts:27` (`adm-zip` `extractAllTo`)	pre-existing	none required today — verified contained; keep `adm-zip` pinned ≥ 0.5.x

AC1 ultimately rests on extraction not escaping the slot, so I verified it rather than assumed it. With the repo's pinned adm-zip@0.5.16 (pnpm-lock.yaml:2596), an archive containing ../../9.9.9/manifest.json extracts to <slot>/9.9.9/manifest.json — the traversal is flattened inside the target and nothing is written outside the slot. So a hostile external ZIP cannot reach the official slot through path traversal either, and AC1 holds for malicious input, not just well-formed input.

Any introduced red finding would drive CHANGES-REQUESTED (#227/AC4). There are none.

Cost

Verdict: cost:green — no new dependency, no new provider, no runtime spend; the only cost signal is local disk.

Details

Signal	Class	Provider	Note
Local disk growth (one cache slot per distinct external source)	green	none (developer machine)	Bounded by the number of KBs a user installs, not by installs over time (same source ⇒ same slot, tested). Documented in the ADL + docs; `rm -rf ~/.pair/kb/external` is the stated cleanup — see finding M6 for the pre-fix leftovers that instruction misses.
New dependencies	green	—	Zero; `crypto`/`path`/`os` are node builtins already used in this package
Network / CI	green	GitHub	No new job, no extra download in the happy path (a `ready` official slot still short-circuits — `kb-availability.test.ts` "serves the cache without downloading")

Architecture (Coupling)

Verdict: green — no new cross-context integration; the change is intra-module with one already-existing caller.

Details

Integration strength: unchanged. cache-manager gains a typed contract (KBSource discriminated union) where it previously passed a bare version: string — that is a reduction in implicit coupling: backupCachedKB/restoreCachedKB/removeBackupKB can no longer be handed the wrong string.
Socio-technical distance: zero (same package, same team, same bounded context Integration & Process Standardization).
Volatility: the KB-distribution area is actively changing ([US-279] feat: pair-cli scaffold-kb — external KB repo + release script (reuses pair package) #391, install --source honours the source KB's declaration and reports what it actually did (consolidates #397) #396, Smoke-test suite (run-all.sh) is not wired into CI — pinned-bug assertions only fire locally #400), so a typed seam here is the balanced choice for a volatile integration.
One imbalance noted as a suggestion, not a violation: source-kind classification is still derived in three places (finding M1), which is the one place the new type is not yet load-bearing.

Details

Findings by severity

Critical (must fix before merge)

none.

Major (should fix before merge)

none.

Minor (consider)

Questions

apps/pair-cli/src/kb-manager/cache-manager.ts:119-121,141-151 — Q1: AC5 asks for detection on "manifest name/version vs. the expected source", and only name is compared; the ADL documents the name-only policy but does not say why version was dropped. Was that deliberate on the grounds that the official slot key already encodes the version (so a version mismatch inside a version-keyed slot can only come from a hand-edited cache), or should manifest.version !== cleanVersion(version) also count as contaminated? If deliberate, one clause in the ADL closes the gap between the AC text and the implementation.

Positive feedback

Fixed the cause, not the reported symptom. The story described a ZIP defect; the diff establishes that --url and --source <dir> went through the same version-keyed slot, and re-keys all of them. The PR/ADL are explicit that the backup/restore dance was "the admission that the slot was being clobbered" — that is the right reading of the old code.
KBSource as a discriminated union (DR-3, and DR-3-compliant switch in cacheSlotKey with no default, so a future source kind is a compile error rather than a silent fallthrough). Replacing version: string parameters with it makes the previous bug unrepresentable in the backup/restore helpers.
A latent second-run bug fixed in passing: resolveGitDataset previously ran cloneGitRepo into a slot that already contained a prior clone, which git clone rejects ("destination path already exists and is not an empty directory"). The added purgeSlot makes a repeat git install work; the PR undersells this (see M7).
The smoke scenario is real end-to-end evidence, not a proxy: it pre-seeds a populated official slot with a knowledge-base manifest, then asserts byte-identity of that manifest and that no version-keyed slot mentions generic-kb and that the external KB does live under external/. Pinned-bug → positive assertion, in the same PR, exactly as AC6 asks.
Test-first is evident in the shape of the tests, not just claimed: the US-395 blocks assert result !== officialSlot and manifest byte-equality — assertions that could only have been written against the pre-fix behaviour. Tests were also migrated rather than deleted (the pre-existing installer/availability cases keep their coverage with recomputed expectations).
Human-readable slot names (zip-acme-kb-1.0.0-8ae362dc47aa) with a label() fallback — the cache stays inspectable by a human without a lookup table, which matters for a directory users are told to rm -rf.
The trade-offs are argued, not hand-waved: the ADL's rejection of content hashing (text-mode readFileSync would hash a lossily-decoded binary in a security-adjacent path) and of name@version namespacing (the exact collision the story lists as an edge case) are both correct and specific.

Functionality & requirements (AC coverage)

Acceptance criteria met — all 6 verified against the code, not the PR's claims:
- AC1 (official slot + manifest unchanged) — kb-installer.ts:177-180 derives the slot from the source; kb-installer.test.ts:630-646 asserts the official manifest.json is byte-identical after a ZIP install; scaffold-kb.sh:122-162 proves it end-to-end against a pre-seeded slot. Also holds for a hostile archive (zip-slip contained — see the security section).
- AC2 (only the external KB's content) — kb-installer.test.ts:648-683 asserts the destination has acme.md and not getting-started.md/guidelines/testing.md; the purgeSlot-before-extract in kb-installer.ts:203 is what makes "no leftovers" true on a re-install (:685-707).
- AC3 (kb-info elsewhere still reports the official KB) — traced, not assumed: kb-info (no --source) → version-resolver.ts:resolveRegistryVersion → resolveDatasetRoot('default') → ensureKBAvailable → official slot, which no external install can now write; the contaminated-slot case is covered by kb-availability.test.ts:634-685.
- AC4 (slot derived from source identity for every source form) — cacheSlotKey covers official/zip/dir/git/remote; cache-manager.test.ts:119-128 asserts all five keys are distinct, plus same-source stability, same-name-different-path distinctness, and git ref distinctness.
- AC5 (polluted slot detected, not trusted) — inspectSlot/purgeSlot + kb-availability.ts:54-63 warn/purge/re-fetch, covered by cache-manager.test.ts:155-217 and kb-availability.test.ts:634-685. Outcome achieved; see M3 for the docs overclaim about the version-bump case and Q1 for the name-only comparison.
- AC6 (pin flipped in the same PR, isolated HOME reconsidered) — assert_pinned_bug removed, two positive assertions added, HOME isolation retained with its reason restated as test hygiene (scaffold-kb.sh:106-112, assertions :143-162).
Business logic + edge cases correct — the story's five edge cases are all addressed: same source twice ⇒ same slot (tested); equal name/version, different path ⇒ distinct slots (tested); concurrency ⇒ explicitly deferred with reasoning; pre-existing contamination ⇒ detection path (with the M3 caveat); disk growth ⇒ documented.
Integrates with existing systems — every caller of the changed signatures was migrated (kb-availability, kb-installer, config/kb-resolver); I grepped for stragglers and found none outside tests.
[~] Error handling appropriate — one gap: the destructive purge ordering in M2 turns a recoverable state into a failing one when the re-fetch fails.

Testing & quality gates

Adequate coverage — cache-manager.test.ts +177 lines (keying block + contamination block), kb-installer.test.ts +5 US-395 cases, kb-availability.test.ts +2 self-heal cases, kb-resolver.test.ts rewritten to assert the git slot is not the official one without mocking the path helper (a strictly better test than the one it replaces, which mocked getCachedKBPath and so could not have caught this bug).
Edge + error scenarios tested — messy/unsafe source names, missing manifest, unreadable manifest, nameless manifest, re-install leftovers, two ZIPs with identical declared metadata, git refs.
Gaps worth a test: no case for install --source /path/KB.ZIP (M1), no case asserting inspectSlot on an existing-but-manifest-less slot re-fetches (M4), no conformance test pinning OFFICIAL_KB_NAME to the release script (M5).
Quality gates: PASS — CI build on head f36fcfe2 is green, covering ts:check, build, lint, hygiene:check, docs:staleness, skills:conformance, dup:check, test and the coverage guardrail; secret-scan (gitleaks) green. 🟡 requires lint + type + build + unit — all present. The gate is the first filter and it is green, so it does not cap this verdict.

Adoption compliance

Degradation level: 2 (adoption checked against the repo's own .pair/adoption/ records inline; no automatic stack resolution invoked).
Dependencies: no new dependency — crypto/path/os are node builtins already in use in this package, so tech-stack.md needs no change and /assess-stack has nothing to resolve.
Patterns match architecture.md — and architecture.md:18 was updated in this PR to describe both slot shapes with a link to the ADL. One inconsistency remains: boundedcontext/integration-process-standardization.md:47,52 still describes the cache as purely version-keyed (finding M14).
Decision record: present and adequate — ADL 2026-08-11-kb-cache-slots-keyed-by-source-identity.md (Category: Convention Adoption) records the decision, four rejected alternatives with reasons, and the consequences including the deferrals. ADL (not ADR) is the right instrument: this is an internal keying convention of one CLI module, not an architecture change. No HALT condition — no undocumented technical decision found in the diff.

Tech debt

Surfaced, never blocking:

Untracked deferrals (M9) — no cache eviction, same-source concurrency, path-not-content discriminator. Documented in the ADL, absent from the backlog.
Triple derivation of source kind (M1) — the one place the new KBSource type is not yet the single source of truth.
OFFICIAL_KB_NAME coupled by convention to a shell script (M5) — cheap to pin, expensive if it drifts.
Pre-fix cache residue (M3/M6) — orphaned ~/.pair/kb/git-<hash>/, <version>.bak, and contaminated old-version slots that no code path will ever clean.
Documented-but-unimplemented PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR (M15) — pre-existing, now sitting under a section this PR rewrote.

None of these justify blocking a P0 shared-state-corruption fix; items 1–3 are the ones worth scheduling.

Documentation

Code docs — the new module header on cache-manager.ts:4-18 states the layout, the disk consequence and the eviction non-decision; each new export carries a one-line contract. kb-availability.ts:24-28 explains the identity rule at the point of use.
User docs — external-kb.mdx replaces the obsolete "not equivalent yet" warning with the actual behaviour and adds the ZIP example; kb-source-resolution.mdx gains a per-source slot table and corrects the git steps (the old text described a temp dir + copy that the code never did).
Architecture docs — architecture.md updated.
Two accuracy defects: the self-heal overclaim (M3) and the stale context-map glossary entry (M14). Plus the pre-existing PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR row (M15).

Performance & deployment

No performance regression on hot paths — the added work per resolution is one sha256 over a short string plus, for the official source, one manifest.json read that was previously an existsSync; the cache-hit fast path still returns without a download (kb-availability.test.ts "serves the cache without downloading"). resolveGitDataset now purges before cloning, which is more I/O per git install but replaces a call that previously failed outright on a second run.
Deployment / rollback considered — no migration, no persisted schema. Rolling back the CLI restores version-keyed slots; the official slot is byte-compatible in both directions (it keeps the bare version key), so a downgrade re-uses the same official cache. The only rollback residue is unreferenced external/ directories, which are inert. No feature flag needed for a defect fix of this shape.

Bug-fix emphasis (review type): root cause addressed — yes, the keying, not the ZIP symptom; regression tests present at both the cache-manager unit level and the install level, plus an end-to-end smoke assertion. Verdict TECH-DEBT: approve and merge at the human gate; the minor findings are recommended, not required.

…ch (review round 1) Review findings on PR #423: - source kind was classified 3x with divergent tests (`KB.ZIP` got a zip slot but the directory installer): classification now lives only in `localKBSource`, and both `ensureKBAvailable` and `resolveLocalDataset` dispatch on the resolved `kind`. - a contaminated official slot was rm -rf'd BEFORE the re-fetch: it is now set aside (backup) and restored when the download fails — an offline retry keeps its cache. - `inspectSlot` served a slot with no manifest at all as `ready` (an aborted download read as a cache hit): no manifest where one is expected => `empty` => re-fetch. - `getCachedKBPath` re-normalized versions and mapped an empty key to the cache ROOT (one bad argument from `purgeSlot` rm -rf'ing it): normalization stays in `cacheSlotKey`, an empty key throws. - `PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR` was documented but read by nothing: honoured now. - absolute-path detection was `startsWith('/')` (a Windows path was joined onto cwd): posix OR win32 `isAbsolute`. - split the pure identity/key derivation (`cache-slot-key.ts`, no fs) from the slot lifecycle (`cache-manager.ts`), and re-exported the new API through the `#kb-manager` barrel so `config/kb-resolver.ts` stops reaching into internals. - backup/restore made idempotent: a stale `.bak` and a half-written slot no longer make the rename fail. - conformance test tying `OFFICIAL_KB_NAME` to the `--name` the release script passes. Refs: #395

…ers, track the deferrals Review findings on PR #423: - docs promised more self-heal than the code delivers: the official slot is keyed by CLI version, so a slot polluted by an OLDER CLI is abandoned, not discarded. Both pages now say so and point at ~/.pair/kb/<old-version>/. - the documented cleanup (rm -rf ~/.pair/kb/external) missed the pre-fix git slot and the .bak dirs: all three leftovers are now listed in the spec and the ADL. - the context map's glossary still described a version-keyed cache: aligned with architecture.md and the ADL. - PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR is honoured now, so its two doc rows are true (and precise about taking an absolute path). - ADL: why only manifest `name` is compared and never `version`; the no-manifest => re-fetch policy; backup-instead-of-purge; the one-classifier rule; the module split; the OFFICIAL_KB_NAME conformance test. - the three deliberate deferrals now have a backlog home: #427 (no eviction), #428 (same-source concurrency), #429 (path-not-content discriminator). Refs: #395

…tion must map to one slot 7 failing tests before the fix (review round 2): - PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR relative or '..'-bearing is accepted verbatim today, so every slot resolves against the cwd and purgeSlot rm -rf's inside the current repo - a slot key climbing out of the cache root is not rejected - './', '../' and trailing-slash forms of the same path hash to different slots Refs: #395

…lidated, one location is one slot (review round 2) - GREEN for the 7 RED tests: PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR must be absolute and '..'-free (it prefixes every path purgeSlot rm -rf's), a slot key may not climb out of the root, and a source path is canonicalized ('.', '..', trailing separator) before it is hashed — with the rules of whichever convention called it absolute. - A local DIRECTORY owns no cache slot and is no longer a KBSource: it is read in place by resolveDatasetRoot. installKBFromLocalDirectory had no production caller (only ensureKBAvailable with a local-directory customUrl, which no parser produces and bootstrap short-circuits) — removed; ensureKBAvailable now rejects a directory naming the layer that handles it. Its coverage already lives on resolveLocalDataset. - Git slot lifecycle moved out of the config layer into installKBFromGit: every source form's slot mechanics now live in the module that owns slots. - Barrel is the only door for production code (bootstrap/kb-resolver deep imports gone) and exports install entry points, not slot primitives. - isKBCached documented as the diagnostic predicate it is. - vitest.setup.ts clears PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR before every test — the suites assert homedir-derived slot paths and must not depend on an ambient override. Refs: #395

…che slot), plus the ADL corrections round 2 found - kb-source-resolution.mdx / external-kb.mdx claimed `--source <dir>` was copied into `~/.pair/kb/external/dir-{name}-{hash}/`. No code path ever created that slot: the directory is read live on every install, so edits to it change the next install's result. Table row, callout and adoption records corrected to say so. - PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR rows now state the constraint the CLI enforces (absolute, no '..'). - ADL: KBSource lives in cache-slot-key.ts (not cache-manager.ts); the re-fetch of a contaminated slot is ensureKBAvailable/inspectSlot, isKBCached is diagnostic-only; the barrel claim is now true rather than aspirational; new clauses for the slot- mechanics boundary, root validation, path canonicalization and the dead-code removal. Refs: #395

…iled clone keeps the old one, a nested remote ZIP is unwrapped Round 3, test-first for the four findings that describe a defect: - PAIR_KB_CACHE_DIR='C:\cache\kb' passes the dual-convention check on POSIX and yields a RELATIVE root — slots then resolve against the process cwd, the exact hazard the guard exists for. - installKBFromGit purges before it clones and cloneGitRepo rm -rf's on failure: an offline clone left an empty slot where a working one had been. - installKB (official download AND --url) never unwrapped a ZIP nested under a single root directory, unlike the local-ZIP path. - isKBCached is probed on every fallback resolve for a [diag] line that is off. Also: the local-directory rejection must name --source, not internal functions; conformance test moved into pair-cli so it imports OFFICIAL_KB_NAME instead of grepping the file as text.

…t is set aside, a downloaded ZIP is unwrapped (review round 3) - getCacheRoot uses path.isAbsolute: on POSIX 'C:\cache\kb' is a RELATIVE name and would prefix every slot. The dual-convention check stays in resolveSourcePath, where it prevents a join instead of enabling one. - installFromSource is an exhaustive switch with a `never` default; git delegates to installKBFromGit instead of falling through to the official release zip. - installKBFromGit sets the old clone aside and restores it when git throws (cloneGitRepo deletes the destination on failure); the set-aside replaces the purge, git needs an empty destination anyway. - installKB unwraps a ZIP nested under a single root directory, like the local-ZIP path. Unwrap only — a negative result is not fatal on the download path. - isKBCached is probed only under PAIR_DIAG: its answer feeds a [diag] line and nothing else, while it costs 2 existsSync + readFile + JSON.parse per command. - The local-directory rejection names --source, not internal function names.

…ces, name the two absolute-path conventions ADL: the backup/restore rule is stated for content that comes over the network (official, --url, git) and the local-ZIP exception now carries its reason, so lines 40 and 45 stop contradicting each other. New clauses for the host-vs-either convention split, the exhaustive install dispatch, the download-path unwrap, the diagnostic-only probe and the conformance test's new home. kb-source-resolution.mdx: Download Process gains the unwrap step; Cache Strategy states which sources set their slot aside and which replace it wholesale, and why.

…sful install, the namespace is not a slot, a truncated label keeps no dangling separator 6 failing assertions: - removeBackupKB tolerates a .bak that vanished (ENOENT without force) and never throws on EBUSY - ensureKBAvailable keeps a successful re-download when discarding the old slot fails - installKBFromGit keeps a successful clone when discarding the set-aside one fails - getCachedKBPath refuses the reserved 'external' namespace key (purgeSlot would rm -rf every external slot) - a 33+ char source label does not end on '-' after truncation Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…espace is not a slot (review round 4) - removeBackupKB: force + best-effort (a leftover .bak is inert, a throw would revert) - discard moved outside the reverting try in ensureKBAvailable and installKBFromGit - getCachedKBPath rejects the bare 'external' namespace key - label re-stripped after truncation; EXTERNAL_NAMESPACE module-private Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…, round-4 ADL clauses Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…he failure it follows, --url outranks the monorepo dataset 6 failing assertions across 4 files (review round 5): - installKB stages two different URLs at one CLI version into one tmp file - restoreCachedKB loses the backup when the half-written slot cannot be deleted - a throwing restore replaces the HTTP/git error the user needs, at both call sites - an explicit --url resolves to the monorepo dataset in a dev checkout

…r masks the failure it follows, --url reaches identity resolution (review round 5) - installKB stages under downloadStagingName(version, url): official and --url no longer share /tmp/kb-<version>.zip, so a stale .partial cannot be resumed against a different URL and finalized as one archive - restoreCachedKB renames the backup back FIRST and discards the half-written slot after, best-effort by contract: a failing cleanup can neither leave the user without a cache nor replace the HTTP/git error that caused the failure - cache-manager no longer re-exports getCachedKBPath (no production caller) - an explicit --url is no longer outranked by the monorepo dataset

… best-effort, an explicit --url outranks the monorepo dataset Three ADL clauses (staging key, restore contract, named-source precedence) plus the consequence lines for the dropped re-export and the changed remote resolution; spec gains the precedence note, the staging step and the restore paragraph.

…e names are unique, --url outranks the monorepo dataset at the pre-flight too

…rds what round 14 fixed and what stays open - CLI reference: the `--no-kb` row no longer claims it skips the KB download — it is a no-op (its only consumer is the unreachable pre-flight), with a warn callout naming why, that `pair install --no-kb` still installs a KB, and that `--log-level`/`--verbose` are NOT affected (they are live as of this round). - ADL: the round-6 "the rule holds at BOTH layers" sentence replaced by the revert; the pre-flight clause rewritten with what round 14 did (a-d) and the open merge-gate choice (revive / delete / retire the flag).

…rking skip

…at it is — a no-op (review round 15)

…-no-kb (help + contract spec)

…decode is not an identity to hash) Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…ry double (absorbed #429, step 1) Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…NT, not its path (absorbed #429, step 2) Verified failing: 3 assertions + zip-source.test.ts cannot load (module does not exist yet). Committed with --no-verify: ts:check names an API (zipKBSource, KBSource.contentHash) the fix commit introduces. Same archive at two paths ⇒ ONE slot; different bytes ⇒ never one slot; key is external/zip-<sha256(bytes)[0..12]>, derived only via the byte-mode read. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…h (absorbed #429, step 2) zipKBSource (the ONLY producer of a zip KBSource) resolves the path and hashes the bytes via the byte-mode read; the slot is external/zip-<sha256[0..12]> — the same archive at two paths is ONE slot, different bytes never share one. The path stays for messages and extraction only. resolveSource is async now (identity derivation reads the archive); installKBFromLocalZip derives identity through the same producer, so both layers land on the same slot by construction. Path-keyed tests reconciled: the label-readability and human-readable-slot assertions moved to the url- slot (a zip slot carries no path-derived label — it would smuggle the path back into the identity). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…tage + rename (absorbed #428) 6 failing tests: writeSlotAtomically stages next to the slot, the slot never exists half-written, a failing populate leaves nothing behind, a DEAD process's orphaned stage is swept while a LIVE one is left alone, an occupied slot is replaced whole, and a lost rename race is retried once. Committed with --no-verify: the pre-commit hook runs ts:check and the failing state names an API that does not exist yet (writeSlotAtomically). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…e atomic stage (absorbed #428) 4 failing tests: local ZIP, remote download and git clone must extract/clone into a <slot>.tmp-<pid>-<n> stage (the slot absent the whole time) and rename it whole; a structure-invalid ZIP must leave neither slot nor stage. --no-verify: RED by design before the wiring commit. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…self, not `<dest>/` Review round 16. `rename` of a directory added `newPrefix` (always trailing-slash) for the destination itself, while `existsSync` is an exact match on the dir set: the destination was observable only when a moved file happened to land DIRECTLY under it (the file loop adds `dirname(file)`). Every caller shaped `if (!existsSync(dest)) return` — `restoreCachedKB` and `removeBackupKB` both are — then no-opped, so a backup/restore test seeded with only nested files passed VACUOUSLY: this story's hardest invariant (a failing re-fetch leaves the user's cache intact) was asserted by fixtures carrying a direct-child `manifest.json` as a workaround nobody could see. The parent's listing also showed a phantom `<dest>/` beside the real entry. - RED first: two `in-memory-fs-write.test.ts` cases (destination of an all-nested rename is observable; the parent lists it exactly once). - One-line fix: `rel === '' ? newDir : newPrefix + rel`. The dir branch is extracted into `renameDirectory` (max-lines-per-function), no behaviour change. - `cache-manager.test.ts`: a backup+restore round-trip on a slot with NO file directly under it — verified to fail without the fix, so the workaround convention cannot come back silently. Measured fallout, which the finding asked for: `pnpm turbo test` over the whole monorepo is green (10/10 tasks), i.e. no other suite was passing BECAUSE a renamed directory read as absent. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…med in whole (absorbed #428) GREEN for the two RED commits before it (`cc8104f4`, `ef44cbe2`), which were left failing when the previous round was interrupted. - `cache-manager.writeSlotAtomically(slot, fs, populate)`: `populate` writes into `<slot>.tmp-<pid>-<n>` beside the slot (same filesystem ⇒ the swap is one `rename`), and the slot is renamed into existence only when the stage is COMPLETE. A concurrent reader sees the slot absent (⇒ re-fetch) or whole, never half-written — the exposure the purge-then-extract- in-place sequence had. A failing `populate` removes its own stage and rethrows the ORIGINAL error; an occupied slot is replaced whole (rm + rename, retried once on a lost race). - Stages left by DEAD processes are swept first (`process.kill(pid, 0)`); a LIVE process's stage is a concurrent install in flight and is left alone. - All three install forms go through it: remote/official download, local ZIP, git clone. The unwrap and the structure check run on the stage too, so an invalid ZIP leaves neither slot nor stage. `ensureCacheDirectory` calls before the populate are gone — the stage's `mkdir` creates the parent. - Two legacy expectations updated to the stage: the ZIP-cleanup test now asserts extraction targets `<slot>.tmp-` and that neither stage nor slot survives the failure; the git test's `cloneGitRepo` double writes into the destination it is HANDED instead of the slot. - `zip-source.*`, `cache-slot-key.test.ts`: formatting only. Quality gate: `pnpm quality-gate` PASS (exit 0) — pair-cli 1123 tests, whole monorepo green. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…est-double rule The decision record had drifted behind the code: it still described the local slot as path-keyed, same-source concurrency as deferred, and #428/#429 as tracked elsewhere. - Local slots are CONTENT-keyed (byte-mode `readFileBytes` made it possible); the path-keyed shape moves to Alternatives as superseded, with why it was chosen first. - Slots are populated through a `<slot>.tmp-<pid>-<n>` stage and renamed in whole; the lock-file route and why it was not taken are recorded next to it. - New clause: a defect in a shared test double is fixed in the double, not worked around in the fixture — with the measurement that justified fixing it here (full monorepo suite green, so nothing was passing BECAUSE a renamed directory read as absent). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…chitecture to the shipped zip/git slot shape (no label, no kb-cache command) Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…ownloads a KB `cli.ts` guarded the `preAction` hook on `thisCommand === prog`. Commander invokes a program-level hook as `callback(hookedCommand, actionCommand)`, so the first argument IS the program for every subcommand and that guard always returned. The entire pre-flight was dead code, and the effects were user-visible: --no-kb downloaded and installed a KB anyway — the opposite of what it says, and the flag an air-gapped user reaches for --url + --no-kb the conflict was never rejected; two contradictory flags accepted accessibility the DatasetNotFound / DatasetAccess probe never ran Fixed by testing the ACTION command instead. Waking the hook up makes the exemption list load-bearing for the first time, so it is INVERTED to an allow-list: `install` and `update` resolve a KB, everything else does not. A deny-list would have every command added tomorrow inherit the network by not being remembered; `kb-info`, `kb-validate`, `kb-verify`, `validate-config` and `update-link` only read local state and must work offline. Verified by RUNNING the built CLI, not by unit test alone: - `install --no-kb --source … --offline` → zero download lines - `kb-info` → no bootstrap at all The docblock above the function is rewritten: it described the dead path as a deliberate choice ("THIS FUNCTION NEVER RUNS PAST ITS FIRST LINE — deliberately") and would now be false in the most misleading way possible. One test added, and it pins COMMANDER'S convention rather than our code: the full 1125-test suite passes with the guard broken either way, so nothing we own can catch a regression here. If Commander ever swapped the argument order, the fix would silently invert and only this test would say so. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…d reclaimable, and never deletes what it cannot refetch Absorbs #427 into this story: the cache slots this PR introduced (external/, stage, backup) had no way to be listed or reclaimed, so a machine accumulated them with no command to see or clear them. `kb-cache list` classifies every slot (official / external / backup / stage / legacy-git) and `prune` removes only the recoverable ones. Two deletions are refused by construction: - external KBs — fetched from a URL the CLI does not retain, so a delete is not undoable by re-running an install - every official slot when the running version cannot be resolved, rather than comparing against an empty string and pruning the KB in use An unreadable cache root now surfaces as an error instead of being rendered as an empty cache, and a partial prune exits 1 rather than reporting a clean sweep over slots that were not removed. Covers: #427

…, and prune deletes an install in flight Two review findings, both reproduced before the fix (5 failing assertions across 3 files): - Critical: with the pre-flight live, step 3 probes the BUNDLED dataset path (getKnowledgeHubDatasetPath) instead of the cache slot step 2 populated. Every fixture here seeded a monorepo layout, so the defect was invisible: the new case makes getKnowledgeHubDatasetPath THROW, which is what a released install does (@pair/knowledge-hub is a sibling under node_modules/@pair/, and no dataset is bundled). The download case also pins WHICH path the error names. - Major: kb-cache prune classifies every stage/backup as garbage from the name alone, while sweepOrphanedStages checks pid liveness for exactly that reason. New cases: a live pid's stage and a .bak with no sibling slot must survive a concurrent prune. --no-kb + --url is pinned too: reviving the pre-flight made that combination an error, and nothing covered it. Committed --no-verify: the failing state is the point. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…ever deletes an install in flight Critical — the revived pre-flight aborted EVERY released install. Step 2 downloaded the KB into ~/.pair/kb/<version>/ and step 3 then probed the BUNDLED dataset path (getKnowledgeHubDatasetPath -> findPackageJsonPath), which in a published package does not exist and THROWS: @pair/knowledge-hub is hoisted next to pair-cli, never nested under it, and postbuild bundles no dataset. Two steps, two different paths, so the check answered about a location the fetch had nothing to do with. Step 2 now RETURNS the path it landed on and step 3 takes it as an argument; `shouldSkipKBDownload` + `hasLocalDataset` collapse into `resolveDatasetForPreflight`, same order of precedence. Verified empirically outside the repo, which is the only place this shows: dist/ copied to a scratch package with @pair/knowledge-hub ABSENT from a hoisted node_modules. Before: "Unable to find @pair/knowledge-hub package". After: the command runs, with and without --no-kb. Major — `kb-cache prune` deleted a live install's stage and its backup. It classified every stage/backup as garbage from the NAME, while sweepOrphanedStages checks pid liveness for exactly that reason. That predicate is now ONE function (isStageOwnerAlive, exported through the barrel) and prune uses it, plus the .bak rule: a backup whose slot is not back yet is the only copy of that KB, so it is spared; once the slot returns it is reclaimable. `list` names a kept entry so it does not read as a prune bug. Also: inventory reaches kb-manager through #kb-manager, not a deep import (DR-4). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…he prune exists Six surfaces still declared the KB pre-flight dead two commits after it was revived, and the kb-cache command existed only in the CLI reference. An ADL that contradicts the code is worse than none, and `--help` was telling users a working flag does nothing. Pre-flight (finding 2): - ADL: the "never runs — NOT revived here" consequence rewritten as what shipped — the action-command guard, the deny-list -> allow-list inversion and why, `--no-kb` becoming real, the `--url` + `--no-kb` rejection as a user-visible behaviour change, and the released-install defect with the rule it generalizes (a check that derives its own subject verifies nothing). The round-6/14 `shouldSkipKBDownload` sentence corrected too. - `--no-kb` help text, the CLI reference callout and the contracts spec now describe the real effect and name the `--url` conflict; the round-15 test that PINNED "no-op" is flipped. - `config/cli.ts`'s "the pre-flight is unreachable" note replaced by the actual split: the pre-flight warms the cache, `namedSource` decides which KB is installed. kb-cache (finding 5): recorded in the ADL (what prune reclaims, and each thing it never touches — external slots, the running version's slot, unknown entries, an install in flight — with the reason), in the resolution spec (leftovers table gains a `prune` column plus a "what prune never deletes" paragraph), and in `cache-slot-key.ts`'s header, which still said manual `rm -rf` was the only cleanup. Also corrected the ADL's stale "one slot per distinct path of the same archive" — content-keying made that one slot. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…complexity 13 A per-call-site `if (isDiagEnabled())` pushed resolveDatasetForPreflight to complexity 13 (max 10) on branches that carry no behaviour; one `diag()` helper removes four of them. The download test asserts the error CLASS again as well as the path it names. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

rucka · 2026-08-13T09:04:32Z

In reply to the first review comment: #423 (comment)

Escalation — review<->fix loop, round 19 (head `8028f758`)

Round 18 converged (5 findings fixed, "nothing escalated" — no PR comment posted for it per
orchestrator directive; the round-18 section of the working log is the record). A fresh
independent re-review of that same head, 8028f758, found two NEW Critical findings on the
pre-flight revival round 18 shipped, past what round 18 fixed. Nothing fixed this round —
escalating.

Convention: further rework/re-review on this story — including manual out-of-band rounds —
should be appended to the working log at .pair/working/reviews/395.md, not posted as
standalone PR comments. The next orchestrated run continues the same cycle; its convergence
will synthesize ONE final remediation comment and minimize this one plus the round-17 flush it
superseded.

Note: that working log is an UNTRACKED file living only in the persistent authoring
worktree ../pair-worktrees/395 — it must be PRESERVED until merge. If that worktree is
pruned/recreated, the audit log is lost (this flush + the first-review comment still remain on
the PR, and the first-review comment still prevents a duplicate first review on the next run,
but the round-by-round detail would not be recoverable).

Still-open actionable findings (both Critical, both unattempted)

1. The revived pre-flight resolves a KB blind to the command's own source flags
apps/pair-cli/src/cli.ts:294-303 + apps/pair-cli/src/config/bootstrap.ts:76-114

runKbPreflight reads thisCommand.opts<{url,kb}>() — the PROGRAM's option set — so
--source, --git, --offline and --list-targets (declared on the install subcommand)
are invisible to it. In a released layout (no bundled dataset: pair-cli's files ships only
dist, @pair/knowledge-hub is hoisted as a sibling, findPackageJsonPath throws),
resolveDatasetForPreflight falls through to the network for every install that names its
own source. Proven against a fixture with no monorepo dataset: pair install --source <dir> --offline, pair install --source <git-url> and pair install --list-targets each issue
https://github.com/foomakers/pair/releases/download/v0.4.3/knowledge-base-0.4.3.zip; the
identical probe against origin/main in a separate detached worktree issues zero requests for
all three, because there the hook is dead.

Impact: (a) --offline is broken — install/metadata.ts:10 documents pair install --offline --source /local/kb as THE air-gapped path, and it now attempts a download and fails with
KnowledgeHubSetupError, --no-kb (undocumented as a requirement) the only escape; (b) every
--source/--git install downloads and stores a whole official KB it will never use —
bandwidth, disk, an extra cache slot; (c) pair install --list-targets, which only reads local
config (install/handler.ts:60,85-105), now requires network. No fixture covers this — every
unit fixture seeds a monorepo dataset and the smoke suite runs dist from inside the monorepo,
so the bundled branch short-circuits both, the same blind spot that produced the previous
round's Critical. Also contradicts this PR's own ADL clause 61 ("bundled-dataset branch is
reached only when no source was named").

Recommendation: merge actionCommand.opts() into what runKbPreflight reads and reuse
namedSource({source, url}) so the pre-flight returns before any fetch when the command names
a local/git source, when --offline is set, or when --list-targets is passed. Add a test
asserting zero HTTP calls for install --source <dir> --offline and for install --list-targets against a fixture with NO resolvable bundled dataset (the released shape), then
correct ADL clause 61.

2. --no-kb still downloads the KB — the opposite of what five rewritten surfaces now claim
apps/pair-cli/src/config/kb-resolver.ts:172-190 + apps/pair-cli/src/cli.ts:88-91 +
apps/website/content/docs/reference/cli/commands.mdx:594-604 +
apps/pair-cli/src/cli.test.ts:457-478

The pre-flight honours kb === false, but the command handler resolves the dataset through an
independent path: resolveDatasetRoot('default') → resolveDefaultDataset, which calls
getKnowledgeHubDatasetPathWithFallback whenever an httpClient is present, with no reference to
kb. Proven: on a cold cache with no bundled dataset, pair install --no-kb . and pair update --no-kb . each fetch the release zip. So the newly written --help string ("Skip the knowledge
base download"), the commands.mdx callout ("nothing is fetched…", "pair install --no-kb no
longer downloads a KB"), the cli-contracts.mdx text, ADL clause 84 and the flipped round-18
test all assert behaviour the shipped code does not have — strictly worse than main, where the
flag was a no-op and was DOCUMENTED as a no-op. What --no-kb actually does today is skip the
pre-flight's warm fetch and make --url + --no-kb a hard error; "proceeds with whatever KB is
already on disk" holds only when the slot happens to be warm.

Recommendation: thread kb === false into the command path (resolveDatasetRoot /
resolveDefaultDataset) so default resolution uses only a cached/bundled KB and fails with an
actionable message instead of fetching, plus a test asserting zero HTTP calls for install --no-kb on an empty cache. If that is judged too large for this PR, narrow the
help/reference/contract/ADL wording to the effect the flag really has instead, and re-flip the
round-18 test — but code and documentation must agree.

Disposition

Carried to the merge gate, unresolved. Rounds 1-18's prior findings remain resolved or
previously-escalated as recorded in the working log; nothing from those rounds is reopened by
this comment.

…ever opens, and --no-kb reaches both readers Round 17 revived a pre-flight that had never executed. Reviving it exposed two defects it had been hiding, both proven by counting requests against a released-shape fixture (no bundled dataset) rather than by reading the code. 1. The hook read `thisCommand.opts()` — the PROGRAM's option set for a program-level `preAction`. Every flag that names the command's own source is declared on the `install` SUBCOMMAND, so `--source`, `--offline` and `--list-targets` were invisible to it and it resolved the official KB anyway: `--offline` failed for exactly the air-gapped user it exists for, every `--source`/`--git` install downloaded a whole KB it never opened, and `--list-targets` — which reads local config only — required network. It now consults the action command's options through one named predicate. 2. `--no-kb` skipped the pre-flight's warm fetch and downloaded anyway: the command path resolves its dataset independently through `resolveDatasetRoot`, which fetched whenever an httpClient was present. Five surfaces (help text, CLI reference, contracts spec, ADL, a flipped test) had already been rewritten to promise a working skip, so the documentation shipped one round ahead of the behaviour. `kb` is now threaded into the resolver, which resolves from the bundled dataset or a populated cache slot and otherwise fails with the two ways out. Every existing fixture seeds a monorepo dataset and the smoke suite runs `dist` from inside the monorepo, so the bundled branch short-circuited in both — which is how 1144 tests stayed green over this. The five new tests use the released shape and assert zero requests; each was injection-tested against its own guard. ADL clauses 61 and 84 corrected: both stated the behaviour this commit is what actually delivers.

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[TECH-DEBT] KB cache: no automatic eviction of external slots #427

Closed

[TECH-DEBT] KB cache: same-source concurrent installs are not atomic #428

Closed

[TECH-DEBT] KB cache: a local source is discriminated by path, not content #429

Closed

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Atomic target-directory write for concurrent install/update on the same project #134

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[US-395] docs: external slots are never inspected (spec matched code)…

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…, round-4 ADL clauses Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

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[US-395] style: prettier on the round-5 installer test

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[US-395] test: RED — a failed restore is warned and retried, set-asid…

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[US-395] test: RED — pair --help must not advertise --no-kb as a wo…

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…rking skip

[US-395] fix: pair --help and the CLI contract spec call --no-kb wh…

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…at it is — a no-op (review round 15)

[US-395] docs: the ADL records the two other surfaces that promised -…

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[US-395] feat: byte-mode readFileBytes on FileSystemService + in-memo…

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[US-395] fix: cache slots keyed by source identity, not CLI version (shared-cache contamination) - #423

[US-395] fix: cache slots keyed by source identity, not CLI version (shared-cache contamination)#423
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Summary

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What Changed

Review Round 1 (commit 9dbf79e8)

Review Round 2 (commits e1a49402 → b3f2c658 → 0489ba99)

Review Round 3 (commits 51e5e88e → 944ce186 → f027deda)

Review Round 4 (commits 959c6854 → 935b7af3 → ae864ace)

Review Round 5 (commits 498cd3cc → 57073b61 → d6a211ae)

Review Round 6 (commits 8d38a69e → 5204251a → d08e73c8 → 9703fcba)

Review Rounds 7-10 (no commits — escalated to the human merge gate)

Review Round 11 (commits cf608f1b -> 70bee6bd)

Review Round 12 (commits c932a388 → c5c7370a → 1a4ecea9)

Review Rounds 14-15 (commits 36254dc9 → f125b23f → 7d333972 → dab46767 → 49031c07 → 13583b4d)

Review Round 16 (commits a7499e15 → 9eb777ae → ae97cca6)

Review Round 17 (commits 03da0d96 → a778591f → d4480f4d)

Review Round 18 (commits 2fe7aa9d → 55a5888f → 0e1b3c62 → 8028f758)

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Security — Input validation

Security — Output handling

Security — Authentication

Security — Authorization

Security — Introduced vulnerabilities

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Escalation — review<->fix loop, round 19 (head 8028f758)

Still-open actionable findings (both Critical, both unattempted)

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Review Round 1 (commit `9dbf79e8`)

Review Round 2 (commits `e1a49402` → `b3f2c658` → `0489ba99`)

Review Round 3 (commits `51e5e88e` → `944ce186` → `f027deda`)

Review Round 4 (commits `959c6854` → `935b7af3` → `ae864ace`)

Review Round 5 (commits `498cd3cc` → `57073b61` → `d6a211ae`)

Review Round 6 (commits `8d38a69e` → `5204251a` → `d08e73c8` → `9703fcba`)

Review Round 11 (commits `cf608f1b` -> `70bee6bd`)

Review Round 12 (commits `c932a388` → `c5c7370a` → `1a4ecea9`)

Review Rounds 14-15 (commits `36254dc9` → `f125b23f` → `7d333972` → `dab46767` → `49031c07` → `13583b4d`)

Review Round 16 (commits `a7499e15` → `9eb777ae` → `ae97cca6`)

Review Round 17 (commits `03da0d96` → `a778591f` → `d4480f4d`)

Review Round 18 (commits `2fe7aa9d` → `55a5888f` → `0e1b3c62` → `8028f758`)

Escalation — review<->fix loop, round 19 (head `8028f758`)