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40 referenced-but-absent files across 19 repos — triaged (estate sweep) #653
Description
Activity
⚠ Correction — group 3 was misclassified. The documentation is not missing.
I filed "3. Genuine documentation gaps — the largest group (14)" claiming
docs/{API_REFERENCE,ARCHITECTURE,EXAMPLES,FAQ,MIGRATION,QUICKSTART,TROUBLESHOOTING}.mdwere never authored inasdf-tool-pluginsanddeveloper-ecosystem.They exist. All of them, as
.adoc, beside the script that checks for them:asdf-ghjk/docs/ API_REFERENCE.adoc ARCHITECTURE.adoc CITATIONS.adoc COMPATIBILITY.adoc EXAMPLES.adoc FAQ.adoc MIGRATION.adoc QUICKSTART.adoc TROUBLESHOOTING.adocscripts/rsr-verify.shchecks for the.mdnames. This is the same.md→.adocmigration class as group 2 of this issue and as the 56 checks repointed across 18 repos earlier in the campaign — not a documentation gap at all.Why my triage got it wrong
The detection probe resolved paths three ways (repo root, the script's own directory, basename anywhere). The classification step, which decided "migration gap" vs "genuinely missing", only looked for the
.adoctwin at the repo root. These live atasdf-ghjk/docs/, so it found no twin and filed them as absent.I fixed that root-relative flaw in the detector and never carried it into the classifier — the same bug surviving in the second half of the same tool.
Corrected totals
group was now 3. genuine documentation gaps 14 0 2. wrong path / migration class 4 18 The other groups stand: 5 false positives (
standardstest fixtures), 3 checks for banned tooling, 2 possible undeclaredpackage.jsondependencies, 2 × missingguix-install.sh, and the singles.Fixed
- fix(rsr-verify): accept .adoc — the docs exist, the check named .md asdf-tool-plugins#71
- fix(rsr-verify): accept .adoc — the docs exist, the check named .md developer-ecosystem#194
Both accept either extension, matching the pattern the RSR template's own
quality.ymlalready uses for README, LICENSE and CONTRIBUTING. Verified 7/7 checks satisfied against files on disk, 0 missing, shellcheck clean.No documentation needed authoring. Had this not been checked first, 14 duplicate files would have been written in the wrong format alongside the correct ones.
Correction — group 4 ("checks for banned tooling") re-triaged
I proposed deleting three checks as stale. Having read how each is actually used, none of the three should simply be deleted, and one is a materially worse defect than filed.
1.
preference-injector— the scorer penalises compliance ⚠scripts/rsr-verify.shawards RSR points like this:category points requires Type Safety — Bronze 80 deno.jsonwith"strict": trueType Safety — Silver 20 bsconfig.json(ReScript)Memory Safety — Bronze 40 deno.jsonThe repo is written in AffineScript — 30
.affinefiles, the estate's endorsed language. It has nodeno.jsonand nobsconfig.json, because both Deno and ReScript are banned estate-wide.So the scorer grants points only for using two banned languages, and zero for the endorsed one actually in use.
preference-injectorscores 0/140 on these categories permanently — not for being non-compliant, but for being compliant.This is not a stale check to delete; it is a scorer measuring the opposite of the policy. It needs new criteria, and the point values are a policy decision rather than a mechanical fix. Isolated — only this repo ships this scorer.
2.
quandledb— an endorsed-language check gated behind a banned one.claude/hooks/session-start.sh:134if command -v deno && command -v affinescript && [ -f frontend/deno.json ]; then # type-check the AffineScript frontend
The AffineScript type-check only runs when Deno is installed and a
deno.jsonexists. Neither is true, and neither should be. The check never runs — silently. Fix is to decouple it from Deno, not to delete it.3.
.git-private-farm— no action neededscripts/bootstrap-hookset.sh:204—if [ -f "rescript.json" ] || ls *.resinside a generated workflow. A properly guarded conditional that correctly does nothing when no ReScript is present. Working as intended.Corrected totals
group was now 4. delete as stale 3 0 needs new criteria (policy) — 1 ( preference-injector)needs decoupling — 1 ( quandledb)working as intended — 1 ( .git-private-farm)Related, found while triaging
30 repos still carry a live
deno.jsondespite the standing ruling that Deno is removed estate-wide — includingcandy-crash/frontend,aerie/src/ui,burble/admin,avow-protocol,dicti0nary-attack,fireflag,dotmatrix-fileprinter,excel-economic-numbers-tool. Separately,candy-crash/scripts/check-languages.sh:125advises "Should use deno.json" — a language-policy checker recommending a banned runtime. That advice is isolated to that one repo.Group 5 also re-triaged — false positives
candy-crashanduniversal-project-managerboth have zero JS sources and no npm imports; everypackage.jsonreference is conditional detection. Not theubicitycase. 0 defects, not 2.Next step (spot-verified 2026-08-27, 10 of 40 entries across 6 classes — all 10 confirmed): the sweep is sound, with one correction:
bag-of-actionsdoes not exist as a repo in either org, so class 6 is 1 repo and the total is 18 repos, not 19.→ Classes 2, 4, 6, 7 (~26 refs) are mechanical repointing/deletion — roughly one small PR per repo. Class 3 (the two 7-file doc sets,
asdf-tool-plugins+developer-ecosystem, 0 of 7 present in each) is the one owner call inside this issue: author the docs or delete the contract.Re-measured 2026-08-31 on today's main: 0 of the 40 refs are fixed. Three corrections to the thread:
bag-of-actionswas renamed tocontinuation-mesh(the API redirects) — it exists; the earlier triage note recording it as nonexistent is wrong. Net: 39 distinct refs across 18 repos, and a stale duplicate checkout of the old name remains on disk (recorded on Duplicate checkout trees double-count every estate census — repos/ vs hyper-repos/ overlap on 213 names, _SET containers hold 412 nested repos #703).- The "Fixed" note above is premature: asdf-tool-plugins#71 and developer-ecosystem#194 are both still OPEN — both repos'
rsr-verify.shon main still run.md-only doc checks while the.adoctwins sit indocs/. excel-economic-numbers-toolnow hasdocs/governance/TPCF.md, butscripts/verify-rsr.shstill checks rootTPCF.md— moved from the missing-file class to the wrong-path class (check fails on a compliant repo).
Actionable scope after this thread's own re-triage (fixtures and non-defects excluded): 31 refs / 15 repos. Stays open as REAL WORK at that scope.
An estate-wide sweep of 454 unique repos / 5,111 tracked shell scripts looked for literal file paths that scripts try to read (
rg/grep/cat/source/[ -f ]operands) but which do not exist.After discarding runtime-created files and vendored trees, 40 references across 19 repos remained. Triaged below — not all are defects, and the classes want different responses.
1. False positives — no action (5)
standards:a.md,b.md,x.md,target.md,check.sh— all insidescripts/spdx-inject-copyright-test.sh, which creates them as fixtures (cat > target.md <<EOF). Correctly absent from the repo.2. Wrong path, not a missing licence (4)
LICENSE.txtLICENSE+LICENSES/{AGPL-3.0-or-later,CC-BY-SA-4.0,MPL-2.0}.txtLICENSE.txtLICENSE+LICENSES/{CC-BY-SA-4.0,MPL-2.0}.txtLICENSE-PALIMPSEST.txtLICENSE+LICENSES/*LICENSE-PALIMPSEST.txtLICENSE+LICENSES/PMPL-1.0-or-later.txtThe licences are present and correct; the checks name files that were never the convention. Repoint the checks at
LICENSE/LICENSES/. These checks are failing today on compliant repos.3. Genuine documentation gaps — the largest group (14)
An identical seven-file set is referenced but never authored, in two repos:
asdf-tool-plugins— that set, plusRSR.mddeveloper-ecosystem— that set, plusRSR.md,READINESS.md,TPCF.mdThe identical shape in both suggests a scaffold that declared a documentation contract nobody then filled. Decision needed: author the docs, or drop the checks. Leaving them asserts a contract the repos do not meet.
4. Checks for banned tooling — stale by policy (3)
deno.jsonfrontend/deno.jsonrescript.jsonThese can never pass and should not — the tooling was deliberately removed. Delete the checks.
5. Possible undeclared dependencies (2)
candy-crashanduniversal-project-managerreference apackage.jsonthat does not exist. Worth checking againstubicity, where the same absence meant the project could not build under any toolchain — its sources importedzodandglobwith no manifest declaring them (fixed in hyperpolymath/ubicity#107).6. Same missing script in two repos (2)
bag-of-actionsandcontinuation-meshboth referenceguix-install.sh, absent from both. Likely a shared scaffold step that was never vendored in.7. Singles (10)
run-tests.shTPCF.mdSUMMARY.mddocs/BENCHMARK-QUICKSTART.mdscripts/check-no-vlang.shscripts/apply-common-files.shWhy this matters
A
grep/rgon a missing file exits non-zero, soif ! rg … X; then fail; fiis permanently true — the check fails regardless of the repo's actual state. Where the reference sits insideif [ -f X ], the opposite happens: the guarded block is silently skipped and the gate reports success by not checking.This sweep is the sibling of the
.md→.adocmigration finding: 56 further checks across 18 repos were pointed at files the migration had renamed. Those are fixed (17 PRs). The 40 above are what remained after that class was removed.Method note
The probe took four iterations before it was trustworthy: v1 examined 1 repo of 454 (a
cdin a shared shell); v2 flagged 417 of 454 (it matched cross-repouses:references); v3 flagged 57 but resolved paths only from the repo root, giving false positives on monorepo-relative and script-relative paths. v4 resolves from repo root, the script's own directory, or basename anywhere, and self-tests against a planted ghost file, a real file, a sibling-directory file and a cross-repo reference.v3's 57 was the dangerous one — it sat squarely in the range a real defect rate would occupy, so nothing about the number itself would have caught it. Only opening three entries did.