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Retire the design-sync gate that presupposes a command that does not exist
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Backlog
Source
docs/backlog/archive/WI-097-retire-phantom-design-gate.md
Status
done

Proposal (rationale)

F-062: design-sync ships design-mirror-not-edited, whose table declares detect = "local-modification" and generated_by = "rungs design pull". No engine implements the detection and no design pull command exists — the mirror is produced by the /design-pull skill, an agent procedure — so the gate passes on every repository by examining nothing. Its two fixtures were the only ones of 163 that cannot execute, held on an explicit allowlist since WI-087. module-commands-exist never caught the phantom because it reads command keys, not generated_by values.

Decision

accepted — 2026-09-06, at the user’s request to tackle F-059 to F-063. Retire the gate rather than build design pull: a CLI command that fetches an external design authority is a feature with no accepted design, and a gate that reports green while checking nothing is worse than no gate — it is the confidently-wrong probe ADR-0007 refuses. The rule the gate stated (the mirror is generated; a hand edit is destroyed by the next pull) stays where it already lives, in the skill’s text. This is not a weakening: nothing the gate ever detected stops being detected.

Plan

Requirements

  • The gate, its table entry and its two fixtures are removed from design-sync; the module’s version moves 1.0.0 → 1.1.0 and the fragment marker follows.
  • The /design-pull skill no longer names a gate; it states the rule directly.
  • module-commands-exist treats a generated_by value naming rungs … as a command claim.
  • The self-test inventory’s unsupported allowlist is empty and asserted empty; the named-unsupported mechanism stays for the next case.

Impacts

  • modules/design-sync/{module.toml,gates/design.toml,fragments/AGENTS.md,skills/design-pull/SKILL.md}, scripts/check-module-commands.mjs, src/selftest.ts, test/core.test.js, site claims snapshot.

Approach

Delete, then make the gate that should have caught it read the value it hid in. Alternative — implement local-modification against a manifest the skill would be asked to write — rejected: a gate that depends on an agent remembering to write a manifest is the same green-by-omission with one more step.

Acceptance criteria / tests

  1. The inventory test asserts zero unrun fixtures; runSelfTests on a modified fixture now reports “no builder”, not a named unsupported rule.
  2. A test proves module-commands-exist fails on a table whose generated_by names a command the CLI does not dispatch.
  3. Serial suite, rungs check and the site claims check pass; doctor --explain output for this repository is unchanged (it does not install design-sync).

Out of scope

  • Building rungs design pull; a separate proposal if a consumer ever needs it. Nothing else deferred.

Execution

Branch feature/WI-097-retire-phantom-design-gate from 28837f14, 2026-09-06. As planned. The /design-pull skill now tells the agent to check git status and git diff on the mirror before pulling, since no gate watches it — the honest replacement for a gate that claimed to. The fragment marker moved to design-sync@1.1.0 with the module version, so a consumer’s upgrade sees the change. unsupportedReason stays as a function that returns null, so the next table rule nothing implements is named there rather than counted as “no builder”.

Review

  1. Targeted (2026-09-06): “the self-test runner executes a fixture…” (a modified fixture is now “no builder”), “every shipped self-test fixture executes…” (unrun list empty, every row ok) and “module-commands-exist reads generated_by values…” (an honest node .ai/rungs.mjs render passes, a phantom rungs design pull fails naming the file and line): 3/3.
  2. Inventory node .scratch/fixture-inventory.mjs: 161 fixtures, 161 ok, 0 unrun, 0 mismatch, 0 error (was 163 with 2 unrun; the two retired fixtures are the difference).
  3. node scripts/check-module-commands.mjs: 54 spans resolve; it caught this item’s own first wording of the retirement comment, which named the phantom in a code span — reworded.
  4. npm test: 157 tests, 154 pass, 0 fail, 3 skipped, 151 s. node src/cli.ts check: 32 pass after archiving; claims snapshot regenerated (design-sync 1.1.0).