From 7863157040d8a60ee48ac140aa5e5f3fb006b0f8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: sylph-decoder Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:30:30 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] method: a checker inherits the staleness of every file it scans Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v --- docs/re/METHOD.md | 24 ++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 24 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/re/METHOD.md b/docs/re/METHOD.md index 75836857..5c0752e3 100644 --- a/docs/re/METHOD.md +++ b/docs/re/METHOD.md @@ -2888,3 +2888,27 @@ remembers the ref exists. What a peer must be *told* still needs `main`. Reporti defect in a file you have not read at its head is worse than not reporting it: theirs was corrected, so my message asked them to re-fix something already fixed, which is the wrongly-superseded failure aimed at a live correction. + +## A checker inherits the staleness of every file it scans + +`check_refuted.py` scans all of `docs/`, which includes the files `sylpheed-port` +authors. **Six of seven of my copies of those are days behind their branch head, +and one I do not have at all.** So any verdict it reaches about one of their files +is a verdict about *my copy*. + +Measured before acting: **zero** of today's hits land in a peer-owned file, so the +exposure is **latent rather than active**. That is worth stating either way, +because the failure direction is the false positive — flagging a claim the owner +has already corrected — and I did exactly that by hand the same day, with their +live file one `git show` away in a ref already fetched here. + +⚠️ **Reported, not excluded.** Silently skipping their files would hide the +exposure, and being behind a peer's topic branch is the normal state — making it an +error would be scenery within a day. The run now names which peer-owned files were +judged from a stale copy, and prints the command to read the live one. + +📌 **The general form: a tool's reach includes the freshness of its inputs, not +just their content.** A checker with a green light over a stale corpus is reporting +on a snapshot, and nothing in its output says so unless it is made to. Ask of any +scan not only *what did it look at* but *how old was what it looked at, and who +owns it*.