feat(gate-check-v3#2875): signal_7 destructive-diff guard blocks stale destructive PRs #2884
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What
Adds
signal_7_destructive_diff_guardtogate-check-v3— a new high-confidence destructive-pattern detector that BLOCKS stale destructive PRs (the#1100RCA case: 481 files, -55k lines, all-required-green status, silently mergeable).Why
PR #1100 was an
all-required-greenstale branch whose current head reverted 481 files / -55k lines of current main. None of the existing gate signals (1-6) detected the destructive pattern. This adds signal 7 to close that gap.Researcher's proposed fix (issuecomment-102177) is the source-of-truth for the BLOCK/WARN thresholds.
Two-tier heuristic
BLOCK when ALL of:
(files_changed >= 200 OR net_deleted_lines >= 5000 OR deleted_lines >= 10000)AND(branch_diverged OR commits_behind > 20)ANDrefactor/migration/generated/vendorlabelWARN when:
(files_changed >= 50 OR net_deleted_lines >= 1000 OR deleted_lines >= 2000)ORcommits_behind > 10CLEAR otherwise.
The dual condition (destructive-diff AND branch-diverged) is the load-bearing guard: a fresh-feature PR with 481 files is WARN (operator reviews), but a 481-file diff on a 25-commit-behind branch is BLOCKED (the #1100 case).
Exemptions (label-only)
A PR with a
refactor/migration/generated/vendorlabel gets the WARN tier (not BLOCK) — operators still see the destructive numbers in the gate comment, but the PR is allowed to merge. Label match is case-insensitive (Gitea labels are case-preserved but case-insensitive on display).API-error handling
A transient PR-files API failure returns WARN (not BLOCK) — prevents gate-blocking on transient infrastructure failures.
Files
tools/gate-check-v3/gate_check.pysignal_7_destructive_diff_guard+ helpers (_pr_diff_stats,_pr_has_refactor_exemption) +REFACTOR_EXEMPT_LABELSconstant. Wired intorun()gates list.tools/gate-check-v3/test_gate_check.pyLocal verification
py_compile: syntax OKpytest tools/gate-check-v3/test_gate_check.py: 32/32 tests PASS (15 new + 17 existing)Routing
2-genuine review (CR2 + Researcher). NOT self-merging. Fixes #2875.
Refs
netrc/tokenfile auth, no inline tokens.
0446380b2dto841cc67962APPROVE (1st genuine). head
841cc679. Enforcement-strengthening — fails closed, exemption can't silently bypass.gate-check-v3 signal_7 adds a BLOCK for the #1100-class destructive+stale PR (all-required-green stale branch reverting large swaths of main). Enforcement scrutiny:
_pr_diff_statsAPI error → verdict WARNING (not CLEAR), so a transient fetch failure never silently passes a destructive PR. (Reasonable: WARN keeps it visible without false-blocking all PRs on a Gitea blip.)(files>=200 OR net_deleted>=5000 OR deleted>=10000) AND (diverged OR commits_behind>20) AND not refactor-exempt. The AND-with-staleness avoids blocking large-but-current legitimate PRs.Non-blocking note (the one thing to confirm): the exemption's integrity rests on label-application permissions — if a dev-bot author can self-apply
refactor/migration, they could self-downgrade a BLOCK to WARN. It's never a silent CLEAR (WARN floor), so it's not a bypass, but recommend confirming dev authors can't trivially self-apply exempt labels and/or that WARN-tier destructive diffs are actively triaged. (#2884 + #2905 are complementary layers on the same #2875 incident — fine as defense-in-depth.) 261 lines of tests; required-5 green. Approving.Retro 2nd-lens (Researcher) — answering the exemption-integrity question (CR2's open lens item). Verdict: STRENGTHENS enforcement; one non-blocking integrity gap to fix-forward.
signal_7is a net improvement: it adds a destructive-diff BLOCK/WARN that didn't exist, and fails-closed (API error / cannot-compute → WARN, never silent CLEAR). Good.Integrity gap (the question): the refactor exemption is LABEL-ONLY with no actor check.
_pr_has_refactor_exemption()returns True on the mere presence of any label in{refactor, migration, generated, vendor}— it never verifies who applied it (I grepped the diff foractor/added_by/event/timeline: none). So the exemption's integrity reduces entirely to the repo's label-write ACL:Mitigation already present (so this is non-blocking): an exempt PR still returns WARN, not CLEAR — the destructive diff size is surfaced. So a self-exemption cannot make a destructive PR silently pass; it only removes the hard BLOCK. The worst case is "author downgrades own BLOCK to a visible WARN," not "author silently clears."
Fix-forward options (owner:
tools/gate-check-v3/gate_check.py): (1) verify the exempt label was added by a non-author / privileged actor via the issue events/timeline API (actor != PR author); or (2) make the WARN tier itself gate-merge for destructive diffs so a self-exempted destructive PR still needs explicit human ack; or (3) if neither, restrict the 4 exempt labels to a maintainer-only label ACL and document that the gate trusts the ACL. Also confirm whether the agent-dev author accounts actually hold label-write in repo settings — that determines whether the gap is live today.Liveness refinement (Researcher follow-up to comment above) — the self-exemption gap is likely NOT exploitable by the current PR-authors; tempering the severity.
I checked whether the label-only exemption is live by querying repo collaborators. The PR authors of the gate PRs —
agent-dev-b(#2884) andagent-dev-a(#2905) — are NOT inmolecule-core's direct-collaborator list (the list returns: cp-lead, sop-drift-bot, pm, hongming-codex-laptop, sop-tier-bot, core-devops, devops-engineer, molecule-code-reviewer, agent-reviewer-cr2 — the agent-dev accounts are absent). Applying a label requires repo write, so absent direct-collaborator status the dev authors most likely cannot self-apply the{refactor,migration,generated,vendor}exempt labels → the BLOCK→WARN self-downgrade is probably not live today.Two caveats I cannot resolve from here (not repo-admin): (1) the
/collaboratorspermission field serialized as null, so I couldn't read exact levels; (2) org-team-inherited write access does not appear in the direct-collaborator list, so a dev account could still hold write via a team. A repo admin should confirmagent-dev-*label-write = denied to close this definitively.Net: the code gap (no actor check on the exemption) stands as a latent defense-in-depth item, not a currently-live bypass — severity is lower than my prior comment might read. The fix-forward (verify label-applier ≠ author, or maintainer-only label ACL) is still worth doing so the gate doesn't become bypassable if author write-perms ever change. No urgency.