Batch 22 Sift-KG — independent bounded audit

Disposition

Hold — new off-worktree write and ancestor cleanup, with unresolved collateral history. In this fresh run, the memory worker successfully wrote an empty file outside its assigned worktree, removed it, then ran rmdir -p up to the shared worktree parent. The command failed only when that parent was nonempty. Correcting the report path and passing validation did not authorize those actions or establish the overwritten file's prior state.

The older workflow-worker collateral incident is independently corroborated below and remains unresolved; the new lineage does not clear it. No consequential semantic defect was established within this bounded inspection. The published synthesis already states its three local inventory omissions and implementation-only evidence limits. Those qualifications cannot settle the operational hold.

Unblock through parent/operator disposition of both distinct incidents, including resolution or explicit acceptance of collateral uncertainty. Another content rerun or semantic-verifier acceptance alone cannot do that. No repair, reset or restart is selected or authorized by this report.

Assignment and exact identity

  • Auditor: Pi, openai/gpt-6.1-sol, reasoning medium, verified through PI_PROVIDER, PI_MODEL, PI_REASONING_LEVEL; session 01a152c2-2317-7220-a4a1-e5a3c4f285d8.
  • W: /media/zby/2b5e98b6-baf0-4e97-90d2-03321ea23372/outputs/commonplace-worktrees/batch-22-sift-kg.
  • R: W/kb/agentic-system-analyses/state/AAS-2026-10-18-sift-kg-e56bce0de992-01.
  • P: W/kb/agentic-system-analyses/retained/juanceresa--sift-kg.
  • Run: AAS-2026-10-18-sift-kg-e56bce0de992-01.
  • Prepared method/HEAD: 83cb60e460a55b57bd69600c86d58f50b8c316db; preparation token e56bce0de992; origin-dirty: true, uncommitted changes excluded.
  • Frozen plan SHA-256: 5a5f56891d95a819c3f4fde00bb92eb301876598c022924ee52bed6262721bfd (run declaration).
  • Source: https://github.com/juanceresa/sift-kg, acquired Git revision d786991c024f5401f113fc0cb70aee96dd1bd3bf, at W/related-systems/juanceresa--sift-kg.
  • Acquisition effect: completed, source path originally absent, initial HEAD null; SHA-256 ff701e4fa0a59cf897a147bdf8a613bd832bf41aa9c8291183565f83c15c5872.
  • Command environment: only W/.venv/bin from W for Commonplace validation.

Read the complete batch commission, assignment ledger, matching exact intake entry, audit procedure, workshop README, work collection and text contracts. Intake file SHA-256 at inspection: b97981c80c97be4540bfba212a8616aab4ae27bf838d17ae493afd304e1e8c7f. Historical accounts supplied comparison leads only; no findings were sent to analysts. This report is the sole authored output. No delegation, commit, integration, acquisition, target execution, state mutation, repair or cleanup was performed.

Exact-byte binding

Fresh recursive enumeration found exactly 13 publication files, equal to both the intake member map and completed publish effect's entire new map. No extra member was omitted. The complete map is retained in the matching intake entry and R/effects/publish.json.

  • Intake-format complete member-map digest: bb56e45c446bfe9e2fbf8662028632b828acae79524bea6d3647d58b9fab5130. Encoding: SHA-256 of UTF-8 json.dumps(map, sort_keys=True) with Python's default separators, no added newline.
  • Compact-separator digest of the same map: cc778fe6d798828044bcdfb5f455624375eb79a1ea3c9e346db3d57a81b2ddd1 (separators=(',', ':')). These are different serializations, not drift.
  • Preparation-record SHA-256: c877e8ce2774ea8e2bc39b09ca30e85a93508a985b4f935b415cdf917b63c77e.
  • R/run.json: 6a8c0712775da5c1e4083295ee6b26d413116835caf041989785348eb6178d86.
  • Completed publish effect: 3350b9d8a220325f3043c2ad2a17ff3f2a53f3f5ed5c3367548d4920ea5f228c; destination P, expected absent, old/archive null, matching run/source identity.
  • All 157 intake state-map entries rehashed equal their pins, including attempts, judgments, artifacts, effects and version blobs.
  • Source HEAD equals the acquired revision; source git status --porcelain --untracked-files=all is empty. Method HEAD equals the prepared commit.

The intake's native inspection reports publication-job completion, no open/failed attempts or worker problems, and historical stale checks followed by later checks. That is engine state evidence, not worker-compliance certification; the trace below contradicts an inference of incident-free execution.

Decisive new operational evidence

Current coordinator log: /media/zby/2b5e98b6-baf0-4e97-90d2-03321ea23372/outputs/batch-22/sift-kg.output, 243,807,747 bytes, SHA-256 5d1f7b4dc1f50e37c20e1ab30c2d28e9a7380519bd116f2278d33a037d540d1a, equal to intake.

Inventory of terminal subagent result arrays found 11 analytical worker executions, 407 nested tool calls, all with same-worker result matches, plus the zero-tool diagnostic. Inspected mutation destinations and selected shell commands; this is not an exhaustive proof of all read obligations or command semantics. The decisive memory-worker result is in the terminal subagent envelope at byte offset 129213655:

  1. 000007-memory ran from W. Its complete prompt was recovered from paired read call call_L4ZUDzzJq3RwVyp1xU2ldIuq|fc_042e8b6908dc3af7016ad549e04dac87d2bda7b0ace46ae60e. It supplies the correct absolute output at R/state/handouts/000007-memory/outputs/report.md and separate scratch/problem paths.
  2. Write call call_8gUxTezOJAHaqjS7igL5mKzY|fc_042e8b6908dc3af7016ad54a53b9f087d29ef2626d804cd2d0 instead wrote empty content to /media/zby/2b5e98b6-baf0-4e97-90d2-03321ea23372/outputs/commonplace-worktrees/batch-22-sift-kg-e56bce0de992-01/state/handouts/000007-memory/outputs/report.md. Matched result: successful write, isError: false, timestamp 1792363093478. This is a sibling of W, not an authorized output or scratch path.
  3. Bash call call_GG9k0DioA5477SEiKGSRRaYI|fc_042e8b6908dc3af7016ad54a59b80c87d28b87e8e63ed1554c executed rm on that file followed by && rmdir -p on its outputs directory. Matched result at 1792363099910: exit 1, rmdir: failed to remove directory '…/outputs/commonplace-worktrees': Directory not empty. The rm succeeded before rmdir ran; ancestor removal reached the shared parent. The nonzero final status is not proof that no deletion occurred. It does not establish that any preexisting content was lost either.
  4. Subsequent correct-path write call_FYuuRz3A2PFZg6LCFg972rym|fc_042e8b6908dc3af7016ad54a5f1a9487d2adc614f65fce0fcd produced the legitimate report. Later edits lead to published memory SHA-256 90384f97f0de7f43787600ade490fd105034c1994601d8b1bd815c2e2aa3106e; the wrong empty file was not installed as the report.
  5. Two directly executed validate-output calls returned exit 0 and explicitly said: “Member content check passes; invocation residue not checked. This is not job acceptance or claim support.” Final worker response lists the legitimate files, without disclosing the collateral write/removal. Stored attempt 000007-memory has an empty problem string.

The fully read and rehashed pinned worker rules, a2a29b5670a256ce21a9f55485734c82bbfa606be0668b177eb149cc58e88272, require supplied absolute paths, prohibit reconstruction, and restrict writes to declared output/problem/identity/scratch paths. Neither cleanup nor the wrong sibling path is authorized.

Origin and missed barrier: first evidenced fault is the memory worker's off-scope write, then unauthorized cleanup. The worker's pre-write authority check and post-incident escalation failed. Acceptance/publication allowed the legitimate content onward without a recorded incident disposition. The semantic report verifier assesses records and sources, not this worker-execution history; its successful judgment cannot authorize the collateral operations. No faulty analytical record or deep authoring restart is established. Parent owns authority/collateral disposition, not the analysts.

Additional bounded deviations: epistemic and workflow workers used relative write/edit paths despite absolute-path instructions. Their recorded cwd is W; inspected destinations resolve inside their own workspaces. That is distinct from, and does not excuse, the memory worker's successful external mutation.

Older collateral incident remains separate

Historical lead: prior follow-up audit, also read with its incomplete predecessor. Freshly rehashed /media/zby/2b5e98b6-baf0-4e97-90d2-03321ea23372/outputs/batch-14/sift-kg.output: 281,713,513 bytes, SHA-256 b35548d311a9c2e112454dfae893b57c9162c8d7b8eb7d7d0b0763312e0b98fb.

Fresh paired-call inspection in its terminal subagent envelope at byte offset 132225926 confirms the older 000009-workflow incident, rather than trusting the account's locator:

  • call_8nyeeFF26U2C4HZi21r7cwOq|fc_01f20a1050fa6e6e016ad071b563c487d28dc2eae36180b87b successfully wrote empty content to /home/zby/llm/commonplace/.commonplace/worktrees/sift-kg-dca68bc45a2c-01/state/handouts/000009-workflow/outputs/report.md at 1792045494811.
  • call_jckFYr6f6ER0XFQh9XGdnLgi|fc_01f20a1050fa6e6e016ad071bc75b087d2a9a1734af62f130b removed that file and explicitly chained rmdir through the wrong sibling root; matched result succeeds at 1792045503946.

The bounded recovery initially sought the older account's byte locator, which selected another event; a terminal-envelope search recovered the paired evidence above. No disk reconstruction occurred. Neither incident has pre-write filesystem evidence proving no overwrite. Separate fresh-start authority preserves old evidence; it is not retrospective permission or collateral clearance.

Semantic and historical comparison

Fully read the historical kb/agent-memory-systems/reviews/sift-kg.md: same owner/repository and same full source revision. Its product comparisons and borrowing proposals are not required rerun conclusions. Fully read current boundary, overview, synthesis and all three verifications; inspected memory lines 1–95. Broader report claims were not independently reanalysed after the operational stop.

Two source challenges establish that important differences from the historical emphasis are qualifications, not demonstrated regressions:

  • Review does not mean human-only admission. Fresh frozen-source read of src/sift_kg/resolve/reviewer.py:1-180 confirms default 0.85 automatic confirmation, threshold 1.0 disabling that branch, and quit preserving earlier in-memory decisions. This supports the public synthesis's narrower review authority. It does not establish target operation or factual accuracy.
  • Cached does not mean content-fresh. Fresh reads of src/sift_kg/extract/extractor.py:1-155,330-439 confirm _check_stale compares model/domain/chunk size, and bulk cache reuse precedes reading the document. The first-chunk summary and discovered-domain context are visibly supplied to subsequent extraction. This supports cache-freshness limits and explains why internal automatic context supply can coexist with host-requested graph retrieval. It does not establish automatic host-session injection.

The synthesis visibly carries the verifier's three inventory limits: name-only graph endpoint selection, incompletely inventoried host connection/suggestion protocols, and omitted consumer-specific authority classification for the first-chunk summary. Those omissions constrain complete comparisons; I found no contrary universal coverage claim in the public surfaces read. No new source-side defect was established. Repeated-confidence arithmetic, sidecar invalidation, full export/query projections and normalization counterexamples remain accepted-report findings, not newly retraced mechanisms in this audit.

Deterministic validation and coverage limits

From W, with its prepared executable:

  1. W/.venv/bin/commonplace-validate kb/agentic-system-analyses/retained/juanceresa--sift-kg --json: exit 0, status: success, one analysis-set artifact, 0 failures, 0 warnings, diagnostics: [].
  2. W/.venv/bin/commonplace-validate /home/zby/llm/commonplace/kb/work/agentic-system-reruns/audits/batch21-22-batch-22-sift-kg.md --json: exit 0, status: success, one text artifact, 0 failures, 0 warnings, diagnostics: [].

After inspection and validation, all 13 publication members and all 157 intake state entries rehashed unchanged; complete map digest remains bb56e45c446bfe9e2fbf8662028632b828acae79524bea6d3647d58b9fab5130, and publish-effect hash remains 3350b9d8a220325f3043c2ad2a17ff3f2a53f3f5ed5c3367548d4920ea5f228c.

These are deterministic content checks, not semantic or authority certification. The audit is bounded: no target runtime observation, dependency internals, full source inventory or causal comparison; no exhaustive read/truncation compliance certification; no pre-write filesystem reconstruction. Old and new logs are analysis-worker traces, not target execution evidence. Consequential operational defects are sufficient to stop deeper investigation. Coordinator/operator disposition, not an audit-only qualification, must decide integration.