Use when about to "fix" or "optimize" something in tensor-grep that feels novel — before proposing PyO3/FFI for directory walking, re-enabling free-threading, adding a --json self-test, tightening a dependency upper-cap, blaming an IDF/ranking flip, trusting a green mock/FFI test, diagnosing a release that "didn't publish", chasing a reported latency "regression" without profiling at scale, shipping a doc-drift/precision heuristic off green fixtures alone, adding a "differs-from-default" native-delegation gate, reading a `capfd`-based CliRunner test result, micro-optimizing a hot loop without checking who actually consumes the value, re-proposing cAST structural chunking as the default, re-proposing dense int8/binary/PCA embedding compression, proposing a warm-session/daemon search-index shortcut, proposing GPU-for-search or re-litigating the PFAC-vs-brute-force kernel claim, hitting the many-pattern Aho-Corasick dedup bug, trusting an unverified "cheap win" from a paper/research steal-list, cloning a "mirror
Use when about to "fix" or "optimize" something in tensor-grep that feels novel — before proposing PyO3/FFI for directory walking, re-enabling free-threading, adding a --json self-test, tightening a dependency upper-cap, blaming an IDF/ranking flip, trusting a green mock/FFI test, diagnosing a release that "didn't publish", chasing a reported latency "regression" without profiling at scale, shipping a doc-drift/precision heuristic off green fixtures alone, adding a "differs-from-default" native-delegation gate, reading a `capfd`-based CliRunner test result, micro-optimizing a hot loop without checking who actually consumes the value, re-proposing cAST structural chunking as the default, re-proposing dense int8/binary/PCA embedding compression, proposing a warm-session/daemon search-index shortcut, proposing GPU-for-search or re-litigating the PFAC-vs-brute-force kernel claim, hitting the many-pattern Aho-Corasick dedup bug, trusting an unverified "cheap win" from a paper/research steal-list, cloning a "mirror language X" onboarding brief without checking which module is the CURRENT template, trusting a conflict-free git rebase across several PRs that touch the same shared registration file as proof nothing was silently dropped, or trusting a BANKED fix hypothesis (a memory note from a prior session) without re-deriving it against the real AST/code; trusting a cause-emitter census count reached by "this one covers that one" reasoning instead of counting each emitter directly; re-proposing an auto-derived agent-id for `tg ledger --claim`; treating MaxSim reranking's absence after `tg install-dense` as a CUJ-coverage gap instead of the RETIRED 2026-08-05 (task F10) validated dead end it is; or chasing a GPU exit-code-2 report, or trusting a control/repro that reproduces the failing output, before confirming which exact symbol the control checked and whether that code path runs in the real CI job; or re-adding a shared-argv-builder flag like `-q` to `_build_cmd` instead of `search_passthrough`, silently starving the consumers that parse rg's stdout rather than stream it. A chronicle of settled battles (symptom -> root cause -> evidence -> status) so no one re-fights them. Load it to check "has this already been tried and lost?" before spending effort. For a live NEW failure use tensor-grep-debugging-playbook; for the process gates to re-attempt one use tensor-grep-change-control.
Tensor-Grep Failure Archaeology
A chronicle of settled battles in tensor-grep: expensive fights that already reached a
verdict. Each entry is symptom -> root cause -> evidence -> status so a future engineer or
model does not burn a day re-discovering the same wall.
Facts below were verified against the repo on 2026-07-02 at v1.17.25, with a second pass on
2026-07-03 at v1.19.3 (Battles 9-14), a third pass adding Battle 15 (release-tag-smoke), a
fourth pass 2026-07-16 at v1.78.1 fixing the stale case_sensitive KNOWN_GAP claim in Battle 9 and
adding Battle 16 (the tg find Opus-gate catches), a fifth pass 2026-07-22 at v1.93.2 adding
Battles 17-22 (the CEO deep-research campaign's research retirements — cAST, dense int8, warm-session,
GPU-for-search, the many-pattern dedup bug, and the "5/5 mirage" meta-lesson), and a sixth pass
2026-07-24 at v1.96.0 adding Battles 23-24 (the language-expansion campaign's stale onboarding-brief
catch and its sequential multi-PR shared-file union-rebase discipline), a warm-hides-cold addendum to
Battle 12, and re-pointing Battle 16's evidence at its post-squash commit hashes (501dc26/6d79945)
plus fixing a stale AGENTS.md section-letter reference, and a seventh, same-day pass 2026-07-24 at
v1.98.2 adding Battle 25 (the banked C function-pointer fix hypothesis, falsified before any code was
written), and an eighth pass 2026-07-31 at v1.101.24 adding Battles 26-29 (the defaulted-scope
disclosure census undercount, the anonymous --claim sentinel-id retention, the MaxSim rerank-extra
deliberate hold, and the #868 GPU exit-2 investigation's two false-confirmation traps), a ninth pass
2026-08-01 at v1.101.27 adding Battle 30 (the -q false-zero shipped in the shared _build_cmd,
#876/#880), and a tenth retention pass 2026-08-12 that marked Battle 28 RETIRED (task F10, per the
retrieval_late.py module header), Battle 29 SETTLED/RETIRED (commit 50595ef — the exit-2 rule
itself was retired), scoped Battle 20's no-crossover claim to single-pattern + fair public baselines,
corrected Battle 21's #694 description (the guard pins the CORRECT behavior, not the bug) and Battle
23's lang_java.py claim, and reconciled Battle 22's steal-list count to its actual 6-candidate list.
Re-verify anything load-bearing with the commands in Provenance and maintenance before you act on it.
Adding a self-test or health check that runs tg search … --json ….
Tightening a dependency upper cap (typer<X, click<X, pydantic<X, …).
Diagnosing a release that "didn't publish" or a green-CI-then-no-PyPI gap.
Blaming a ranking / capsule / semantic-search behavior change on IDF, or "fixing" it by
widening a candidate pool.
Trusting a green mock or FFI test as proof that a bridge works.
Reacting to a wall of red governance tests after a README / docs change.
Chasing a reported latency "regression" by guessing the hot path instead of profiling the
actual slow command at scale.
Shipping a doc-drift / precision-heuristic feature because its fixture tests are green.
Adding a "differs-from-default" runtime gate to decide native-delegation refusal.
Reading capfd/fd-level captured output from a CliRunner-invoked command.
Micro-optimizing a hot loop (e.g. skip-unless-needed) without checking every consumer of the
skipped value first.
Gating a second sequential merge-watcher on "did the tag change since I started" instead of
an absolute condition.
Re-proposing cAST structural chunking as the default chunker — evaluated and REJECTED (Battle 17).
Re-proposing dense-embedding int8/binary/PCA compression for speed — evaluated and DEFERRED, it's
slower in numpy (Battle 18).
Proposing a warm-session/daemon search-index shortcut ("just serve search from the daemon's cached
state") — the daemon holds a symbol map, not a search index; this is a big refactor, not a quick win
(Battle 19).
Proposing GPU-for-search, or describing the shipped GPU kernel as PFAC/Aho-Corasick — it is a
brute-force byte-compare with no single-pattern crossover at any scale vs the fair public baselines
(Battle 20); many-fixed-pattern native CUDA remains only the local candidate lane.
Hitting a many-pattern -e/-f count that looks off — a live native aho-corasick dedup
over-count bug is already diagnosed and guarded, not yet root-fixed (Battle 21).
Trusting an unverified "cheap win" from a paper or research steal-list without checking it against
the real code first — every one of the 6 recent steals came back negative/big-refactor/secondary-path
once verified (Battle 22, the meta-lesson).
Assuming a "clone language X's extractor" onboarding brief is still accurate without checking
which module is the CURRENT template — a brief that says "mirror inline _rust_*" is stale once the
codebase has grown a lang_registry + lang_go.py-style module (Battle 23).
Trusting a conflict-free git rebase across several PRs that all touch the same shared
registration file (a suffix dict, an extras list, a lockfile) as proof the merged file is still
complete (Battle 24).
Trusting a cause-emitter census count ("N of N covered") that was reached by reasoning one
emitter transitively covers another, instead of counting each one directly — the defaulted-scope
disclosure census undercounted by one (Battle 26).
Re-proposing an auto-derived agent-id for tg ledger --claim to remove the explicit
--agent-id requirement — evaluated and REJECTED, it silently reproduces #845 through the
ledger's own overlap suppression (Battle 27).
Treating MaxSim reranking's absence after tg install-dense as a CUJ-coverage gap — MaxSim
late-rerank is RETIRED 2026-08-05 (task F10) as a validated dead end, not a paused hold or a
coverage gap (Battle 28).
Chasing a GPU-path exit code 2 as a plain regression, or trusting a control/repro that
reproduces the failing output, before confirming which exact symbol it exercised and whether
that symbol's job runs in the real CI path (Battle 29).
Adding a flag that suppresses or alters rg's output (e.g. -q) to the shared _build_cmd
argv builder instead of search_passthrough — three of its four consumers PARSE stdout, and
suppression reads as a false no-match, not a quieter one (Battle 30).
When NOT to use this skill (use a sibling instead)
Situation
Use instead
A new, live bug / test failure / crash you are actively debugging
tensor-grep-debugging-playbook
You want to re-attempt a settled battle and need the gates (council, dry-run, flag-flip)
tensor-grep-change-control
You need the invariants that these battles hardened (front door, registration, fail-closed backend)
tensor-grep-architecture-contract
You are running the release pipeline / semantic-release mechanics
tensor-grep-release-and-positioning
Rust/uv/maturin build or env problems (off-PATH cargo, slow LTO)
tensor-grep-build-and-env
The eval/oracle/grader version of the "green test lied" trap (pnpm exit-127, bidirectional oracle)
trustworthy-cuj-scoring
Search-flag / config-axis defaults and semantics
tensor-grep-config-and-flags
This skill is read-only history. It does NOT authorize a change. Reopening any settled
battle still goes through tensor-grep-change-control (council-verify -> dry-run -> conscious
flag-flip). Nothing here routes around that.
How to read an entry
Every entry has four fields. Trust the Evidence column over the prose; if the evidence no
longer matches the code, the battle may have moved — flag it, do not silently act.
Symptom — what you would observe that tempts the re-fight.
Root cause — the mechanism, stated precisely (the naive guess is usually wrong).
Evidence — the commit / PR / file:symbol that proves it.
Status — SETTLED (do not re-fight without change-control) or OPEN (known debt).
Battle 1 — PyO3 for directory walking (FFI boundary loses to os.walk)
Field
Detail
Symptom
"Python's os.walk is slow; wrap Andrew Gallant's Rust ignore crate in a PyO3 class and directory traversal will be much faster."
Root cause
The bottleneck is the PyO3 FFI boundary, not the walk. A Rust iterator that yields paths back to Python must allocate and serialize tens of thousands of Rust String into PyString on the Python heap, acquiring and releasing the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock — CPython's per-interpreter mutex) on every yield. CPython's os.walk runs in C inside the interpreter and never crosses a language boundary until it yields native objects.
Evidence
Benchmarked on the C:\dev monorepo: Rust PyO3 ignore extension = 48.818 s vs pure Python os.walk = 39.892 s. Documented in docs/PAPER.md §3.7 ("Why Pure Python Traversals Sometimes Win"); the Rust scanner.rs PyO3 path was deleted in commit b2f3fdd ("Document PyO3 FFI overhead limits and revert to native CPython directory scanning").
Rule: FFI is the speed path only when it avoids the per-item boundary entirely — i.e. the
embedded tg.exe route that maps files with memmap2 + rayon and never yields per-path into
Python (docs/PAPER.md §3.6). A PyO3 extension that returns a large iterator of small Python
objects will lose to CPython C code. Do not re-propose "just wrap ignore in PyO3" for the walk.
"Free-threading (drop the GIL, mark #[pyclass(frozen)]) should speed up the extension — turn it on."
Root cause
PR #266 flipped gil_used = false + #[pyclass(frozen)]. The extension then failed to import on Linux (agent-readiness red), while Windows and local import stayed green — so the break was invisible where it was developed. Worse: #266 merged with its CI cancelled by a force-push, so no green run ever gated it. The release job needsagent-readiness, so this blocked every release from v1.13.43 onward.
Evidence
Revert commit a90595f ("revert #266 free-threading (gil_used=false + frozen) — broke Linux agent-readiness"); reverted to the known-green #265 config (gil_used=true, no frozen).
Status
SETTLED / re-enable only behind full green CI. Free-threading is marginal-value here; it may be re-attempted, but only via tensor-grep-change-control with a complete green multi-OS CI run — never merged with cancelled CI.
Rule: A merge whose CI was cancelled by a force-push is not verified. Two independent
traps compounded here (Linux-only import break + ungated merge). Do not re-flip free-threading
casually, and never let a force-push swallow the gating CI run.
Battle 3 — the --json fork-bomb (mutual native<->Python delegation)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A tg invocation with --json plus a passthrough flag (--json -b, --json --debug, --stats, …) hangs, then spawns processes without bound — historically it disabled both native tg.exe binaries (audit item "C3").
Root cause
The native front door delegates --json+passthrough combos to the Python sidecar. If the sidecar's launcher lacks the guard (a stale/guard-less Python), the Python launcher re-invokes the native binary, which delegates back to Python — a self-invocation loop that deadlocks and fork-bombs. A self-test that ran tg search … --json --debug against a guard-less Python would re-trigger it.
Evidence
Guard is a re-exec marker enforced across three files: src/tensor_grep/cli/bootstrap.py (search "fork-bomb"), rust_core/src/main.rs, rust_core/src/python_sidecar.rs; behavioral test tests/unit/test_launcher_no_respawn.py. See CHANGELOG entries for the C3 close ("close the C3 fork-bomb for ALL --json + passthrough-flag combos (re-exec marker)").
Status
SETTLED / guarded. The immediate mitigation disabled the native binaries; the durable fix is the re-exec marker guard. Current native-binary availability is nuanced — check tg doctor --json (skipped_native_tg_binaries) and tensor-grep-run-and-operate for live status.
Rule: Never add a health check / self-test that runs tg search … --json … — that is the
exact shape that reopens C3. If you touch the native<->Python delegation path, run
tests/unit/test_launcher_no_respawn.py and dogfood the real binary, not CliRunner.
Battle 4 — README rewrite: 14 red governance tests + 4 wasted CI cycles
Field
Detail
Symptom
A force-pushed marketing README turned main red on ~11–14 governance tests and also tripped a release-blocker gate. The team then burned ~4 CI cycles trying fixes that did not address the failing check.
Root cause
Two layers. (1) The README rewrite dropped enterprise-doc links + pinned content that test_public_docs_governance / test_enterprise_docs_governance / validate_readme_contract assert. (2) The 4-cycle waste came from theorizing from tracebacks — a free-threading revert and uv run --no-sync were tried first — instead of decoding the structured failing check. The real release-gate failer was validate_docs_claims (a docs-claim staleness check), not the theories.
Evidence
PR #269 / v1.13.44 ("green main after the README rewrite — restore enterprise-doc links + relax redundant README governance"); commits fc1f4b9, and the validate_readme_contract / test_public_docs_governance relaxations in CHANGELOG v1.13.44.
Status
SETTLED. README stays governed by validate_docs_claims for version-staleness, but is exempted from technical-fragment pins; substance moved to dedicated docs (SKILL.md / AGENTS.md / CONTRACTS.md).
Rule (the load-bearing lesson):Decode the structured failing check FIRST. Run
gh run view <id> --log-failed (or read the specific failing test's assertion) and fix that
check. Do not theorize a root cause from a traceback and start reverting unrelated things — that
is what cost 4 cycles. This same "decode first" rule is why Battle 6's push-race is diagnosable in
one step.
Battle 5 — dependency upper-cap silently downgraded the whole install on Python 3.14
Field
Detail
Symptom
uv tool install tensor-grep (or pipx/uvx) on Python 3.14 silently installed stale 1.13.35 instead of the latest — with no error.
Root cause
The pin was typer>=0.12,<0.25. On py3.14 there was no py3.14-compatible click inside the typer<0.25 range, so the resolver could not satisfy the newest tensor-grep's constraints and silently resolved the WHOLE package DOWN to the last version that fit. requires-python >= X has no upper bound, so nothing surfaced the mismatch as an error — a downgrade reads as success.
Evidence
PR #310 / v1.17.16 ("Allow typer 0.25 to unblock Python 3.14 installs"); commit 20d22c8. Current pin in pyproject.toml is typer>=0.12,<0.26. The <0.25 floor existed because typer 0.26 dropped CliRunner.isolated_filesystem() that 49 CLI tests use; typer 0.25.1 threads the needle (keeps that API AND supports py3.14).
Status
SETTLED at typer>=0.12,<0.26.
Rule: When a new Python version yields a stale install, suspect a transitive
dependency upper cap (typer / click / pydantic), notrequires-python. An upper cap that
is unsatisfiable on a newer Python degrades silently — always validate an unpinned install on the
newest supported Python end-to-end before assuming a cap is safe. Tightening any <X cap is a
change-control event (tensor-grep-change-control).
Battle 6 — release "didn't publish": the push-race (non-fast-forward)
Field
Detail
Symptom
PR CI is green, the fix:/feat: code is on main, but no chore(release): vX commit appears and PyPI does not update — the version "didn't publish".
Root cause
The real publish is the Semantic Release job inside .github/workflows/ci.yml (gated github.ref=='refs/heads/main' && github.event_name=='push'). It compiles native assets first, so it runs ~6 min — a race window. If any merge lands on main during that window — including a no-release docs:/chore: PR — main advances and the in-flight release's final git push origin main (the version-bump commit) is rejected non-fast-forward (! [rejected] main -> main). The CI concurrency group serializes runs, not the human/agent act of clicking merge.
Evidence
AGENTS.md "Release publish is not instant — the push-race (hard-won, re-confirmed 2026-07-02)". Receipt: v1.17.23 (#318, a security batch) failed to publish because the GPU-pause docs: PR #319 was merged while #318's release job was still compiling assets. release.yml is workflow_dispatch-only (a manual tag cannot bypass semantic-release).
Status
SETTLED discipline = one-merge-per-tick. Merge ONE release-bearing PR -> wait for its chore(release): vX commit on main AND the new PyPI version -> then merge the next. Applies even to no-release docs/chore PRs.
Recovery — do NOT panic-rerun. The failure self-heals: the next push-to-main re-runs
Semantic Release, and because the version is derived from git tags (not the failed run's
state), it recomputes the correct next version and covers the orphaned commit. Just confirm that
next run's Semantic Release job succeeds. Diagnose with the structured result first:
gh run view <id> --json jobs -> find Semantic Release -> gh run view <id> --log-failed. A
! [rejected] main -> main line is the push-race signature; anything else is a different problem.
Battle 7 — the IDF-ranking-fragility flip (the IDF root-cause guess was DISPROVEN)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A change that added zero ranking terms (a GPU-code diff) silently flipped the agent capsule's bridge-binary choice from "tie, ask the user" to "confidently pick a marker no-op" — i.e. a ranking surface (tg search --rank, agent capsule, semantic) silently changed a safety behavior on corpus change, and the blast radius was invisible to the call graph.
Root cause
The first guess — "missing IDF weighting" — was DISPROVEN by a thinktank, and the minimal "just widen the candidate pool" fix was proven insufficient. The real cause is a stack: a flat, no-IDF scorer + a hard top-5 candidate cap + a file_score flip + an alphabetical path tie-break. (IDF = inverse document frequency, the term-rarity weighting BM25 uses; its absence makes common and rare terms score alike.)
Evidence
PR #302 shipped a degrade-to-ask safety floor (force ask_user when the post-swap primary is still an unrequested marker), de-fragilized the self-referential live-test into a safety-floor assertion, and moved the exact-identity contract to a deterministic fixture. See CHANGELOG #302 and AGENTS.md ranking notes.
Status
PARTIALLY SETTLED — OPEN DEBT. The safety floor shipped. The underlying flat no-IDF scorer still exists and remains fragile; a proper fix is deferred to a separate benchmarked repo_map PR.
Rule: Do not ship your first root-cause guess for a ranking flip (IDF was the wrong
guess here). Ranking surfaces can silently degrade a safety behavior on corpus change — treat
any capsule/--rank/semantic change as safety-relevant, keep the degrade-to-ask floor, and gate
scorer changes on a measured benchmark (tensor-grep-benchmark-and-proof-toolkit), never a
clean-looking diff. No speed/quality claim without numbers vs the accepted baseline.
Battle 8 — the broken-oracle trap: green mock/FFI tests while the real bridge was DEAD
Field
Detail
Symptom
Mock-based FFI tests were green, yet the real PyO3 passthrough bridge dropped every forwarded flag — the passthrough was effectively dead and users got wrong/unaccelerated results.
Root cause
The bridge passed None for glob/file_type into an rg Vec<String> -> TypeError -> a broad except swallowed it into a silent fallback that dropped all flags. The mocks never exercised the real extension, so the tests validated nothing about the live boundary — a broken oracle (a test that passes regardless of whether the thing works).
Evidence
PR #309 / v1.17.15 ("Forward dropped rg flags through PyO3 bridge + revive the passthrough (audit #3)"); commit fd30e6d. The fix forwards the hardcoded flags and guards (… or []).
Status
SETTLED.
Rule:Verify FFI/bridge changes against the REAL extension (a live maturin develop
runtime call), never mocks alone. A green mock is a hypothesis, not proof (see the unwritten rule
"never trust a self-report"). For the eval/grader version of this trap — a whole lane failing
uniformly, a grader that passes an empty answer, pnpm.cmd exit-127 on Windows — load
trustworthy-cuj-scoring, which enforces bidirectional oracle validation (a correct
answer must PASS and a wrong/empty answer must FAIL before any batch is trusted).
tg search --rank --cpu (also --rank --json/--ndjson, --sort-files --cpu) silently returned unranked / unsorted results — no error, output just looked plausible and wrong.
Root cause
Native-tg delegation sys.exit()s before the Python-side BM25 rerank and the in-backend sort ever run. rank_bm25 and sort_files were SearchConfig fields that were neither forwarded into the native argv nor listed in the refuse-tuple (_NATIVE_TG_DELEGATION_DEFAULT_REQUIRED_FIELDS), so the gate happily delegated and the flags evaporated. A tempting alternative fix — a generic "differs-from-default" runtime gate that refuses delegation whenever any field is non-default — was explicitly rejected: query_pattern is auto-set on every search, so a blanket differs-from-default check would trip on it on literally every invocation and kill the native fast path entirely (a re-confirmation of a 2026-06-30 failure mode; see tensor-grep-config-and-flags).
Evidence
Commit 5e6f780 (#342, "fix: refuse native delegation for --rank/--sort-files (silent wrong-output) + coverage ratchet") adds sort_files/rank_bm25 to _NATIVE_TG_DELEGATION_DEFAULT_REQUIRED_FIELDS in src/tensor_grep/cli/main.py. New governance ratchet tests/unit/test_native_delegation_field_coverage.pyAST-derives the forwarded-field set from _build_native_tg_search_command and asserts every SearchConfig field is forwarded | refused | gate-handled | in the documented _NATIVE_TG_DELEGATION_KNOWN_GAP_FIELDS frozenset (which explicitly names query_pattern with the differs-from-default caveat in its comment).
Status
SETTLED for rank_bm25/sort_files. OPEN debt: the KNOWN_GAP frozenset (ast_prefer_native, ast_selector, ast_stdin, nlp_threshold, use_jit, ignore_dot, …) documents fields that were already silently dropped before #342 — acknowledged, not fixed. case_sensitive is NOT in this set — audit #19 forwarded it into the native argv via -s, so it graduated out of KNOWN_GAP into the Forwarded bucket; do not list it as a gap in new docs (tensor-grep-config-and-flags records this explicitly).
Rule: Same bug class as #336's -u/-uu no-op — a SearchConfig field that affects output is
a silent-drop landmine unless it is forwarded to the native argv, added to the refuse-tuple, or
explicitly gated. Adding a new SearchConfig field? Load tensor-grep-config-and-flags and run
the coverage ratchet. Never propose a generic "differs-from-default" gate for delegation
refusal — query_pattern makes it degenerate to "always refuse."
Battle 10 — the capfd capture-surface trap: a delegation-routing fix broke fd-level test assertions
Field
Detail
Symptom
Right after Battle 9's fix made --rank correctly refuse native delegation, test_search_rank_reorders_by_bm25 started raising JSONDecodeError — every test-python job on main went red, even though the BM25 rerank behavior itself was correct.
Root cause
Before the fix, --rank wrongly delegated to a native subprocess, whose stdout landed on the real OS file descriptor — exactly what pytest's capfd fixture (fd-level capture) reads. After the fix, the rerank runs in-process, so the JSON is emitted via typer.echo() inside the CliRunner-invoked call and lands in CliRunner's captured result.stdout (a Python-level buffer), never touching the OS fd. The test still read capfd.readouterr().out → empty string → json.loads("") failed.
Evidence
Commit ab717a1 (#343, "test: fix --rank bm25 capture for the non-delegation path (#342 follow-up)"), diff in tests/integration/test_bm25_search_flag.py: dropped the capfd fixture parameter, switched the assertion to json.loads(result.stdout). Comment left in the test explains the fd-vs-in-process split "only surfaces when the native binary is built, which PR CI skips but main/release CI builds."
Status
SETTLED.
Rule: A test that reads capfd against a CliRunner.invoke() result is implicitly asserting
that the command delegated to a real subprocess (whose output crosses the OS fd boundary) rather
than running in-process. Any change to native-delegation routing — what gets forwarded vs. refused
— can silently flip which capture surface carries the real output. If you touch
_can_delegate_to_native_tg_search or the refuse-tuple, run tests/integration/ locally, not just
tests/unit/. This is the sibling of Battle 3's "dogfood the real binary, not CliRunner": here
CliRunner is the right tool, but you must know which stream it captures for the path you just
changed.
Battle 11 — MatchLine hashability regression, and a "free" micro-opt that wasn't
Field
Detail
Symptom
(a) A MatchLine with a populated submatches field raised TypeError on hash() — a frozen dataclass silently lost its hashability contract. (b) A follow-on "obvious" optimization (only stash submatches when --vimgrep/--column is requested) broke an existing test in the same PR.
Root cause
(a) submatches (added in #340) is typed tuple[dict[str, object], ...] | None — a tuple of dicts is unhashable — so any future caller that hashes/dedupes a MatchLine would crash the instant a real rg run populated it. (b) The gating micro-opt (want_submatches = config.vimgrep or config.column) looked like free wasted-work removal — a profiler had flagged the per-match stash as a small cost during the Battle 12 blast-radius hunt — but tests/unit/test_submatches_output_shaping.py::test_backend_stashes_submatches_without_inflating_count calls RipgrepBackend().search(..., SearchConfig()) with a default config (vimgrep=False, column=False) and asserts result.matches[0].submatches is not None. The gate made that default-config case return None, failing the test — the "wasted work" was not actually dead: a consumer expects it populated regardless of output format.
Evidence
Commit 80de0b4 (#344). The final merged diff touches only src/tensor_grep/core/result.py (submatches: tuple[...] | None = field(default=None, compare=False)) and adds tests/unit/test_matchline_submatches_hashable.py — it does not touch src/tensor_grep/backends/ripgrep_backend.py. The two squashed sub-commits show why: 65022bc added the want_submatches gate to ripgrep_backend.py (+3 -1 there), and 4c34516reverted exactly that gate (ripgrep_backend.py | 5 +----), keeping only the hashability fix.
Status
SETTLED for (a) — compare=False is the shipped fix. (b) is SETTLED as "already tried and reverted" — do not re-propose the vimgrep/column gate without first checking test_submatches_output_shaping.py's consumer contract.
Rule:field(default=None, compare=False) is the fix shape for "add a field to a frozen
dataclass that must stay hashable but holds an unhashable value type" (the offsets are a pure
function of text+line, so excluding it from == is correct too). Before gating a per-match stash
"because only formatter X consumes it," grep the actual consumers first — a test that breaks the
instant you ship a profiler-motivated micro-opt is not an obstacle to route around; it is the
consumer contract telling you the guess was wrong.
Battle 12 — the reported +33% blast-radius "regression" was noise; the council's own hot-path guess was also wrong
Field
Detail
Symptom
An AI-user report claimed tg blast-radius (depth-2) regressed +33% (188s → 250s) between two tagged versions.
Root cause
Two separate wrong guesses were made and disproven before the real fix. (1) A 3-lens+opus review council correctly ruled out a noise-regression theory on the reported deltas, but then guessed the hot path was AST parsing — live profiling later showed compile() was only 3.6% of runtime, and a Counter-monkeypatch of ripgrep_backend calls showed zero frames on the actual tg callers path the council had profiled (they profiled the wrong file/path — 0 calls on-path). (2) A follow-on regression-hunt workflow's own synthesis guessed "cache the AST parse" as the fix; profiling proved that would have saved only ~3%. The ACTUAL dominant cost, found only by a profile-at-scale of the real tg blast-radius --depth 2 invocation on a high-fan-in symbol (290 callers), was _module_aliases_for_path: called 1,431,341 times for only ~1,000 unique path inputs inside the reverse-import-graph / PageRank loops (6.1s self / 38s cumulative of a 62s run) — a pure function of the path string, rebuilt on every call instead of cached. Separately, the reported cross-version +33% was itself confirmed to be environmental noise: the plain tg callers path was byte-identical between v1.17.31 and HEAD.
Evidence
Commit bb5dc59 (#345, "perf: memoize _module_aliases_for_path — blast-radius depth-2 ~4.8x faster (62s->13s)"); adds @lru_cache(maxsize=16384) + a frozenset return type to _module_aliases_for_path in src/tensor_grep/cli/repo_map.py, plus tests/unit/test_module_aliases_cache.py. Result: 61.7s → 12.8s (4.8x), byte-identical output (affected=62; 231 blast-radius/callers/pagerank parity tests unchanged). Commit message states explicitly: "corrects the regression-hunt synthesis, which guessed AST-parse caching (would have saved ~3%)."
Status
SETTLED — real fix shipped and dogfooded. The "+33% regression" claim itself is SETTLED as noise, not a code defect.
Rule: For a latency claim, the profiler is the oracle — not a diff-review council, and not
even a first-pass profiler read: this hunt needed a second profiling pass (profile the real
command at scale, with a call-count monkeypatch) before the true hotspot appeared, because the
first profile ran on the wrong command entirely. Before accepting any "X% regression" report,
reproduce it on the byte-identical code path across both versions before designing a fix — it may
be noise (see also tensor-grep-benchmark-and-proof-toolkit). A pure, no-I/O helper function
called repeatedly inside a graph/loop algorithm is a near-free @lru_cache candidate; check
dict[str, set] → dict[str, frozenset] downstream type hints when the cached value is
shared/iterated but never mutated in place.
Addendum (2026-07-24) — the mirror-image trap: a warm run can hide a real WIN too. The same
"measure the actual thing, not a proxy" discipline cuts the other way: a warm end-to-end dogfood
rerun measures whatever CACHED path the optimized function no longer sits on, so a real improvement
can read as noise, or even a false regression, if the changed function only runs on the cold/
first-touch path. Two later optimizations — 9a2a01c ("merge 3 redundant ast.walk passes in
_python_imports_and_symbols into one") and d2c1266 ("textual pre-check before per-candidate
validation-test AST parse") — were verified with a single-pass, fresh-process microbenchmark over
distinct inputs instead of a warm end-to-end dogfood rerun, specifically to avoid this trap; see
profile-guided-byte-identical-optimization for the general technique. Same rule as this battle's
own Rule paragraph, one layer deeper: the proxy trap this time is warm-cache reuse, not "profiled
the wrong command."
Battle 13 — tg diff-docs: 17 green fixture tests, 20k+ false positives on the real corpus (deliberately deferred)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A doc-drift-detection prototype (tg diff-docs: flag a doc code-span identifier that no longer resolves to a repo symbol) shipped a fully-passing fixture suite — 17/17 unit tests green — but running it on the real repo corpus (docs/ vs src/) produced an unusable flood of findings dominated by stdlib/language type names.
Root cause
Fixture tests only exercise the hand-picked cases the author thought of; they cannot reveal a heuristic's real-world false-positive rate. The design's own module docstring already cited the risk — "DocPrism: naive code-doc drift detection is 0.62 precision / 98% flag-rate" (arXiv 2511.00215) — but shipped anyway because the fixtures were green. Dogfooding on the real corpus confirmed the DocPrism trap: "unresolved symbol in a doc code-span" flags common language/stdlib type names (e.g. String, Option, Vec) that were never going to resolve in repo_map's symbol table because they are not project symbols — the heuristic has no positive repo-reference signal, only a "not found locally" absence signal, so anything foreign reads as "drifted."
Evidence
Commit 90b7042 on branch wip/diff-docs-precision ("wip: tg diff-docs foundation (DEFERRED — precision inadequate, see task)"), adding src/tensor_grep/cli/diff_docs.py (303 lines) and tests/unit/test_diff_docs.py (17 def test_... functions, direct-counted). docs/SESSION_HANDOFF.md records: "tg diff-docs was prototyped and deliberately deferred pending a precision rebuild — naive doc-drift detection floods false positives (documented follow-up)." The feature was never merged to main; it lives only on the wip/ branch. (The exact real-corpus finding counts were an ad hoc dogfood measurement during the deferring session, not persisted as a committed benchmark artifact — treat the shape, not the digits, as load-bearing.)
Status
OPEN / DEFERRED BY DESIGN. Not a bug to fix — a feature intentionally not shipped. A rebuild needs (1) a positive repo-reference signal (e.g. a qualified repo_module.symbol span where the module resolves in-repo but the symbol doesn't — not a bare identifier), and (2) a measured real-corpus precision gate before merging, not just green fixtures.
Rule:Fixture-green is not sufficient for a precision/heuristic feature. Before shipping
anything that classifies or flags ("is this drifted", "is this dead code", "is this a bug"),
dogfood it on the real project corpus and eyeball the finding count and the top hits,
not just whether the unit tests pass. Prefer deferring (park on a wip/ branch) over shipping a
feature that trains the agent/user to ignore its own output — thousands of false positives is
worse than no feature. See also Battle 8's broken-oracle framing: a fixture suite that only tests
hand-picked true/false cases is a weaker oracle than a real-corpus run.
Battle 14 — sequential release-watcher deadlock: gate on absolute state, never "changed since I launched"
Field
Detail
Symptom
A sequential merge-watcher (Battle 6's one-merge-per-tick discipline, automated) that gates the next merge on "has the release tag changed since I started watching" can deadlock permanently if a release was already in flight — or already published — at the moment the watcher launched, because the tag never "changes" relative to a baseline that was itself already stale.
Root cause
A relative baseline ("did X change since t0") is only correct if t0 is guaranteed to precede the event being waited for. A watcher that launches after a publish already started (or completed) cannot distinguish "still waiting" from "already done" if it only tracks deltas from its own launch time — it must instead check absolute state: the prior PR's state == MERGED, and the specific main CI run (identified by run ID / commit SHA, not "newer than my start time") has actually completed. The full pipeline is also longer than the ~6-minute pre-publish compile window documented in Battle 6 — a real measured run (PR #346, gh run id 28667549718, 2026-07-03) took CI-verification-start (15:01) to publish-pypi success (15:41) — ~40 minutes — and to the post-publish release-tag-smoke check completing (15:45) — ~45 minutes end-to-end. build-release-native-assets (macos-15-intel, cpu) and native-build-smoke (macos-15-intel) were consistently the longest individual jobs (~12 min and ~11.7 min respectively) at both the CI-verification and release-asset-build stages — a watcher with a short or relative-only wait window will misdiagnose an in-flight release as "stuck" or "already done."
Evidence
Measured via gh run view 28667549718 --json jobs: repo-hygiene/smoke start 15:01:06-15:01:19; Semantic Release15:21:43-15:25:49; build-release-native-assets (macos-15-intel, cpu)15:25:53-15:37:58 (the longest release-asset job); publish-pypi15:41:16-15:41:57; release-tag-smoke completes 15:45:47. AGENTS.md's "Release publish is not instant — the push-race" section (Battle 6) documents the shorter ~6-minute pre-publish compile window that creates the push-race; the full pipeline through PyPI + tag-smoke is longer still, as measured above.
Status
SETTLED discipline (a corollary to Battle 6, applied to automated watchers rather than human merge timing): gate any sequential watcher on absolute conditions — prior PR state == MERGED AND the specific main CI run (by ID) has status == completed — never on "did the tag change since my launch." Size any watcher wait window for the full measured pipeline (~40-45 min), not the ~6-minute compile window alone.
Rule: This is Battle 6's push-race discipline applied to automation, not just human merge
timing. A polling/watcher loop that checks "did state change since I started" is race-prone
whenever the state could have already changed before the loop started (a pre-launch publish).
Always identify a specific, absolute target to wait FOR (a run ID, a PR merged-state, a version
string) — never a relative delta from an arbitrary observation point. Re-measure the pipeline
duration periodically (gh run view <id> --json jobs) — CI job mix and runner speed drift over
time, and a stale duration assumption is how a watcher's timeout gets tuned wrong.
Battle 15 -- release-tag-smoke stayed red for 4 releases while PyPI kept publishing, masking a real regression
Field
Detail
Symptom
"Latest main CI run is green" was trusted as "releases are healthy," but the post-publish, NEEDS-gated release-tag-smoke job (.github/workflows/ci.yml, needs: [release, publish-success-gate], checks out the release tag and re-runs scripts/agent_readiness.py against it) had been red since v1.64.4 while publish-pypi/publish-success-gate kept going green release after release -- 4 releases shipped with this specific gate failing underneath, unnoticed.
Root cause
release-tag-smoke is a separate JOB inside the same workflow run as Semantic Release/publish-pypi -- a run's overall "latest run on main: success" summary does not surface one late-stage job's own red conclusion unless you look at that job specifically. It masked a real regression: PR #542's AstBackend DSL-divergence bug (tg run --pattern <ast-grep-syntax> on an environment without ast-grep installed) -- release-tag-smoke was the one gate that would have caught it (it runs against the actually-published wheel, not local pytest), but nobody was checking its own conclusion.
Evidence
gh run list --workflow ci.yml showing several consecutive releases publish successfully; gh run view <id> --json jobs on any of those runs shows the release-tag-smoke job's own conclusion: "failure" sitting underneath an overall run that still reads as the release having gone out. Fixed by hotfix #144.
Status
SETTLED discipline. Steward routine: after any release, check the release-tag-smoke JOB's own conclusion inside that specific run (gh run view <id> --json jobs -> find the job named release-tag-smoke -> read its conclusion), not just "latest main run green." See tensor-grep-debugging-playbook for the triage row and tensor-grep-release-and-positioning S1.9 for the release-mechanics checklist item.
Rule: A green workflow run is not the same claim as a green specific job inside it, especially
for a NEEDS-gated post-publish job that only runs after the parts you were actually watching
(publish-pypi, publish-success-gate) already succeeded. When multiple jobs share one workflow run
and only some of them gate on "did the release actually work end-to-end" (vs. "did the version-bump
and upload succeed"), check every gating job's own conclusion by name, not the run's aggregate status.
Battle 16 -- the tg find Opus gates caught what 203-tests-passing-style green CI would have missed (2026-07-16, #189)
Field
Detail
Symptom
Two tg find build-wave PRs (#626 CLI, #627 MCP) reached the mandatory adversarial Opus gate with all tests green and no CI failures, yet the gate still returned FIX-FIRST on both.
Root cause
Two independent misses, each a known bug CLASS from earlier battles recurring in new code: (1) _execute_find's dense-encode path could raise a query-time DenseUnavailableError that was NOT caught at the command boundary — it would have propagated as an uncaught exception (a crash) instead of degrading to BM25-only, violating the Backend Fail-Closed Contract the exact way Battle 8's dead bridge and this repo's --pcre2 anti-pattern already taught (a real failure must never surface as a silent/uncontrolled path); (2) the tg_find MCP tool PR shipped without bumping _TG_MCP_SERVER_CONTRACT_VERSION — a fresh instance of the "enumerate all N registration sites" bug class (AGENTS.md "Adding a Command or Flag"), except a NEW site this repo had not previously named: a new MCP tool's request/response shape IS a registration site, just like the 4 command sites and 2 search-flag sites. Neither defect showed up in unit tests because neither test suite exercised the specific failure path (a corrupt/missing model at query time; a contract-version consumer diffing the reported version).
Evidence
The fix ("fix(cli): F1 query-time dense degrade for tg find (Opus-gate blocker, #189)") catches DenseUnavailableError at the find() command boundary and degrades to BM25-only with a visible rank_fallback_reason, mirroring search's existing catch — squashed into the tg find CLI PR's merge commit 501dc26 (#626) on origin/main (originally authored as 045fadc, which is not itself an ancestor of main post-squash). The MCP fix ("fix(mcp): bump contract version 1.3.0 for tg_find tool (Opus-gate blocker, #189)") bumps _TG_MCP_SERVER_CONTRACT_VERSION in mcp_server.py — squashed into the MCP PR's merge commit 6d79945 (#627) (originally authored as 3fcca06). Both fixes landed inside the PR the gate blocked, before merge.
Status
SETTLED discipline, reinforced. The mandatory adversarial Opus gate (AGENTS.md's "Verify AI-Drafted Plans Against the Real Code" post-build audit) is not a rubber stamp even on a well-tested, TDD-built feature — see that section's own prior receipts (a symlink RCE bypass, a lock-release TOCTOU) for the pattern repeating. AGENTS.md now names a 5th registration site for this reason: any new MCP tool bumps _TG_MCP_SERVER_CONTRACT_VERSION (see "Adding a Command or Flag").
Rule: A green test suite proves the tests you wrote pass, not that every failure boundary is
covered — a new compute path (a dense-model encode call, a new MCP tool) needs its OWN fail-closed
catch and its OWN registration-site check, not an inherited assumption that a sibling command/tool's
contract automatically covers it. Route every new MCP tool through the 5-site checklist (4 command
sites + _TG_MCP_SERVER_CONTRACT_VERSION), and route every new backend-compute call through the
Backend Fail-Closed Contract explicitly, even when it "obviously" mirrors an existing command.
Battle 17 -- cAST structural chunking as the DEFAULT chunker: REJECTED on a real-corpus eval (2026-07-21, #251)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A proposal to promote TG_CHUNKER=structural (cAST-style AST-shaped chunking, shipped opt-in since v1.47.0) from an experimental opt-in to the DEFAULT chunker for the BM25/dense/RRF retrieval stack.
Root cause
The proposal was evaluated against a REAL-corpus retrieval-quality eval, not the toy fixture — the retrieval-quality delta came back a net WASH (no measurable improvement over the shipped line-window chunk_file), while cAST chunking ran 24.4x SLOWER and produced ~38% LARGER chunks. A structural chunker sounds like it should produce more semantically coherent units, but the measured cost/benefit did not support default promotion.
Evidence
benchmarks/eval_late_rerank_quality.py (the LIVE, chunker-sensitive harness — it actually imports and calls chunk_file/chunk_file_structural) produced the wash/24.4x/38% numbers. Recorded as a documented retirement in docs/PAPER.md §3.10, item 8. Do not cite benchmarks/run_repo_retrieval_benchmarks.py for this class of claim — it is a static-fixture REPLAY that never calls chunk_file and cannot detect a chunker change at all; using it was the original harness-selection mistake this evaluation corrected.
Status
SETTLED / REJECTED-as-default. The opt-in code (TG_CHUNKER=structural) remains shipped for experimentation; it is not promoted. Do not re-run this experiment expecting a different verdict without new evidence — see tensor-grep-semantic-search-campaign STATUS UPDATE 3.
Rule: A structural/semantically-motivated redesign of an already-shipped, already-tuned mechanism
(here: line-window chunking) needs to clear the SAME real-corpus bar as any other optimization claim —
"more principled" is not evidence. Use the live chunker-sensitive harness, not a static replay that
can't even see the change.
A proposal to compress the dense-embedding vectors (int8 quantization, binary hashing, or PCA dimensionality reduction) for a claimed speed/memory win on the CPU-only dense-retrieval leg.
Root cause
The memory win is real (3.79x smaller on disk) but the CPU has no int8 SIMD path reachable from pure numpy on this stack, so the "faster" half of the pitch INVERTED under measurement: ~2x SLOWER than the uncompressed float path. A real speed win here needs a native kernel, which is a genuinely different, multi-day scope than a quick numpy dtype change.
Evidence
PR #692, CLOSED not merged. #255 in project tracking is a task-store label for the banked moat-investment options (native int8 kernel among them) — NOT a GitHub issue; re-verify with gh issue list before citing it as a tracked item.
Status
SETTLED / DEFERRED. Memory-only win banked as a future moat-investment option gated on a native kernel; do not re-propose a pure-numpy int8/PCA path expecting a speed win.
Rule: A compression technique's memory-footprint win and its speed-claim are SEPARATE measurements
— confirm both independently before pitching either half, and check whether the runtime (here, pure
numpy with no SIMD path) can actually realize the theoretical speed benefit before promising it.
Battle 19 -- warm-session/daemon search-index shortcut: a BIG REFACTOR, not a quick win (2026-07-21, #251)
Field
Detail
Symptom
"The session daemon is already warm and long-lived — just serve repeated tg search queries from its cached state instead of re-walking/re-searching cold each time."
Root cause
The premise doesn't hold: session_daemon.py's cached state is a symbol map (the repo-map graph used by orient/callers/blast-radius/agent), not a search index. There is no PyO3 binding for the Rust TrigramIndex struct reachable from the daemon's Python process, and the common tg search path is a raw rg passthrough that never touches the daemon at all. Wiring warm-session search would mean building a new binding + a new serving path, not flipping a flag on an existing cache.
Evidence
Verified directly against session_daemon.py's cached-state shape and rust_core/src/index.rs's TrigramIndex (no PyO3 export) during the 2026-07-21 research campaign (#251).
Status
SETTLED / BIG-REFACTOR, not a quick win. The free partial win that DOES exist today: tg mcp is itself a long-lived process, so CPUBackend in-process caches stay warm across one MCP session — that is a different, already-available mechanism from "warm-session search," and citing it does not require the daemon rework this battle rejects.
Rule: "It's already warm, just reuse it" is only true if the warm state is actually the RIGHT
KIND of state for the new use case — check what a cache/daemon/session actually holds (a symbol map
vs. a search index are not interchangeable) before proposing to repurpose it.
Battle 20 -- GPU-for-search: NO single-pattern crossover at any scale vs fair public baselines, and the shipped kernel is NOT PFAC (2026-07-21, #251)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A recurring pitch to invest further in GPU-accelerated text search, sometimes phrased as "the PFAC kernel should give a crossover at scale" or "surely a big-enough corpus favors GPU."
Root cause
Re-tested across 10MB-5GB corpora: no SINGLE-PATTERN crossover at any scale against the fair public baselines (rg, tg_cpu), historical worst case ~30-35x SLOWER than rg at 5GB. Crucially, the premise "we have a PFAC kernel" is itself wrong: the shipped gpu_text_search_positions kernel is a position-parallel brute-force byte-compare, not a PFAC/Aho-Corasick automaton (docs/gpu_crossover.md:133-138 — PFAC remains documented future work). Even the best-case candidate wedge (many fixed patterns resident over a large corpus) loses to the fair single-invocation baseline: 100 patterns over 1GB measured rg -F -e ... -e ... at 0.169s vs the GPU-requested path at 0.448s (itself a CPU-fallback measurement, not a real GPU number). docs/gpu_crossover.md (grep "GPU performance claims must name the workload class") nonetheless preserves many-fixed-pattern native CUDA as the LOCAL candidate crossover lane — what is SETTLED here is the single-pattern + public-managed claim, not the resident local lane.
Evidence
docs/gpu_crossover.md:133-138; the CEO deep-research decision package (2026-07-21) adjudicated public CUDA-asset publishing to a deliberate HOLD (task-store #169, not a GitHub issue). Release checksums currently ship 3 CPU-only rows.
Status
SETTLED / HOLD (scoped). Single-pattern GPU-for-search and public managed promotion stay HOLD: do not re-propose either without a genuinely new mechanism (not a re-measurement of the same brute-force kernel), never describe the shipped kernel as PFAC, and do not claim it is public-promotion-ready. Many-fixed-pattern native CUDA remains the LOCAL candidate lane (docs/gpu_crossover.md), unproven and not public-promotion-ready.
Rule: Before re-pitching a GPU program, confirm what kernel is ACTUALLY shipped (read the source,
don't trust the roadmap's aspirational language) — "we have kernel X" claims drift from "we shipped a
simpler placeholder for X" easily, and the gap matters for whether a crossover claim is even plausible.
Battle 21 -- many-pattern -e/-f Aho-Corasick: a LIVE dedup over-count bug, diagnosed not yet fixed (2026-07-21, #251/#694)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A many-fixed-pattern search (-e pat1 -e pat2 ... / -f patterns.txt) over the same 100-pattern path used elsewhere in this campaign's benchmarks reproduces a live over-count: total_matches: 3 where the rg-correct answer is 2, on a case where one line matches two different patterns from the set.
Root cause
The fast native Aho-Corasick delegation path counts one match per (line, pattern) pair rather than deduplicating by line when multiple patterns hit the same line — a real correctness bug in the delegation path, not a benchmark artifact.
Evidence
PR #694 — a guard test that pins the CORRECT rg-parity behavior, NOT the bug: test_many_fixed_patterns_dedupe_overlapping_lines_at_scale (tests/e2e/test_multi_pattern_native.py) runs the in-process Python combine route (--cpu, _combine_multi_patterns, combine-into-one-alternation-regex) at 100 patterns and asserts the deduplicated answer (4 matched lines, each reported once, total_matches == 4). The NATIVE defect is documented in the test's docstring prose, not asserted: the native Aho-Corasick fast path (native_search.rs::run_native_fixed_multi_pattern_search) emits one match per (line, pattern) pair, measured total_matches: 3 vs the rg-correct 2 on the published binary. The many-pattern fast path stays deliberately blocked from native delegation (bootstrap.py's _can_delegate_to_native_tg_search + _NATIVE_TG_DELEGATION_DEFAULT_REQUIRED_FIELDS, audit #69 comments) until the native dedup is root-fixed. Do not re-describe the guard as asserting the wrong behavior.
Status
OPEN, GUARDED. The real fix is native dedup + FFI-level correctness work, banked as a moat-investment option (task-store #255, not a GitHub issue). Do not re-describe this as "the code is still correct" — #694 falsified that framing; treat any many-pattern count claim as suspect until the dedup fix lands.
Rule: A benchmark that measures a wrong-but-plausible-looking number (3 instead of 2) can hide a
real correctness bug behind what looks like a performance measurement — when a fast-path count doesn't
match the naive/reference tool's count, suspect the fast path's correctness before assuming it's just
"differently implemented."
Battle 22 (meta) -- the 6/6 mirage: every "cheap win" from the research steal-list came back negative once verified (2026-07-21, #251)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A CEO deep-research directive produced a steal-list of 6 candidate "cheap wins" from papers/prior-art (cAST chunking, dense-int8 compression, warm-session search, GPU-for-search viability, a many-pattern speed claim, and a "code is still correct" framing) — the kind of list that FEELS like free value sitting on the table.
Root cause
Every single one, when verified against the REAL code and REAL measurements (not the paper's claims or a plausible-sounding mechanism), came back negative, a big-refactor, or a secondary-path finding — Battles 17-21 above are the individual verdicts (FIVE verdicts for the SIX list items: Battle 21 covers both the many-pattern speed claim and the "code is still correct" framing). Separately, 2 of 6 unrelated "dogfood ask" items in the same research pass turned out to be ALREADY-SHIPPED features whose real defect differed from what was reported — another instance of not verifying the premise before acting on it.
Evidence
Battles 17-21 (this file); the closing research-campaign summary in docs/BACKLOG.md / MEMORY.md for the 2026-07-21 session.
Status
SETTLED discipline. The 6/6-negative result (six steal-list candidates, delivered as five battle verdicts) IS itself the deliverable of a properly-run research pass, not a failure of the research — a steal-list that returns "no, and here's the file:line evidence why" for every item is a SUCCESSFUL verification pass, not a wasted one.
Rule: Treat every item on a "cheap win from research" list as an unverified hypothesis, exactly like
an AI-drafted plan — verify each one against the real code and real measurements before spending a build
cycle on it. A high hit-rate of "looked promising, turned out negative" is not evidence the research
process is broken; it is evidence the verification gate is working. See tensor-grep-research-methodology
Part 4 for where good ideas come from and how to weight them, and treat this battle as the worked example
of Test A/Test C (this skill's evidence bar) firing at portfolio scale rather than on one claim at a time.
Battle 23 -- a "mirror inline _rust_*" onboarding brief is stale; the current clone template is lang_go.py (2026-07-24, #724/#725/#726)
Field
Detail
Symptom
An orchestration brief for onboarding a new language into the symbol-graph tier instructed a build agent to "mirror the inline _rust_* / _parser_for_source_suffix machinery" — i.e. clone Rust's extractor style, since Rust and Python are the oldest, most-familiar languages in the codebase.
Root cause
Rust and Python predate lang_registry.py (introduced by the Go PATH-A-Stage-0 refactor, #418) and still carry the OLD scattered-suffix-dispatch style the registry replaced. Go (#420) established the CURRENT pattern — lang_registry.register_language(LanguageSpec(...)) plus a self-contained lang_go.py module — and every language PR since treats lang_go.py, not the Rust/Python inline code, as the reference template. A brief written from a stale mental model ("the two languages I remember") instead of the grown registry silently steers a build agent toward the wrong shape.
Evidence
The C# PR (6c09424, #726) explicitly self-corrects this exact framing in its own commit message: "mirroring the Go precedent (lang_go.py) rather than the older pre-registry Rust/JS/TS inline pattern -- Go is the most current template since it was added after the lang_registry refactor." The PHP PR (8659e87, #724) independently states the same: "mirroring lang_go.py's module shape." All THREE of lang_php.py, lang_csharp.py, and lang_java.py exist as standalone modules on origin/main (ls src/tensor_grep/cli/lang_*.py). Java (f3ad51b, #725) ORIGINALLY landed with its extractor functions inline in repo_map.py — self-documented there as "mirroring the two Rust functions above" (grep -n "mirroring the two Rust functions above" src/tensor_grep/cli/repo_map.py — was :4515-4519, then :4755, now :4808; content verified present verbatim) — and Task 10A later moved its references/calls extraction into lang_java.py (java_references_and_calls, wired via LanguageSpec.references_and_calls; grep -n "lang_java.java_references_and_calls" src/tensor_grep/cli/repo_map.py), deliberately leaving defs/imports inline (grep -n "scoped OUT of" src/tensor_grep/cli/repo_map.py — the registration-block comment recording that the defs/imports move was deliberately scoped out of Task 10A). This entry's earlier "there is no lang_java.py" wording was itself the stale-snapshot claim this battle warns about — it was true when Java landed inline and false once Task 10A shipped. Both shapes register through lang_registry and are contract-consistent — see _target_language_for_path (grep -n "def _target_language_for_path" src/tensor_grep/cli/repo_map.py — was :7850-7880, now :8127), which every one of the four newly-registered suffixes (go/java/php/csharp) touches with its own inline "MOST-FORGOTTEN seam" comment reminding the next language's author why the branch matters.
Status
SETTLED discipline, reinforced.
Rule: "Mirror language X" is only good guidance if X is still the CURRENT template — verify a
cloning instruction against the actual registry/module layout on the branch you are building from,
not a snapshot mental model of "the languages I remember being added first." This is the same lesson
as Cross-cutting lesson 9 (verify a steal/brief against the LIVE code) and AGENTS.md's "Verify
AI-Drafted Plans Against the Real Code" section, caught a second time here — inside a same-session
orchestration brief this time, not an external paper.
Battle 24 -- sequential multi-PR shared-file drain: a conflict-free rebase is not proof of correctness (2026-07-24, #724/#725/#726)
Field
Detail
Symptom
Three independently-built language-onboarding PRs (Java #725, PHP #724, C# #726) each needed to add their own language to the SAME shared files — tests/unit/test_lang_registry.py's per-suffix expectation table, pyproject.toml's ast/dev/bench extras, and uv.lock — one drained and merged at a time, with the next rebased onto the just-merged prior. A rebase that applies without a conflict marker only proves the diff hunks landed on non-overlapping text; it does not by itself prove the resulting file still asserts every language every earlier sibling PR already added.
Root cause
Each PR's diff to the shared suffix-expectation dict/frozenset looks, syntactically, like "add one more entry near the others already there" — exactly the shape a rebase or an automated merge can resolve by keeping only one side of an overlapping hunk instead of unioning both. Git's conflict detection is textual, not semantic: it has no notion that the post-rebase file is supposed to end up asserting python+js+ts+rust+go plus the prior sibling's addition plus this PR's own addition. Only re-running the affected test file (or a human/agent diff-reading the merged result) catches a hunk that silently reverted to a stale subset.
Evidence
The three sequential squash-merges show the union holding at every step: f3ad51b (Java, #725) touches test_lang_registry.py (44 changed lines: registers java/.java, substitutes the "still-unregistered example" language from .java to .kt); 8659e87 (PHP, #724) touches it again (15 changed lines: adds php/.php alongside Java's entries); 6c09424 (C#, #726) touches it a third time (20 changed lines: adds csharp/.cs alongside both priors). The current file's test_spec_for_path_resolves_every_registered_suffix asserts all ten registered languages together (the top-10 symbol-graph set; C/C++ joined via #731/#732, every language now parser-backed) (tests/unit/test_lang_registry.py), and the same union pattern holds in pyproject.toml:600,622-630,636-644 (the ast/dev/bench extras list all ten tree-sitter-* packages) and uv.lock (all ten tree-sitter-*[[package]] blocks plus their per-extra marker entries). This is the discipline the campaign's own operating notes flagged as a landmine to guard against before each rebase: union the registered-lang set, re-resolve uv.lock, and verify uv export --locked exits 0 before merging — never assume a clean rebase alone proves the shared file is still complete.
Status
SETTLED discipline.
Rule: When N PRs touch the same shared registration file (a suffix-dispatch dict, an extras list,
a lockfile), drain them ONE at a time, rebase each onto the just-merged prior, and UNION the
assertions — verify the post-rebase file still asserts everything every earlier sibling added, not
just the new PR's own addition. A conflict-free rebase is a claim about textual non-overlap, not
semantic completeness; re-run the affected tests after every rebase, before merging — the same
"gate on verified state, not on the absence of a visible problem" discipline Battle 14 requires for
a release watcher.
Battle 25 -- a banked "fix hypothesis" for the C function-pointer mis-kind was WRONG; the real tell was one level deeper (2026-07-24, #736)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A file-scope C function-pointer VARIABLE (void (*handler)(int);) was mis-kinded "function" in the symbol table. A one-line note carried forward from an earlier session proposed the fix: "require function_declarator outermost" to distinguish a real function from a function-pointer variable.
Root cause
The banked hypothesis was FALSIFIED before any fix code was written, by verify-plan-against-code against a live-dumped tree_sitter_c 0.24.2 AST: a function-pointer variable's declarator chain ALSO has function_declarator outermost — identical in that respect to a real function prototype. "Outermost-direct function_declarator" cannot distinguish the two cases; it was never a valid discriminator, and the note that banked it as one had not been checked against a real parse tree. The actual tell lives one level deeper: what that function_declarator node's OWN declarator field WRAPS — a parenthesized_declarator wrapping a pointer_declarator ((*handler)) means a variable (exclude); wrapping a bare identifier directly means a real, redundantly-parenthesized function name (int (foo)(void);, keep).
Evidence
PR #736 (226d887, merged into v1.98.2). Its own description states the root cause was "verified against a real, live-dumped AST — not assumed from the grammar docs" and that the banked "outermost-direct" framing "does NOT distinguish real functions from function-pointer variables, since both are outermost-direct." An independent Opus gate then caught a SECOND-order miss in the first cut (see the "Gate-caught refinement" note in the PR body) — the coarse rule also wrongly excluded a redundant-paren real prototype, fixed in the same still-draft PR before merge.
Status
SETTLED.
Rule: A banked "we already know the fix" note is a HYPOTHESIS, not a fact, even when it's your own
prior session's conclusion carried forward in memory — re-derive it against the real AST/code (dump the
actual parse tree, don't reason from the grammar's shape in the abstract) before dispatching it as a
plan. This is Cross-cutting lesson 9 (verify a steal/brief against the LIVE code) applied to a
carried-forward memory note instead of an external paper or a same-session orchestration brief — same
failure shape as Battle 23, a third venue.
Battle 26 -- defaulted-scope disclosure: the census population was FIVE emitters, not four (2026-07-31, #26)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A disclosure feature (flag it when tg silently defaulted its search scope, e.g. ran repo-wide because nothing narrowed it) needs to fire from every code path that can default the scope. An initial census of those cause-emitters counted four.
Root cause
The population was undercounted by reasoning, not by direct enumeration — the same failure shape Battle 24's shared-file union-rebase discipline and Cross-cutting lesson 9 already warn about: a count arrived at by judging "the others are covered by this one" instead of listing every emitter and checking each individually. A fifth emitter existed outside the counted four.
Evidence
Shipped in v1.101.24. Verified against the published native binary (checksum-matched, not a local rebuild) across four arms: (1) treatment — the defaulted-scope case actually discloses; (2) explicit-PATH control — an explicit path does not spuriously disclose; (3) found-matches control — the disclosure does not suppress or alter real results; (4) byte-identical cross-engine string parity — the disclosure text matches regardless of which engine (native/Python) answered.
Status
SETTLED / SHIPPED (v1.101.24).
Rule: A cause-emitter census is only as good as the enumeration, never the enumerator's confidence
that "the rest are covered." Count directly (grep/AST-derive every emitter and check each one), and
re-run the count as a governance ratchet, the same discipline Battle 24 requires for shared
registration files. The four-arm verification pattern here (treatment / a control that must NOT fire /
a control that must not corrupt real output / cross-engine parity) is a reusable oracle shape for any
future disclosure-style feature — keep it, don't rebuild ad hoc.
Battle 27 -- anonymous --claim: an auto-derived agent-id was proposed and REJECTED (#23)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A proposal to drop tg ledger --claim's requirement for an explicit --agent-id, auto-deriving one for zero-config callers instead of falling back to the anonymous sentinel value.
Root cause
Any deterministic auto-derivation scheme makes it likely that two independently-launched, zero-config agents compute the SAME non-sentinel id. The ledger's overlap detector, _find_overlaps, then treats those matching ids as one claimant's own (non-conflicting) claims and suppresses them — so each agent's real overlap with the OTHER agent's claim is silently dropped, reproducing #845's failure mode through a new mechanism. This is not one bad derivation scheme; no derivation escapes it, because the defect is _find_overlaps conflating "same id value" with "same claimant," and any zero-config auto-derivation is exactly what makes two different claimants collide on id.
Evidence
#23. Auto-derivation was traced through _find_overlaps's same-id suppression path to a reproduction of #845 before it was proposed for implementation.
Status
SETTLED / REJECTED. The anonymous sentinel agent-id stays. Do not re-propose auto-deriving one.
Rule: A dedup/suppression key (here: agent id) that conflates "same value" with "same actor" will
silently merge two different actors the moment ANY id-assignment scheme — even one meant only to
remove a config burden — can produce a collision. An explicit identity input that downstream code
trusts for correctness (not just labeling) is not friction to be removed; removing it removes the
only thing preventing the collision.
Battle 28 -- MaxSim reranking is RETIRED (F10), not a tg install-dense coverage gap (#15)
Field
Detail
Symptom
MaxSim (late-interaction) reranking appeared unavailable after running tg install-dense, read as a CUJ-coverage gap in the semantic-search stack.
Root cause
tg install-dense installs the semantic extra — the BM25+dense-embedding RRF leg (tensor-grep-semantic-search-campaign). MaxSim reranking depends on a DIFFERENT extra, rerank, whose model no tg command fetches — there is no install path that provisions it today. Nothing regressed; the feature was never wired to auto-provision.
Evidence
#15. The fix shipped was doc-honesty (state the gap plainly instead of implying install-dense covers it) plus making the existing test for this path able to fail — it previously could not distinguish "MaxSim ran" from "MaxSim was silently skipped."
Status
SETTLED / RETIRED 2026-08-05 (task F10) — the deliberate-hold disposition below was SUPERSEDED by a full retirement; see the appended block.
Rule:semantic and rerank are different extras gating different capabilities — confirm which
one actually provisions the feature you're testing before calling its absence a coverage gap. A test
that cannot fail when the dependent feature silently no-ops is the same broken-oracle shape as
Battle 8; here the fix was making the test able to fail, not adding new capability.
SUPERSEDED (append-only, do not rewrite the table above) — 2026-08-05, task F10. The
"DELIBERATE HOLD" disposition is RETIRED: src/tensor_grep/core/retrieval_late.py:4-16 (the
module-header RETIRED block) records MaxSim late-rerank as a VALIDATED DEAD END, not a paused
build — decisive negative on the golden set AFTER the role-aware encoder fix already landed
(ndcg@10 0.068 vs plain RRF 0.305), root cause = model capacity (the 17M-param int8
LateOn-Code-edge model's raw MaxSim ranking is statistically indistinguishable from random on
in-repo code), NOT the encoder, so re-flipping the same encoder cannot change the verdict.
Reopen only on BOTH a real tg-command install path AND a different encoder clearing the design
doc's T8 golden-set thresholds; do not re-enable off a partial win on either alone. The original
hold's lessons stand: semantic and rerank are different extras, and a test that cannot fail
when the dependent feature silently no-ops is a broken oracle.
Battle 29 -- #868 GPU exit-2: two false-confirmation traps, then SETTLED by retiring the rule (50595ef)
Field
Detail
Symptom
A GPU-path tg invocation exits with code 2 (#868); the issue sat RED for days with the cause logged as "unknown." Two sequential root-cause hypotheses were built and killed before the real state was reached.
Root cause
Two independent false-confirmation traps, not one bug. (1) The live hypothesis (the GPU dispatch path is misrouting) was killed by a control that checked whether rust_core — the Python extension module — was present and loaded. But the code that actually decides native-vs-Python dispatch is resolve_native_tg_binary(), which resolves the compiled binary — an adjacent-named, different artifact. The control proved the wrong symbol and falsely exonerated a hypothesis that was never actually tested. (2) After the hypothesis was reopened, a two-arm control reproduced CI's exact failure byte-for-byte (same exit code, same stdout); it was called "confirmed" and a fix was dispatched on that basis. .github/workflows/ci.yml:688 then showed that job never builds the binary the control had forced into the picture — the control's mechanism was sufficient to produce the same output, but not the operative cause in the real CI job, and the fix-dispatch had to be recalled mid-flight.
Evidence
#868. Arm 1 named rust_core (extension module) present/absent rather than resolve_native_tg_binary() (compiled binary); arm 2's byte-for-byte reproduction was traced to .github/workflows/ci.yml:688, which shows the accused job path is not the one exercised in real CI. The settlement: commit 50595ef ("ci(diagnostics): measure the GPU dispatch route, and RETIRE the exit-2 rule the contract already rejected (#868)", v1.101.26) — git log --oneline --grep="#868" — plus docs/BACKLOG.md "#22/F1 RETIRED" and the 2026-07-31 session entry.
Status
SETTLED / RETIRED (commit 50595ef, v1.101.26). Both former blockers were closed BY RETIRING THE RULE, not by fixing it: (1) the deployed diagnostic (scripts/diagnose_gpu_delegation_route.py) measured the dispatch route, closing the "cause UNKNOWN"; (2) the contract contest was resolved by the written contract, which already answered — exit 0 complete match, exit 1 complete no-match, exit 2 incomplete; an unhonoured explicit --gpu-device-ids route stays an in-band disclosure (gpu_evidence_status/native_gpu_unavailable in the JSON envelope) and does NOT independently change the exit code (docs/BACKLOG.md, grep "#22/F1"). Do not re-open a GPU exit-code rule without a contract change through tensor-grep-change-control.
Rule: Name a control arm by the exact SYMBOL the code branches on ("I set resolve_native_tg_binary()
to X"), never by the capability you believe it stands for ("the GPU extension is present") — two
adjacent-sounding artifacts (rust_core the extension module vs resolve_native_tg_binary() the
compiled binary) can sit one hypothesis apart and send an investigation the wrong way for days. And a
control that REPRODUCES a failure is only SUFFICIENT until you have measured that its mechanism is
OPERATIVE in the real path (here: read the actual workflow file to see whether the accused job even
builds the binary) — "reproduces byte-for-byte" rules out nothing about which of several plausible
mechanisms is the live one. Sibling of Battle 12 (profiled the wrong command) on the measurement side,
and Battle 25 (a banked hypothesis not re-derived against real code) on the planning side.
Battle 30 -- -q shipped in the shared _build_cmd, not search_passthrough: suppression read as a false no-match (#876/#880)
Field
Detail
Symptom
tg search -q --count on a file with real matches reported total_matches: 0 and exited 1 -- a false no-match, not merely a quieter one.
Root cause
-q was added to RipgrepBackend._build_cmd -- the shared argv builder where ~30 other flags live, so it looked like the natural home. _build_cmd has FOUR consumers; only ONE streams rg's output. The other three PARSE rg's stdout, and -q makes rg print nothing. MEASURED on the real binary: rg --count-matches needle f.txt -> "2", with -q -> ""; rg -l needle f.txt -> "f.txt", with -q -> ""; rg --json needle f.txt -> 5 lines, with -q -> 1 line. Each parsing consumer read the starved stdout as zero matches.
Evidence
Shipped in #876, fixed in #880.
Status
SETTLED.-q lives ONLY in search_passthrough, never in _build_cmd.
Rule: Before adding a flag to a SHARED argv builder, enumerate its consumers and ask which of
them CONSUME the thing the flag changes. A flag that alters/suppresses output belongs to the
consumers that stream it, not the ones that parse it. Anyone who "tidies" -q back into the
shared _build_cmd re-ships this exact false zero.
Demand SATISFIED + design packet merged to main reads as the row being done; skip-Fable looks like build clearance.
Root cause
Docs/requirements/design/decisions are an authorization stage, not product delivery. Operator Fable waiver covers the named packet only.
Evidence
A117 (Fable waiver ≠ product/spend/CEO_GATED license); A122 (parent DD-006 still needs DD-006-PERF + DD-006-HONESTY under deliberate build go + TDD+A3). Skill: tensor-grep-design-authorization-ladder.
Status
SETTLED as process law. Do not close the board row on docs alone; do not start src/ from a Fable waiver.
Cross-cutting lessons (the meta-patterns behind the battles)
These recur across the chronicle; internalize them and you avoid the next re-fight too.
Decode the structured failure FIRST, never theorize from a traceback. (Battle 4's 4 wasted
cycles; Battle 6's one-step diagnosis.) gh run view <id> --log-failed, read the failing
assertion, fix that.
Green ≠ working when the test doesn't touch the real boundary. Mocks, cancelled CI, and
