This session found five checks that could not fail. Not checks that were passing — checks that were structurally incapable of reporting a problem. They are collected here because they share one shape and one cure.
The five
| gate |
why it could not fail |
zig ast-check --stdin (my own verification) |
the flag does not exist, so the baseline half errored for every file and the "is this newly broken?" branch never ran. Reported "0 broken" over 655, 224 and 206 files |
tri-doctor / tri-orchestrator build check |
cd /Users/playra/trinity-w1 && zig build — the directory does not exist, cd fails, && short-circuits, no build runs |
zig test src/sacred_constants.zig |
the file had no tests. "All 0 tests passed" |
⚡ Brain Health Check |
gates on tri stress --health, a NotImplemented stub. Its own comment records 47 runs, none passing |
zig fmt --check path list |
eight files do not parse and none is inside any gate's path list |
Three are fixed (#759, #760, and the agent definitions). Two remain, below.
The cure, and why it belongs in the house style
A gate that has never said "no" has not been tested. Every one of these produced confident green output while measuring nothing, and each was found by accident rather than by review — three of them only because something else broke first.
The discipline that catches them is a negative control: feed the gate something known-bad and confirm it fails. It costs one command. #760 does this for all four of its new tests, and the third control found a hole in the test it was controlling.
Where a gate derives its own work list, an empty result must be a hard failure, not a pass — otherwise the loop body runs zero times and the gate goes green.
Children
This session found five checks that could not fail. Not checks that were passing — checks that were structurally incapable of reporting a problem. They are collected here because they share one shape and one cure.
The five
zig ast-check --stdin(my own verification)tri-doctor/tri-orchestratorbuild checkcd /Users/playra/trinity-w1 && zig build— the directory does not exist,cdfails,&&short-circuits, no build runszig test src/sacred_constants.zig⚡ Brain Health Checktri stress --health, aNotImplementedstub. Its own comment records 47 runs, none passingzig fmt --checkpath listThree are fixed (#759, #760, and the agent definitions). Two remain, below.
The cure, and why it belongs in the house style
A gate that has never said "no" has not been tested. Every one of these produced confident green output while measuring nothing, and each was found by accident rather than by review — three of them only because something else broke first.
The discipline that catches them is a negative control: feed the gate something known-bad and confirm it fails. It costs one command.
#760does this for all four of its new tests, and the third control found a hole in the test it was controlling.Where a gate derives its own work list, an empty result must be a hard failure, not a pass — otherwise the loop body runs zero times and the gate goes green.
Children