2026-10-17 lessons from the hardening session: most test/bruno failures
were harness/schema/environment drift (drifted body keys, truncated
payloads, container-only paths), found by triaging the test before the
server. Codified as: triage order (test schema -> environment -> cheap
probe), with the guard against "writing tests to work" — test/contract
edits are asymmetric with code fixes: only harness plumbing fixes,
additive pin widenings with a changelog entry, or deletions of tests of
removed behavior. Pins were green at a known commit; git history
arbitrates stale-vs-changed. A right-looking test that fails is prima
facie a server bug: stop and flag.
contract_pins.md rule 4: narrowing/removing a pinned key requires the
user's explicit sign-off — a pin freezing buggy behavior is a ledger,
not a license.
John O'Keefe
de9e66636a