Privacy-Period-Tracker/docs/architecture/GUARDS.md

# Guards — how to write a check that actually checks

```
Status: Current
Owner: _null
Last reviewed: 2026-08-18
Governs: structural tests, source-grep assertions, probes, and any check whose
  passing is taken as evidence
Review trigger: A guard is found to have been passing while the thing it guards
  was broken; a new class of check is added to the suite.
```

A guard that cannot fail is worse than no guard, because it is trusted. Every
rule here was learned by finding one that had been green for months over
something broken.

## 1. Prove the guard fails before you believe it passes

The one discipline that matters most, and it takes thirty seconds:

```bash
cp src/lib/thing.ts /tmp/thing.bak
# break exactly the thing the test protects
sed -i 's/if (body.error)/if (false)/' src/lib/thing.ts
npx vitest run tests/thing.test.ts        # expect: exactly one failure
cp /tmp/thing.bak src/lib/thing.ts
npx vitest run tests/thing.test.ts        # expect: green again
```

**Exactly one** is the part people skip. If breaking the guard's target fails
three tests, two of them are coincidental and will mask a real regression later.
If it fails none, the guard is decoration — and you have just learned that for
the price of one `sed`.

`scripts/prove-guard.sh` performs exactly this, which removes the two ways it
gets skipped: the restore is a `trap`, so an interrupted run cannot leave the
code broken, and the failure count comes from the runner's own summary rather
than from eyeballing red — one failing test is routinely reported on half a
dozen lines, and counting those calls a clean result six coincidental
failures.

Do this when you write a guard, and again when you change what it guards. A
test written alongside the code it tests has never been observed failing.

## 2. A source-grep guard must tell code from the comment about code

Structural tests that assert a file does *not* contain some pattern will match
the docblock explaining why that pattern is forbidden. So the clearest possible
comment breaks the test, and the obvious fix is to delete the explanation.

Strip comments first:

```ts
const codeOf = (path: string) =>
  readFileSync(path, "utf8")
    .split("\n")
    .filter((line) => !/^\s*(\*|\/\/|\{\/\*)/.test(line))
    .join("\n");

expect(codeOf("src/lib/thing.ts")).not.toContain("dangerouslySetInnerHTML");
```

Otherwise the guard quietly punishes documenting the rule it exists to enforce —
which is exactly backwards, because the comment is how the next person learns
the rule at all.

## 3. Pin the behaviour, not the spelling

A guard should fail when the protected behaviour breaks and stay quiet
otherwise. One that asserts on a variable name fails on a rename that changed
nothing.

```ts
// Brittle: breaks when the variable is renamed, while the fallback it protects
// is untouched.
expect(route).toContain("readAsset(project.forgejoRepo");

// Pins the behaviour: the route fetches through the wrapper that tries both
// spellings, and never through the raw reader.
expect(route).toMatch(/readAsset\(\s*\w+,\s*ASSETS\[which\]\s*\)/);
expect(body).not.toContain("readFileBytes(");
```

A guard that fails on changes it does not care about is one people learn to edit
rather than heed, and the edit is usually deletion.

## 4. A negative result is only as good as the probe that produced it

"The check found nothing" and "the check did not run" are different facts, and
they look identical from the outside. Before reporting an absence, prove the
instrument worked:

```bash
# Not this alone — an unreadable file produces the same silence as an unset key
grep -c '^WANTED=' /proc/$PID/environ

# Establish the read succeeded first
tr '\0' '\n' < /proc/$PID/environ | grep -c .   # 0 here means "could not read"
```

This is the confident-absence failure one level up: the same trap as a screen
rendering a failed query as a count of zero, applied to your own diagnosis.

## 5. A guard that is often wrong is worse than none

A check with a high false-positive rate trains everybody to skip its output,
including on the day it is right.

One written for this template flagged **684 of 1142** candidates on its first
run. That was not 684 findings, it was a broken heuristic — and shipping it
would have taught its readers that the check is noise. Two rounds of narrowing
brought it to 17 of 363, all of them real.

If a new guard's first run is loud, tune it until it is quiet before anybody
relies on it. Report the false-positive rate you settled at, so the next person
knows what silence is worth.

## 6. Guards belong before the artifact exists

A check that runs after publication catches the problem once it is somewhere it
cannot be taken back from: the tag is in the registry, and refusing the commit
afterwards leaves git with no record of it.

Order the gates so the expensive, irreversible step is last — preconditions,
guards, build, verify the built thing is what was asked for, publish, and record
it last of all.

## 7. When the gate finds something that invalidates the operation, stop

Printing a warning and continuing produces the worst outcome available: the bad
thing happens *and* a reassuring summary appears above it.

The question is not how bad the finding is. It is **whether it invalidates what
the operation claims**:

- A release whose test gate skipped half the suite — a release claims to be
  tested. **Refuse.**
- A backup written to a group-readable directory — the backup is still a
  backup. **Warn.**

Escape hatches are fine, and they have to be asked for by name, never be the
default, and say plainly what is being given up.