v3.9.0

3.9.0 - 2026-06-09

A feature release centered on killing path-drift false signals — the
phantom path_drift_missing flags that made healthy memories read as
stale forever. Driven by live false flags found in the dogfood store and
a 4-round multi-agent hunt (224 agents, 10 heuristic surfaces, every
finding adversarially re-verified with a runnable repro). No breaking
changes; one wire-shape addition.

Added

• verified_absent_paths attestation on memory_verify. The mirror
  axis to verified_paths: body-cited paths you confirm are
  intentionally absent on this machine — a remote host's path, a
  platform-conditional location (~/.config/... cited for Linux while
  running on macOS), a path the body cites precisely because it is NOT
  the real one. Path-drift reports them under a new
  path_drift.expected_absent bucket instead of missing, so the
  staleness verdict stops nagging about absences that are the expected
  state. Persisted in frontmatter, preserved through scope-only updates,
  tombstone/restore, and no-arg verifies; surfaced on memory_show,
  expanded search hits, and the web UI detail view. Extraction
  heuristics can't read that context — the attestation layer is where
  human/agent judgment lands.

Fixed

• Path extractor: spaced directory segments. Bare
  ~/Library/Application Support/... citations used to truncate at the
  space, and the truncated prefix false-flagged missing on every
  retrieval. The bare scan now continues through title-cased spaced
  segments that resume with a slash; terminal spaced components it
  can't capture safely are dropped when missing rather than flagged
  (the flag would be manufactured by our own truncation). Drive and
  home anchors now count as directory boundaries, so
  C:\Program Files\... and ~/Calibre Library/... are extracted;
  shell-escaped spaces (My\ Drive) are unescaped.
• Path extractor: URL routes. A body citing a domain-attached route
  (pypi.org/pypi/bettermemory/<ver>/json) no longer gets same-rooted
  absolute candidates (/pypi/bettermemory/json) stat'd as local
  files; well-known web filenames (/robots.txt, /openapi.json, …)
  are recognized as routes despite their extensions.
• Path extractor: the rest of the confirmed hunt findings.
  Code-citation line suffixes (file.py:407, :445-461, :12:5)
  check the underlying file; @/+/% survive in bare paths
  (homebrew kegs, systemd templates); VAR=/path and --flag=/path
  assignments, markdown table cells, and smart-quoted paths are
  extracted; $HOME/ canonicalizes to ~/; balanced trailing ) is
  kept (project (archived)); glob, template-placeholder
  (<app>/{service}), and //host/share SMB citations are excluded
  as shape claims; single-argument commands (/opt/homebrew/bin/brew upgrade) no longer flag; sentence-final citations flag correctly
  while report (2).pdf-style continuations don't; attested paths
  always flag when deleted (verified-then-deleted is real drift);
  citation order no longer decides whether drift is reported; ~/x
  and /Users/me/x spellings dedup to one claim; acronym glue
  (/etc/hosts TCP/IP) falls back to the real path.
• Credential gate (HIGH): sentence-final periods masked real
  secrets. my password is <secret>. was read as a dotted module
  reference and waved through; trailing prose punctuation is now
  stripped before the guards. Coverage also extended: encrypted-PKCS#8
  PEM headers and Slack xapp-/xoxc-/xoxe- token families.
• Auto-scope (HIGH): linked-worktree blackout. Sessions running in
  a git worktree checkout (spawned agent worktrees, PR-review trees)
  could not see ANY memory written in the primary checkout — the
  repo's shared knowledge — because the worktree filter required exact
  root equality. A caller in a linked worktree now matches memories
  from its primary (derived from the worktree's .git file, no
  subprocess), and memories recorded in since-deleted worktrees degrade
  to repo-level matching instead of being invisible forever. Live
  sibling worktrees stay isolated — the original leakage fix is
  preserved.

Notes

• The hunt that drove this release hit its round cap still finding
  fresh issues; the 146 remaining verified findings are parked with
  full detail in docs/audit/extractor-hunt-2026-06-09.{md,json} as a
  pre-verified queue for future audit passes.

Full diff: v3.8.0...v3.9.0