backlog: file #1247 -- a gate install leaves no record, and its mtime actively lies - #371
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… actively lies The installed machine-global worktree gate changed content on this box while three sessions ran against it, and after all three looked, nobody can say who wrote it. The change was benign -- it moved the gate forward -- so this is a governance defect rather than an incident. install-gate.ps1:420 is a bare Copy-Item -Force. Four mechanisms could have recorded the write and none is present: no backup of the replaced bytes, no receipt, no log line, and Copy-Item carries the source file's mtime so the installed copy inherits a timestamp from whichever checkout it came from. The mtime is worse than missing because it is misleading. A correct stale-gate report was retracted on the strength of that timestamp and the retraction reached three sessions and the owner before a builder's pre-change baseline hash reproved the original claim. An absent record makes people say unknown; a wrong record makes them say something false with confidence. Records the technique that eventually bounded the write, because it is the only one that worked: a record of the past taken before the change. A re-measurement cannot distinguish a bad instrument from a changed artifact, since it sees only the present. Bounds itself: it is NOT established that install-gate.ps1 performed this write, only that had it been used it would have left nothing either.
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Files one backlog item. Docs-only:
docs/BACKLOG.md, +28 -0, pure append. Basec2241cfe, currentmain, ahead 1 / behind 0.
#1247 -- a gate install leaves no record, and its mtime actively lies.
What happened, measured
The machine-global worktree gate at
C:\Users\Scott\.claude\hooks\worktree_gate.ps1was replacedmid-session by a writer nobody can identify. Three sessions independently examined it and none of
them did it.
The hashes are decisive, because a historical release matches exactly:
So the file moved forward, from the version reported as stale to the version that fixes rule 3d's
quote-aware victim read. The outcome was an upgrade. The governance gap is the finding, not the
content.
Why nothing caught it
mtimeis not a witness here, and it actively misleads. The file reads2026-08-12 13:55:22--earlier than the baseline that already showed different content.
install-gate.ps1installs withCopy-Item, which carries the source's timestamp, so a fresh install produces new content with an oldmtime. A session reasoning from the timestamp concluded "nothing wrote it today" and retracted a true
staleness finding on that basis.
Why this is worth an item rather than a shrug
A machine-global safety control governing every session on the box changed hands with no log, no
attribution, and a timestamp that argues against the change having happened. That is the same shape as
#1244: a state changed and no instrument noticed. It is benign this time only because the change
happened to be correct.
Verification
git branch -r --contains 6e68a2b6returned 0, so it existed in oneworktree only
+28 -0, base is current mainitself retracted
Severity carries no deployment axis -- this is developer tooling on one workstation, not shipped engine
behaviour.