fix: post-write hook debounce break outside loop

[benslockedin]

Summary

• The project.py debounce guard in alive-post-write.sh (line 53) used break to early-exit when the walnut was already projected within the last 5 minutes
• break is only valid inside for/while/until loops — inside a case statement, bash emits "break: only meaningful in a for, while, or until loop" to stderr and returns non-zero, which can surface as a hook failure in Claude Code
• Changed to exit 0, matching the identical debounce pattern for generate-index.py on line 80

Test plan

• Trigger a log.md write twice within 5 minutes for the same walnut — second invocation should exit cleanly with no stderr
• Confirm project.py still runs on the first write (marker file created)
• Verify no "break: only meaningful" errors in hook output

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[patrickSupernormal]

Merge safety review (advisory) — Patrick Brosnan, non-collaborator on alivecontext/alive. Comment weight only, not an approving review.

Verdict: GREEN — merge as-is, merge first of the batch.

Headline: The bug on main is real and user-visible. alive-post-write.sh:53 has [ "$AGE" -lt 300 ] && break sitting inside a case */log.md) block, inside an if [ -n "$WALNUT_PATH" ], AFTER the while ... done loop on lines 37-43 has already closed. There is no enclosing loop at that nesting level. In bash, break with no loop prints bash: break: only meaningful in a 'for', 'while', or 'until' loop to stderr and returns non-zero for that statement — but bash does NOT exit the script; it continues to the next line.

The debounce on main is therefore doubly broken:

1. The hook emits stderr on every repeated save (Claude Code can surface as a hook failure)
2. Execution falls through to touch "$MARKER" and re-invokes project.py anyway, so the 5-minute debounce never actually skips anything

The break → exit 0 fix is correct. exit 0 is the only right answer here — no enclosing loop, no function scope, so break/continue/return are all wrong. The fix also matches the established pattern for the second debounce block at line 80 which already uses [ "$AGE" -lt 300 ] && exit 0. The activity counter for statusline (lines 14-22) runs BEFORE the first case block, so early exit doesn't break activity tracking.

Recommendation: Merge as-is. Merge this first of the batch. No rebase needed, no author response needed, no dependencies.

Inter-PR compatibility: Zero file overlap with any other open PR (#28, #29, #31, #32, #33, #34). No semantic or behavioural interactions with #29's architectural refactor or #33's Hermes subsystem. Smallest, safest, most isolated PR in the queue. Merging first also removes any chance that Ben's rebase of #29 accidentally reintroduces the broken break during conflict resolution.

Full cross-PR synthesis (conflict matrix, recommended merge order for all 7 open PRs, per-PR verdicts, blocker list): see the cover comment on #29 — #29 (comment)

Generated via flow-next epic fn-8-vly (stackwalnuts walnut). 🐿️