fix(core): honour or refuse a stated timezone in normalize_date_to_iso (#252)

.bestpractices.json

@@ -99,7 +99,7 @@
   "build_floss_tools_justification": "pip, uv, hatchling, pytest, ruff and pyright are all FLOSS, and the build runs on ubuntu-latest and windows-latest GitHub runners.",
 
   "test_status": "Met",
-  "test_justification": "An automated test suite of 6439 tests lives under tests_py/ (measured 2026-07-29 with 'pytest --collect-only -q'), covering core, handlers, infrastructure, integration, invariants and architecture: https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/tree/main/tests_py",
+  "test_justification": "An automated test suite of 6526 tests lives under tests_py/ (measured 2026-07-29 with 'pytest --collect-only -q'), covering core, handlers, infrastructure, integration, invariants and architecture: https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/tree/main/tests_py",
 
   "test_invocation_status": "Met",
   "test_invocation_justification": "The whole suite runs with a single 'pytest' command, documented in CONTRIBUTING.md under Testing along with per-layer subsets: https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md",
@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@
   "test_policy_justification": "CONTRIBUTING.md carries an explicit, mandatory testing policy: new functionality ships with tests in the automated suite, a bug fix carries a regression test that fails on the pre-fix code, and each failure path asserts its observable effect including the signal it emits \u2014 https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#the-testing-policy-mandatory. The per-tool checklist ('Add a unit test', 'Add an integration test if the tool touches the database') and the five-element mechanism checklist restate it per change type.",
 
   "tests_are_added_status": "Met",
-  "tests_are_added_justification": "New functionality ships with its tests; the suite has grown to 6439 tests alongside the v4.x feature series, and CI runs it on every pull request.",
+  "tests_are_added_justification": "New functionality ships with its tests; the suite has grown to 6526 tests alongside the v4.x feature series, and CI runs it on every pull request.",
 
   "tests_documented_added_status": "Met",
   "tests_documented_added_justification": "The requirement is written into the documented instructions for change proposals: https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#the-testing-policy-mandatory states that every change adding or altering observable behaviour must arrive with tests in the same PR, the per-tool and per-mechanism checklists repeat it as a concrete step, and .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md requires a Test plan section in every pull request.",
@@ -189,7 +189,7 @@
   "static_analysis_often_justification": "CodeQL default setup analyses each push and pull request and additionally runs on a weekly schedule, so analysis happens per change rather than per release.",
 
   "dynamic_analysis_status": "Unmet",
-  "dynamic_analysis_justification": "No dynamic analysis tool in the badge's sense (fuzzer, sanitizer, or scanner) is applied. The project runs a 6439-test suite with coverage on every change, but a test suite is not a dynamic analysis tool and is not claimed as one here.",
+  "dynamic_analysis_justification": "No dynamic analysis tool in the badge's sense (fuzzer, sanitizer, or scanner) is applied. The project runs a 6526-test suite with coverage on every change, but a test suite is not a dynamic analysis tool and is not claimed as one here.",
 
   "dynamic_analysis_unsafe_status": "N/A",
   "dynamic_analysis_unsafe_justification": "Cortex is written in Python, a memory-safe language, so the memory-safety tooling this criterion asks about (ASan, Valgrind) does not apply.",
@@ -297,13 +297,13 @@
   "interfaces_current_justification": "The stack targets currently supported runtimes and APIs: Python 3.10 through 3.13, all four in the CI matrix, with pgvector 0.3+/PostgreSQL 17 and current major versions of FastMCP, Pydantic v2, numpy and sentence-transformers. Deprecated interfaces are removed rather than wrapped \u2014 the standing rule is one-shot migrations with no back-compat shims (CLAUDE.md), and CI runs on the newest released Python so a deprecation surfaces as a warning in the build rather than as a surprise at end of life.",
 
   "automated_integration_testing_status": "Met",
-  "automated_integration_testing_justification": "The full suite runs on every push and pull request to main via .github/workflows/ci.yml and reports success or failure per job: 6439 tests on Python 3.10-3.13 against PostgreSQL + pgvector, the same suite against the SQLite backend, the suite on Windows, and a Docker smoke job that boots the bare container and exercises the DB-less contract. tests_py/integration/ holds the database-backed integration tests specifically.",
+  "automated_integration_testing_justification": "The full suite runs on every push and pull request to main via .github/workflows/ci.yml and reports success or failure per job: 6526 tests on Python 3.10-3.13 against PostgreSQL + pgvector, the same suite against the SQLite backend, the suite on Windows, and a Docker smoke job that boots the bare container and exercises the DB-less contract. tests_py/integration/ holds the database-backed integration tests specifically.",
 
   "regression_tests_added50_status": "Met",
   "regression_tests_added50_justification": "Measured on 2026-07-27 over the merged pull requests titled as fixes in the preceding six months (2026-01-27 onward): 23 of 30 \u2014 76.7% \u2014 changed the test tree in the same PR, against the 50% this criterion asks for. (The measure counts a PR as carrying tests when it touches tests_py/ or tests_js/, which is a proxy for 'added a regression test'; the policy behind it is written down at https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#the-testing-policy-mandatory \u2014 a bug fix carries a regression test that fails on the pre-fix code.)",
 
   "test_statement_coverage80_status": "Met",
-  "test_statement_coverage80_justification": "Statement coverage is 82.02% (30,229 of 36,854 statements in mcp_server), measured by coverage.py 7.15.2 in the CI coverage job, run 30316539703 (2026-07-28) \u2014 above the 80% this criterion requires. The gap was closed by https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/issues/196: the four zero-importer modules were wired-and-tested or removed with proof, and contract tests now cover the previously-uncovered context-assembly, hook, and wiki modules. The figure cannot silently fall back: the same CI coverage job enforces --cov-fail-under=82 as a floor, seeded at the achieved number.",
+  "test_statement_coverage80_justification": "Statement coverage is 82.02% (30,229 of 36,854 statements in mcp_server), measured by coverage.py 7.15.2 in the CI coverage job, run 30316526703 (2026-07-28) \u2014 above the 80% this criterion requires. The gap was closed by https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/issues/196: the four zero-importer modules were wired-and-tested or removed with proof, and contract tests now cover the previously-uncovered context-assembly, hook, and wiki modules. The figure cannot silently fall back: the same CI coverage job enforces --cov-fail-under=82 as a floor, seeded at the achieved number.",
 
   "test_policy_mandated_status": "Met",
   "test_policy_mandated_justification": "https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#the-testing-policy-mandatory states it as policy, not preference: every change that adds or alters externally observable behaviour must arrive with tests in the same pull request, new functionality ships with tests in the automated suite, a bug fix carries a regression test that fails on the pre-fix code, and each failure path asserts its observable effect including the signal it emits. The consequence is stated \u2014 such a PR is sent back rather than merged with a follow-up promise.",

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -14,6 +14,10 @@ adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/).
 - **Coverage-guided fuzzing** (closes the Scorecard Fuzzing alert). Two harnesses in `fuzz/` over pure parsers that read untrusted text (§13.1 D2 — LLM-generated content is untrusted): the hand-rolled YAML frontmatter parser and the wiki source-path canonicaliser. Wired to **ClusterFuzzLite** (`.clusterfuzzlite/`, `.github/workflows/fuzz.yml`) — a 120s batch on PRs that blocks, and a longer scheduled run that does not, because a fuzzer left running will eventually find something and holding the merge queue hostage to an unrelated input makes the check ignored within a week. Writing the path harness **found a live bug**: `normalize_source_path` stripped `./` in a loop and then `/` exactly once, so removing the slashes could expose a `./` the loop had already walked past — `.//./x` came out as `./x`, still carrying the prefix the function exists to remove, and not idempotent. `extract_document_paths` dedupes on that result, so one document reachable by two spellings counted as two. Fixed by iterating to a fixed point; the four reproducers are committed as corpus inputs and **fail on the pre-fix code**. `fuzz/replay_corpus.py` runs every corpus input through its harness with no atheris, so the properties execute in the ordinary `pytest` suite on every platform — atheris publishes manylinux x86_64 wheels for cpython 3.12–3.14 and nothing else, and a property only one CI job can run is one that rots.
 
 ### Fixed
+- **A `created_at` that states a timezone was stored as the wrong instant** (#252). `normalize_date_to_iso` had no timezone policy on any of its paths, so three defects stacked: (1) the "already ISO" guard was the substring test `"T" in raw`, and every US zone abbreviation contains a T — `8 May 2023 13:56 EST` was returned unparsed; (2) the built-in fast path matches the date at the START of the string and discards the rest, so `8 May 2023 13:56 +02:00` became midnight, dropping both the time and the offset; (3) on the dateutil path an abbreviation it cannot resolve is dropped with a warning nobody sees, leaving a naive datetime that PostgreSQL's `timestamptz` cast and `compute_recency_boost` both read as UTC. The instant was up to a day off and nothing was emitted. A stated zone is now honoured or the value is refused: `mcp_server/core/temporal_timezones.py` supplies dateutil a `tzinfos` resolver over the **RFC 5322 §4.3 obs-zone table** (the normative answer to "which EST?" — cross-checked against CPython's `email._parseaddr._timezones`), and any abbreviation outside it is refused with a warning naming the input, the abbreviation and the fix, rather than defaulted. Parsing no longer depends on the host's local zone name, and no `warnings.catch_warnings()` — process-global and not thread-safe — is taken on a store write path. `normalize_date_to_iso` moves out of `core/temporal.py` into `core/temporal_normalize.py`: storage normalization must not lose precision, retrieval scoring may, and they are now separate modules (both stores import from the new path). The refusal also covers the degraded path — a string that states a zone is never salvaged to a naive date, whatever made the parse fail.
+- **`python-dateutil` is now a declared dependency** (#252). `normalize_date_to_iso` has always parsed free-form dates with a time of day through it — the LoCoMo shape `1:56 pm on 8 May, 2023` its own docstring cites — but it was never declared and arrived only by transitive luck. It was absent from every `requirements/ci-*.txt`, so **every CI test job ran with that parser missing**: the fallback was dead code in CI, and any install resolving without it kept dates it could not read. Declared, locked and hash-pinned into the 9 exported requirement sets, so the write path behaves identically on every install and both backends.
+- **Both stores skipped the normalization entirely for the dates that needed it most** (#252, the same substring defect one layer up). `PgMemoryStore._build_insert_params` and `SqliteMemoryStore._insert_memory_rows` each guarded the call with `"T" not in raw_created` as a cheap "is it already ISO?" test — so `8 May 2023 13:56 EST` (and every `PST`/`CST`/`MST` string) went to the database untouched, whichever way `normalize_date_to_iso` behaved. The guard is gone from both: deciding what is already ISO belongs to the function that owns it, which returns a real ISO datetime unchanged. Asserted on the stored row, not just on the parser, and asserted equal across the two backends.
+- **Plugin installs bootstrapped a dependency set this repo no longer resolves** (found while wiring the above). `scripts/launcher_deps.py` carries the pin table the launcher pip-installs before the plugin's own dependencies exist, every row commented `# source: uv.lock` — and nothing verified it. 7 of the 9 rows had drifted: `fastmcp 3.2.4` (locked 3.4.5), `pydantic 2.13.3` (2.13.4), `pydantic-settings 2.14.0` (2.14.2), `psycopg 3.3.3` (3.3.4), `psycopg_pool 3.3.0` (3.3.1), `pgvector 0.4.2` (0.5.0 — the version whose psycopg loader change `pg_store._vector_to_bytes` is written for), `sentence-transformers 5.4.1` (5.6.1), plus a `numpy` marker split the two-branch constant no longer covered (2.4.4 is not in the lock at all). Realigned, and a test now asserts every pin is a version `uv.lock` records, with a negative control. Two prose copies of the same numbers — `docs/deployment-scenarios.md`'s container versions and a `pyproject.toml` comment — now point at the lock and its hashed exports instead of restating them.
 - **`docker/Dockerfile` could not build at all**: it copied `/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages` from the builder against a `python:3.14` base — a path absent from both stages since the base image moved off 3.12. Invisible because **no CI job built this image**; it now installs into a version-free venv (the rule the root Dockerfile already documents, from the incident where a literal `python3.13` path broke on every base bump). Both `docker/Dockerfile` and `.devcontainer/Dockerfile` gain build jobs in `ci.yml`, so the next such breakage is visible.
 - **`scripts/setup.sh` reported success over any install failure**: the dependency install ended in `2>/dev/null`, which is where a resolution failure, a hash mismatch and a network error all appear, and the script printed "Python packages installed" regardless. Its exit status is now checked. Its hand-written package list — a duplicate of `pyproject.toml` — had already drifted from it, asking for `sentence-transformers>=2.2.0` against a real floor of `>=3.0.0`, and is replaced by the generated hashed file.
 - **`.gitattributes` marks `fuzz/corpus/**` as binary**: end-of-line normalisation would have rewritten the CRLF corpus seed to LF on checkout, silently deleting the case that seed exists to cover.

CLAUDE.md

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ coding write gates, causal graphs, and intent-aware retrieval.
 
 - Install (dev): `uv pip install -e ".[dev]"` — SQLite backend: `".[dev,sqlite]"`
 - Environment preflight: `python -m mcp_server.doctor` (backend-aware check list, fix message per check)
-- Tests: `pytest` (full suite, 6439 tests) · `pytest tests_py/core/` (one layer) · `pytest --cov=mcp_server --cov-report=term-missing`
+- Tests: `pytest` (full suite, 6526 tests) · `pytest tests_py/core/` (one layer) · `pytest --cov=mcp_server --cov-report=term-missing`
 - Lint BEFORE every commit: `ruff check && ruff format --check` — the CI enforces **both**; passing only `ruff check` is not enough.
 - Release gate benchmarks (isolated, ephemeral container — the only source
   of truth for pre-tag/floor decisions): `benchmarks/reproduce.sh`. Do NOT

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ bash scripts/setup.sh        # macOS / Linux
 # Verify everything is wired
 uvx --python 3.13 --from "hypermnesia-mcp[postgresql]" cortex-doctor
 
-# Run tests (6439 tests under tests_py/)
+# Run tests (6526 tests under tests_py/)
 pytest
 
 # Run a benchmark
@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ The full standard lives in
 ## Testing
 
 ```bash
-pytest                              # full suite (6439 tests)
+pytest                              # full suite (6526 tests)
 pytest tests_py/core                # core (pure business logic) only
 pytest tests_py/integration         # PostgreSQL-backed integration
 pytest tests_py/benchmarks -k locomo # subset

README.md

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
   <a href="https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/actions/workflows/ci.yml"><img src="https://github.com/cdeust/Cortex/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg" alt="CI"></a>
   <a href="LICENSE"><img src="assets/badge-license.svg" alt="License: MIT"></a>
   <img src="assets/badge-python.svg" alt="Python 3.10+">
-  <img src="assets/badge-tests.svg" alt="6439 tests passing">
+  <img src="assets/badge-tests.svg" alt="6526 tests passing">
   <img src="assets/badge-references.svg" alt="97 referenced papers">
   <img src="assets/badge-version.svg" alt="Version 4.16.0">
   <a href="https://www.bestpractices.dev/projects/13836"><img src="https://www.bestpractices.dev/projects/13836/badge" alt="OpenSSF Best Practices"></a>
@@ -526,7 +526,7 @@ Cortex is **local-first**: your memories, conversations, and profiles stay on yo
 ## Development
 
 ```bash
-pytest                    # 6439 tests
+pytest                    # 6526 tests
 ruff check .              # Lint
 ruff format --check .     # Format
 python scripts/check_doc_claims.py   # advertised counts must match the repo

docs/ASSURANCE-CASE.md

@@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ decoratively:
 
 Standing analysis: CodeQL default setup (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript,
 Actions) on every push and pull request plus weekly, currently 0 open alerts;
-OpenSSF Scorecard via `.github/workflows/scorecard.yml`; and 6439 tests run on
+OpenSSF Scorecard via `.github/workflows/scorecard.yml`; and 6526 tests run on
 four Python versions, two backends and Windows.
 
 ## 6. What this assurance case does NOT claim
@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ four Python versions, two backends and Windows.
   source can be traced and purged.
 - **The test suite is not yet strong enough to carry this argument alone.**
   Statement coverage is 82.02% (measured in the CI coverage job, run
-  30316539703, 2026-07-28) and is held by a `--cov-fail-under=82` floor in
+  30316526703, 2026-07-28) and is held by a `--cov-fail-under=82` floor in
   that job, but coverage proves execution, not detection: mutation testing
   is wired for one module rather than the load-bearing set (the changed
   code of #196 was mutation-triaged to zero non-equivalent survivors;