Runtime validation made whole — checks see the service, forms author it, the ship ends e2e

[gifflet]

What this is

Dogfood round 15, born from a scouting question — does e2e happen post-implementation in alc? — whose investigation found the runtime-validation subsystem complete on paper and broken at its heart. Three items, each closed by its own regression-guard pass and committed separately, as requested.

1. Checks see the live service (finding 50) — 53c8217

A needs_service run threaded $ALC_BASE_URL to the engine (tested) and to capture: (documented) — but Verifier.run spawned check subprocesses with the bare inherited environ. The builder pack's flagship qa Blueprint could not pass its own inline e2e-smoke check: reproduced live with a real service — health poll green, curl -sf "$ALC_BASE_URL" failing 4/4 attempts with an empty URL, three repair turns burned on an unfixable check, run FAILED.

The Verifier now takes the run's env at construction and merges it over os.environ — the same contract as the engine turn. The identical reproduction passes on the first attempt. None/{} keeps every existing caller byte-identical; flow.py's verify_only stages pass nothing and stay unchanged. Four unit tests (env reaches command checks, merge preserves PATH, no-env inherits untouched, metric path same contract) plus two integration tests through execute_mandate (service run's check sees the URL; plain run's env stays clean).

The battery caught a second, unrelated defect: test_no_stack_detected_still_audits_the_security_set embedded the assumption that gitleaks is NOT installed — on a machine with the scanner, the scaffold declares it live and the audit correctly has nothing to propose, so the test only ever passed on machines without the tool. It is hermetic now: it drops the security set from the manifest first, pinning the scenario it always meant.

2. The forms author runtime validation (finding 51) — 0d90e88

The e2e knobs were YAML-only. BlueprintForm gains a Runtime validation section: a needs_service checkbox — on writes the boolean, off deletes the key, because absence is the model default — with capture beside it, now carrying a hint and an honest placeholder. ManifestForm gains a Service section: Start authors service.start; Health path and Ready timeout reveal only once a start command exists (a service block without start would not validate); clearing Start deletes the whole block, clearing health falls back to the model default instead of writing an empty string. Five new vitest cases.

Validated live on desktop CDP against the real qa blueprint (the checkbox reads its needs_service: true, capture shows its shipped command) and at a 411px emulated viewport with no horizontal overflow. The physical Android was disconnected this round — on-device validation is owed when it returns, and the friction log says so.

3. The ship ends end-to-end — de3ea0d

The builder pack gains ship-e2e: plan → build → harden → static gate (verify_only) → a final qa stage. The last stage is a real engine stage, deliberately not verify_only — the service lifecycle lives in the runner, and a verify-only stage would bypass it. Additive: ship-hardened is untouched, so projects without a service: keep their flow, and ship-e2e's header comment states the service requirement out loud.

Proved live in a scratch project (mock engine, python3 -m http.server as the service): all five stages SUCCESS, the gate with zero engine turns, e2e-smoke ✓ against the app ALC started and tore down — post-implementation e2e as the flow's last word, exactly the round's brief.

Regression guard, per item

Each item ran the full battery before its commit:

• Item 1: ruff clean · pytest 2665 · vitest 671 · build clean (one environment-hardened test, reasoned above)
• Item 2: ruff clean · pytest 2665 · vitest 676 · build clean (no findings)
• Item 3: ruff clean · pytest 2667 · vitest 676 · build clean (one intended-change pin: builder hire count 2 → 3, updated with its reasoning)

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[vercel]

The latest updates on your projects. Learn more about Vercel for GitHub.

Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated
alc	Ready	Preview	Sep 12, 2026 4:50pm UTC