doctor --drift printed no drift ✔ (74 item(s) compared) over a tree containing a file it
never compared. 1.45.0 shipped claude/agents/reference/ENVIRONMENT.ref through all three
install lanes and added checks for both of them, and then doctor's drift families still globbed
agents/*.md only. The reference nine agent prompts point at could be edited, truncated or left
behind by a downgrade and doctor would keep saying the installation matched the repo.
Caught by reading the count rather than the verdict: 74 items before the file shipped, 74 after.
A number that does not move when the tree grows is the whole tell, and it is only visible because
1.14.0 made doctor print the count instead of a bare no drift ✔.
It is its own family rather than another entry in the *.md loop, because the glob genuinely
differs and the reason it differs is the point: a reference named .md installs as a nameless
agent. The stale-file scan gained the same directory, so a .ref this repo stops shipping is now
reported as a leftover instead of sitting there forever.
Adding the family turned check 41 red on the way in, which is the check working. Its positive
control builds a stub tree with one member in every drift family and requires doctor to green it;
doctor grew a family, the stub did not, and the control failed over a tree that was in fact
identical. The stub now derives its members from the same list, so a future family cannot pass by
being absent from the fixture.