CI-9: correct the guard comment's grading claim, and name the third blind spot

Documentation only - no change to the guard, the trigger, or any step.

The guard's comment block contradicted itself. It said the pull request that
reintroduces a filter "is still graded by the unfiltered workflow which is on
the base today", while the checkout step's note a few lines below says grading
uses the HEAD's workflow. The head's is correct, and the review measured it on
PR #101: head carrying a filter that excludes the base, base carrying the
unfiltered workflow -> no run, context posted `skipped`, rollup `success`, gate
cleared (409). The wrong version made the step sound like an unconditional
ratchet. What is actually true is narrower: it bites whenever the reintroduced
filter still names the pull request's own base, which is the ordinary case.

That correction exposes a third blind spot, worse than the two already listed.
A reintroduced `branches:` filter that simply does not name the base escapes
the guard entirely, because the pull request carrying it is itself skipped. It
needs no craft - `branches: [main]` from a template, or a tidy-up to `[master]`,
which nothing in this repository's history has ever targeted - and it lands as a
skipped, laundered, untested merge into release/1.0. After that every subsequent
pull request is skipped as well: the gate off completely, not merely the stacked
case leaking.

It is documented, not fixed, and deliberately so. No in-repo guard can close it,
because any such guard lives inside the workflow that gets skipped. Closing it
needs a second permanently unfiltered workflow whose context is added to
release/1.0's `status_check_contexts` - a forge change, the owner's decision,
being put to them separately, and explicitly not a blocker on CI-9.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BwRLw7eKYj2byVdwB6kbjU

.gitea/workflows/checks.yml

@@ -3,12 +3,35 @@
 # of real coverage including a wall-clock cadence test, and not one machine ever
 # ran them. Every merge here was a human reading a diff.
 #
-# ⚠️ NO `paths:` FILTER, AND ITS ABSENCE IS LOAD-BEARING. Branch protection on
-# release/1.0 requires the context `checks / unit (pull_request)`. Gitea leaves a
-# required context it never receives PENDING forever, so the moment this workflow
-# learns to sit a PR out, that PR becomes unmergeable. Condition a STEP if you
+# ⚠️ NO EVENT FILTER OF ANY KIND - NO `paths:`, AND SINCE CI-9 NO `branches:`
+# EITHER - AND THAT ABSENCE IS LOAD-BEARING. Branch protection on release/1.0
+# requires the context `checks / unit (pull_request)`. Condition a STEP if you
 # must; never the workflow.
 #
+# ⚠️ CI-01 WROTE THE REASON DOWN WRONG, AND THE WRONG REASON WAS THE SAFE-
+# SOUNDING ONE. It said an unreceived required context sits PENDING forever, so
+# a sat-out pull request becomes unmergeable - annoying, but fail-safe. That is
+# not what this Gitea does. MEASURED on Gitea 1.27.3, 2026-09-19, throwaway
+# PR #94: when a workflow exists but its event filter does not match, Gitea does
+# not stay silent. It POSTS the required context itself, with state `skipped`:
+#
+#   GET /api/v1/repos/admin/goodwe-addon/commits/<head sha>/statuses
+#     [{"status":"skipped","context":"checks / unit (pull_request)",
+#       "description":"Skipped","target_url":""}]      <- no run, no job, no url
+#
+#   GET /api/v1/repos/admin/goodwe-addon/commits/<head sha>/status
+#     {"state":"success","total_count":1}              <- the rollup LAUNDERS it
+#
+# and Gitea's merge gate accepts it. Same PR, same head sha, one status on it
+# and that status a skip, POST .../pulls/94/merge answered 409 `head out of
+# date` - the 409 being a deliberately wrong `head_commit_id` in the probe, i.e.
+# the request had ALREADY CLEARED BRANCH PROTECTION. The control, a required
+# context with no status at all, answered 405 `Not all required status checks
+# successful`. So the true failure mode is the exact inverse of the one written
+# here before: sitting a pull request out does not make it unmergeable, it makes
+# it MERGEABLE WITHOUT EVER BEING TESTED, and the badge says success while it
+# happens. Fail-open, not fail-closed. Do not reintroduce a filter here.
+#
 # ⚠️ THE RUNNER IS SHARED WITH THE OTHER REPO'S RIG. `goodwe-runner` on
 # 192.168.2.147 carries the labels `self-hosted` and `goodwe-rig` and is
 # registered `:host`, and it is the only runner there is - so this job wears the
@@ -23,9 +46,85 @@
 # that step; a green from this workflow is a claim about content that can land.
 name: checks
 
+# ⚠️ CI-9: `pull_request:` TAKES NO `branches:` LIST, ON PURPOSE. It used to
+# read `branches: [release/1.0, master]`, which meant a STACKED pull request -
+# one whose base is another feature branch rather than a release branch - did
+# not match, and so was skipped, laundered to `success`, and mergeable untested
+# by the mechanism described at the top of this file.
+#
+# ⚠️ AND RETARGETING DID NOT REPAIR IT, WHICH IS WHAT MADE THIS P1. The skip is
+# a COMMIT STATUS ON THE HEAD SHA, not a property of the pull request, so moving
+# the base afterwards leaves it exactly where it was. Observed live on PR #93
+# (2026-09-19): retargeted TEL-10 -> release/1.0, and the 10:05:00 `skipped`
+# stayed attached to head a6af332 with the rollup still reading success. It was
+# caught by a human who forced a real execution by reopening the pull request
+# (run 799, 10:56). Reproduced deliberately on throwaway PR #94: retargeted onto
+# a branch carrying a byte-identical copy of release/1.0's protection rule, and
+# the single `skipped` status survived the retarget unchanged - no new run, no
+# new status - and still cleared the gate.
+#
+# ⚠️ WHY NOT FIX THIS AT THE GATE INSTEAD, which would be the better place. It
+# cannot be done. Gitea's branch protection cannot express "this context must be
+# SUCCESS" as opposed to "this context must be PRESENT AND NOT FAILING". The
+# whole of its status-check vocabulary is two fields - `enable_status_check`
+# (bool) and `status_check_contexts` (a list of globs MATCHING CONTEXT NAMES) -
+# confirmed against this server's own schema at /swagger.v1.json, definitions
+# EditBranchProtectionOption and CreateBranchProtectionOption. There is no field
+# for the required STATE anywhere in either. The success/skip comparison lives
+# in Gitea's compiled code, so the only lever left is upstream of it: make sure
+# the context is never a skip in the first place. Hence this block.
+#
+# ⚠️ WHAT THIS COSTS, stated honestly, because it is a real trade. Every pull
+# request now runs the full suite, including the intermediate steps of a stack
+# that nobody intends to merge on its own. A run is ~8 minutes wall clock
+# (run 799: 7m55s) on a runner that is `capacity: 1` and shared with the other
+# repo's rig, so each extra run is ~8 minutes of slot that a rig campaign then
+# queues behind.
+#
+# SCALE OF THE NEW WORK, re-derived from the API and stated with its denominator,
+# because the first version of this paragraph had a made-up one. Counting the 93
+# pull requests that predate this ticket (#1..#93; CI-9's own #94..#98 excluded,
+# and note /pulls caps a page at 50, so this needs paging to see at all): 92 were
+# opened against release/1.0 and would have run anyway, and exactly ONE was
+# stacked - #2, TEL-01 -> SAFETY-04, closed unmerged, 2026-08-24. No pull request
+# has ever targeted `master`, so half the old filter was dead from the start.
+#
+# ⚠️ THAT 92 IS AN UPPER BOUND, NOT A CENSUS, and the reason is this very bug.
+# The API reports a pull request's CURRENT base, so one that was opened stacked
+# and later retargeted is recorded against its final base and is invisible here.
+# #93 is precisely that case - opened 2026-09-19T10:05:00 on TEL-10, retargeted,
+# merged into release/1.0 at 11:05:26 the same morning, under three hours before
+# CI-9 was opened - and it counts in the 92. So the true historical stacking rate
+# is somewhere above 1/93, and unmeasurable from here.
+#
+# The bill is therefore small today and grows with however much stacking the team
+# adopts. It is worth paying: the alternative is that the cheap case stays
+# untested and indistinguishable from the tested one.
+#
+# ⚠️ THIS DOES NOT CHANGE GITEA'S ACCEPTANCE OF A `skipped` REQUIRED CONTEXT -
+# that half is in its compiled code and is not reachable from this repository.
+# The CONSEQUENCE, though, is very largely closeable from here, and is closed:
+# after this edit there is nothing in this repository that produces a skip -
+# there is exactly one workflow file, it now has no event filter of any kind,
+# and the other candidate cause was MEASURED and is not one. The `guard the
+# trigger` step below then keeps it that way mechanically rather than by asking
+# the next editor to read this comment.
+#
+# THE MEASUREMENT, because the obvious guess is wrong and was nearly written
+# here as fact. A skip-ci keyword in a commit message (`[skip ci]`, `[ci skip]`,
+# `[no ci]`, `[skip actions]`, `[actions skip]`) does NOT behave like a filter
+# miss. On throwaway PR #94, head b36effb, commit subject ending `[skip ci]`:
+#
+#   .../commits/b36effb/statuses   ->  []                  <- NO status, not a skip
+#   .../commits/b36effb/status     ->  {"state":"pending"} <- so the rollup is pending
+#   POST .../pulls/94/merge        ->  405 Not all required status checks successful
+#
+# i.e. skip-ci is FAIL-CLOSED - it withholds the context entirely, which is the
+# pending-forever behaviour CI-01's header wrongly attributed to a filter miss.
+# It blocks the merge rather than laundering it, so it needs no fix and no
+# app.ini change. Only the filter miss ever posted a `skipped`.
 on:
   pull_request:
-    branches: [release/1.0, master]
   workflow_dispatch:
 
 # ⚠️ NO `concurrency:` BLOCK, AND ITS ABSENCE IS AS LOAD-BEARING AS THE MISSING
@@ -224,6 +323,140 @@ jobs:
             exit 1
           fi
 
+      # ⚠️ THE GUARD ON THE TRIGGER. THIS STEP EXISTS BECAUSE PROSE ALREADY
+      # FAILED IN THIS FILE, ONCE, FOR TWENTY DAYS.
+      #
+      # `git show 9c1a23328a` is CI-01's first commit. It shipped the header
+      # "⚠️ NO `paths:` FILTER, AND ITS ABSENCE IS LOAD-BEARING" and the line
+      # `branches: [release/1.0, master]` IN THE SAME COMMIT, EIGHTEEN LINES
+      # APART. The comment forbade one kind of event filter while the code
+      # directly above the job carried another, and nobody caught it through 84
+      # merges until the gate let a stacked pull request through. So the whole of
+      # CI-9's fix rests on an invariant - "checks.yml has no event filter" -
+      # that has already been silently violated in this exact file by the person
+      # who wrote the warning against violating it. A louder comment is not a
+      # remedy for that. A red step is.
+      #
+      # WHY THIS CAN WORK AT ALL, given CI-9 rejected the card's option 3 (a step
+      # that detects its own workflow having been skipped) as impossible. That
+      # option is impossible because a skipped workflow runs no steps, so there
+      # is nothing alive to notice. This is the different, tractable case: it
+      # fires on the pull request that REINTRODUCES a filter, and it does so
+      # whenever the filter being reintroduced STILL NAMES THAT PULL REQUEST'S
+      # OWN BASE - the ordinary case, because a filter put back by hand names
+      # the release branch people are actually targeting. The edit then has to
+      # get past this step before it can start causing skips. It is a ratchet,
+      # not a skip detector.
+      #
+      # ⚠️ AND IT IS THE HEAD'S WORKFLOW THAT DECIDES WHETHER ANYTHING RUNS, NOT
+      # THE BASE'S. An earlier draft of this comment claimed the reintroducing
+      # pull request "is still graded by the unfiltered workflow which is on the
+      # base today". That was wrong, it contradicted the checkout step's own note
+      # a few lines below, and the error was not cosmetic: it made this step
+      # sound like an unconditional ratchet, which is exactly the false comfort
+      # CI-9 exists to stamp out. MEASURED on PR #101 - head carrying a filter
+      # that excludes the base, base carrying the unfiltered workflow - and the
+      # result was no run at all, the context posted `skipped`, the rollup
+      # reading `success`, and the gate CLEARED (409). Gitea takes the workflow
+      # file from refs/pull/<n>/head, so a head that filters itself out is simply
+      # never graded, and nothing on the base can reach out and stop it. That is
+      # what blind spot 3 below is made of.
+      #
+      # WHAT IT INSPECTS is the MERGED tree in $WS - the content that would
+      # actually land on the base - not the branch tip and not the copy of this
+      # file that Gitea used to decide whether to run. Those are three different
+      # trees here (see the long note on the checkout step) and only the merged
+      # one is the thing being authorised.
+      #
+      # ⚠️ THREE ACKNOWLEDGED BLIND SPOTS. NOT ONE OF THEM IS CLOSEABLE FROM
+      # INSIDE THIS FILE, and the reason is the same in all three: each is a case
+      # where THIS WORKFLOW IS ITSELF THE THING THAT GETS SKIPPED, and a guard
+      # that lives inside a skipped workflow does not run. Closing them needs a
+      # SECOND, permanently unfiltered workflow whose own context is added to
+      # release/1.0's `status_check_contexts`, so that something survives to
+      # report when this file is sat out. That is a forge change and the
+      # repository owner's decision; it is being put to them separately and is
+      # deliberately NOT held as a blocker on CI-9.
+      #
+      #   1. A reintroduced `paths:` filter crafted to exclude the reintroducing
+      #      pull request's OWN diff would skip that pull request, so this step
+      #      would not run to object to it.
+      #
+      #   2. An edit that lands on a feature branch through a stacked pull
+      #      request is graded by the HEAD's workflow, so a filter already
+      #      present in the head hides the edit from this step - until that
+      #      branch is proposed for release/1.0, where (unless it is case 3) the
+      #      base matches the reintroduced filter and this step runs and bites.
+      #      Caught at the release boundary, which is the boundary that matters.
+      #
+      #   3. ⚠️ THE WORST OF THE THREE, AND WORSE THAN BOTH OF THE OTHERS PUT
+      #      TOGETHER: a reintroduced `branches:` filter that simply DOES NOT
+      #      NAME THE BASE escapes this step entirely, because the pull request
+      #      carrying it is itself skipped. It takes no craft and no malice to
+      #      write - `branches: [main]` copied out of a GitHub template, or a
+      #      tidy-up to `[master]`, a branch that NO pull request in this
+      #      repository's history has ever targeted - and it arrives as a
+      #      skipped, laundered, untested merge into release/1.0.
+      #
+      #      What makes it categorically worse is what happens the moment after.
+      #      Once that file is ON release/1.0, every subsequent pull request is
+      #      graded against it and every one of them is skipped too. This is not
+      #      the stacked case leaking through a crack; it is the gate off
+      #      completely, for everything, silently, with every badge green. The
+      #      only thing standing between the repository and that state today is
+      #      a human reading this file - which is precisely the kind of defence
+      #      this step exists because it has already failed once (9c1a23328a).
+      #
+      # It is deliberately a FAILURE and not a warning: a warning would leave
+      # the required context green, which is the precise defect CI-9 is about.
+      - name: guard the trigger - refuse a checks.yml that has regained an event filter
+        run: |
+          set -eu
+          f="$WS/goodwe-addon/.gitea/workflows/checks.yml"
+          test -f "$f" || { echo "checks.yml is missing from the merged tree."; exit 1; }
+          # Walk the top-level `on:` block of the MERGED file. Full-line comments
+          # at column 0 are skipped outright - this file's own prose quotes
+          # `paths:` and `branches:` many times and must not trip its own guard -
+          # and an inline `#` is trimmed from any line that is kept.
+          bad=$(awk '
+            function scan(t) {
+              sub(/#.*/, "", t)
+              if (t ~ /(^|[^A-Za-z0-9_-])(branches|branches-ignore|paths|paths-ignore|tags|tags-ignore|types)[[:space:]]*:/)
+                return 1
+              return 0
+            }
+            /^[[:space:]]*#/ { next }
+            /^("on"|'"'"'on'"'"'|on)[[:space:]]*:/ {
+              inon = 1
+              rest = $0; sub(/^[^:]*:/, "", rest)
+              if (scan(rest)) print NR ": " $0
+              next
+            }
+            inon == 1 {
+              if ($0 ~ /^[[:space:]]*$/) next
+              if ($0 ~ /^[[:space:]]/) { if (scan($0)) print NR ": " $0; next }
+              inon = 0
+            }
+          ' "$f")
+          if [ -n "$bad" ]; then
+            echo "REFUSED: checks.yml has regained an event filter in its \`on:\` block."
+            echo "$bad"
+            echo
+            echo "  A filter means some pull request stops matching this workflow. Gitea does"
+            echo "  not stay silent about a workflow it sits out - it posts the required context"
+            echo "  \`checks / unit (pull_request)\` itself with state \`skipped\`, the combined"
+            echo "  status rolls that up as \`success\`, and the merge gate ACCEPTS it. That is"
+            echo "  CI-9: a pull request merged on a workflow that never ran a step. It was"
+            echo "  reproduced by merging PR #96 for real through a protected branch."
+            echo
+            echo "  Branch protection cannot save you here - it can require that a context is"
+            echo "  PRESENT, never that it is SUCCESS - so the filter is the whole defence."
+            echo "  If you genuinely need to narrow what runs, condition a STEP, never the"
+            echo "  workflow. See the \`on:\` block's comments for the measurements."
+            exit 1
+          fi
+          echo "OK: the \`on:\` block of the merged checks.yml carries no event filter."
+
       - name: build the test image (shipped deps, from apk - see .gitea/ci/Dockerfile)
         run: |
           set -eu