finding(test-infra): check-vi-mock-inherit's no-exception-list pin cannot tell a prose sentence from a list entry #8202

The gate scripts/check-vi-mock-inherit.mjs is guarded by a pin in scripts/__tests__/check-vi-mock-inherit.test.ts named there is NO per-file exception list anywhere in the gate. Its second assertion is:

expect(src).not.toMatch(/\.test\.tsx?['"`]\s*[,\]]/);

It reads the gate's ENTIRE source as one string, so it cannot distinguish a list entry from a sentence. Any prose in the gate's header that names a test file and is followed by a comma trips it.

Measured

Hit while landing objectui#6892 slice 10. The slice record added to the gate header contained the sentence fragment "The eleventh, BACKTICK useAiSurface.test.ts BACKTICK, reaches ZERO of the 454" — a comma after a backticked filename, in running prose, inside a block comment. The pin went red:

AssertionError: expected '#!/usr/bin/env node\n// Copyright (c)…' not to match /\.test\.tsx?['"`]\s*[,\]]/

Repaired by rewording the prose, NOT by narrowing the pin — the bluntness is deliberate and the header says so ("There is deliberately NO per-file exception list, and adding one is the wrong repair").

Why it is worth a card rather than a shrug

The gate's header is a per-slice logbook by construction: each slice appends a record describing what it measured, and those records naturally name the test files they measured. Five specifiers remain on objectui#6892 (@object-ui/app-shell 23 parked, @object-ui/plugin-designer 10, @object-ui/plugin-list 9, @object-ui/fields 8), so the next author to name a file in prose meets the same red — and the failure text points at a regex, not at the sentence, so the natural first reading is that the gate grew an exception list.

The risk is asymmetric and points the wrong way: the obvious "fix" is to loosen the pin, which is exactly the guard this repo does not want loosened.

Not proposing a specific repair

Options a triage round might weigh, none of them obviously right:

• Leave it. The friction is one reword per slice and the pin stays maximally blunt. (Cost: recurring, and each encounter re-tempts the wrong fix.)
• Scope the assertion to the code region rather than the whole file, e.g. run it over the source with block comments blanked. The repo already ships a comment masker the gate itself uses (scripts/js-comment-mask.mjs), so the mechanism exists and the pin would still see every real list entry, which cannot live in a comment.
• Keep the whole-file scan and add a failure message that names the matched line and says "if this is prose, reword it; do not relax this pin."

The second reads strongest against the anti-AI-error axis — it makes the guard MORE precise rather than more permissive, and a real exception list still cannot hide from it — but it touches a pin, which is the sort of change that wants a human's judgement rather than a sweeping seat's.

Filed unassigned, from the objectui#6892 slice-10 sweep (PR opened against @object-ui/plugin-chatbot). Not fixed there: it is outside that slice's declared file surface, and the reword was the in-scope repair.

Generated by Claude Code during the objectui#6892 slice-10 run, session session_01FhBNJcLRZLe8M87VcUgpKr.

Generated by Claude Code