ConfigKit/docs/roadmap/imports.md

Import Ergonomics And Permissive Defaults

Status: working draft / brainstorming notes. This document captures a proposed direction for discussion, not an implemented contract or an implementation plan. The selected direction separates directory searches, filename matching, recursion, and absence handling. Optional-by-default imports are the intended direction. The consumer-directed and Ansible-aligned decisions below are settled; remaining choices have recommendations and alternatives under Open Decisions. All new syntax below is illustrative and unimplemented.

Guiding Philosophy

ConfigKit should provide predictable configuration mechanisms and avoid imposing application policy. Its defaults should permit optional contributions to be absent, with explicit options for increased strictness when needed. That choice may come from an operator or the consuming application; authored import declarations can also express requirements on contributions.

Permissiveness should distinguish absence from invalid supplied configuration:

Optional contributions may be absent by default. Consumers can explicitly require them. Supplied configuration must still be structurally valid and interpretable under the selected composition rules.

This is a general design direction worth making more explicit and consistent across ConfigKit. It is not blanket authorization to weaken existing contracts, ignore errors, or add a global permissiveness switch. Other defaults should be evaluated individually against this principle.

Discovery should accept hidden entries and follow symlinks by default, with options to narrow either behavior. An omitted filename filter should not impose an implicit extension restriction. These defaults do not waive containment, source validity, composition, or resource-limit rules. Recursion remains a separate choice about search scope, not a measure of permissiveness.

This is a hard-breaking pre-1.0 change. Do not build temporary aliases, translation layers, compatibility modes, or staged deprecation support. Evaluate the final interface on its own merits, without retaining syntax solely to ease upgrades.

Current Baseline

The current import contract uses path or glob, with required imports by default and optional: true to permit absence. Glob matching uses slash-based Go path.Match syntax. Recursive ** syntax is not supported; authors can match particular depths with patterns such as prompts/*.yaml and prompts/*/*.yaml.

Current imports expand depth-first in declaration order, with each ordinary source contributing its body before its imports. The existing sibling inheritance resolver instead follows dependency chains before resolving dependents, using sorted sibling names and an explicit stack. Neither implements the shared ordering selected below.

The proposed changes concern naming, discovery, absence handling, and uniform dependency ordering for imports and extends. Import destinations, strict composition, inheritance overlay semantics, tier precedence, and resource identity retain their distinct roles.

Proposed Import Vocabulary

Use direct-file, directory-search, and path-glob forms. Directory searches separate literal search roots from filename filters; path globs additionally support wildcard directory segments and selection at particular depths:

configkit:
  imports:
    - dir: prompts
      pattern: '*.yaml'
      recursive: true
      destination: [prompts]
      placement: sequence-item
    - path: defaults.yaml
      required: true

The first declaration searches prompts and its descendants for matching filenames, placing each source mapping as one prompt item, and permits no matches. The second explicitly requires its target file. Sequence composition still requires the consumer's existing registration, as explained below.

The fields have distinct jobs:

Field	Proposed meaning
path	Import a named file or list of named files, relative to the declaring file
dir	Search a literal directory or list of literal directories, relative to the declaring file
pattern	A filename wildcard or list of wildcards; select files matching any pattern within the searched directories
glob	Select files with one path wildcard, including wildcard directory segments, relative to the declaring file
exclude	A filename wildcard or list of wildcards; remove matching files from any selector's results
recursive	Default false; include descendant directories when true
depth	Bound directory-search depth; 1 means direct files, 0 or omission means unlimited when recursive
follow	Follow symlinks by default; false disables following within the discovery scope defined below
hidden	Include hidden entries by default; false excludes hidden files and prunes hidden directories within the discovery scope defined below
required	For path, require every listed file to be present; for dir or glob, require at least one selected file after exclusions across the complete search
destination, placement	Apply the existing placement rules to each selected source

This follows the familiar separation of traversal and filtering in Ansible's find and include_vars interfaces, without adopting all their spellings, defaults, or matching modes.

Decisions Resolved By Project Direction

• No transition support. Use the final interface immediately in the selected pre-1.0 minor release. Remove optional in favor of required; do not accept it as an alias or normalize old declarations at runtime.
• Optional contributions by default. required: true opts into failure on absence. Supplied invalid configuration continues to fail.
• No implicit filename restriction. Omitting pattern selects all filenames. Authors can narrow selection explicitly. There is no default YAML extension list; extensionless sources remain discoverable.
• Follow symlinks by default, with an opt-out. Provide follow: false for callers who want discovery without symlink following. Applicable containment and filesystem contracts remain in force.
• Include hidden entries by default, with an opt-out. Provide hidden: false to exclude hidden files and prune hidden directories from discovery.
• One dependency-ordering algorithm for imports and extends. Both use the shared dependency-ready scheduler defined below. This is settled independently of the existing implementations and includes refactoring both resolvers.

OD-1 (recursion default), OD-2 (matching and selector expressiveness), OD-4 (discovery boundaries and cycles), OD-5 (policy precedence), and OD-6 (absent-import evidence) are settled in the sections below. Only OD-3 remains open. follow and hidden are the proposed field spellings; their applicability to glob remains part of OD-3. Applying exclude to glob is settled.

Decisions Resolved From Ansible

The comparison covers ansible.builtin.find, ansible.builtin.include_vars, ansible.builtin.fileglob, and ansible.windows.win_find. A consistent approach means agreement among the relevant interfaces that offer the capability, not that every Ansible module exposes it. Existing ConfigKit contracts and the already selected optional-by-default direction remain authoritative; this is not a general Ansible compatibility mode.

The following choices are settled:

• Separate traversal from filename filtering. Directory roots and filename filters have separate roles; filters operate on basenames in visited directories. A directory failing the filename filter does not prune its descendants. This agrees with the directory-search interfaces above. See find's parameters and the include_vars implementation.
• Include an optional integer depth control. All three directory-search interfaces use that spelling. Direct files are at depth 1, and each additional directory adds one. Omission permits unlimited depth when recursion is enabled. See include_vars and win_find.
• Treat depth: 0 as unlimited. This follows include_vars and agrees with the current find implementation and win_find implementation. The latter two document unlimited omission more clearly than explicit zero; this choice uses source-confirmed behavior, not a claimed universal documented Ansible guarantee. Negative values remain a separate open decision.
• Disabling recursion takes precedence over depth. With recursive: false, search only direct files, even if a valid larger or unlimited depth is supplied. Depth does not enable recursion. Both find and win_find explicitly use this rule where a separate recursion switch exists.
• Directory searches select files, not directory documents. Directories are traversal containers, even when their names match pattern. This agrees with the default file selection in the find modules and the file-oriented fileglob lookup. Existing regular-file and containment rules still govern opening selected sources, together with the selected discovery controls.

The accepted recursive spelling is retained. The formerly tentative max_depth spelling becomes depth. Resource budgets remain separate from depth, and the current limits still apply to an unlimited-depth search.

Shared Dependency-Ready Ordering

Status: settled for imports and extends; not yet implemented. Use deterministic dependency-ready ordering: Kahn's topological-sort algorithm with a min-heap of eligible nodes. Both resolvers must use the same algorithm in the same way, through one shared internal scheduling implementation, common tie-breaking rules, and common cycle-path logic.

Scheduling Rule

A dependency edge means that the dependent cannot complete until its dependency has completed. For each dependency graph:

1. Count each node's outstanding dependencies and identify initially eligible nodes: those with none.
2. Choose the eligible node with the smallest stable ordering key.
3. Append it to the schedule, decrement its dependents' outstanding counts, and immediately make newly eligible nodes available for the next selection.
4. Continue until all nodes are scheduled. If unfinished nodes remain with no eligible node, reject the graph and identify an actual dependency cycle.

Use stable source or definition identities to construct ordering keys, with the same deterministic comparison rule in both resolvers. Map iteration order and discovery-assigned source IDs must not supply the tie-breaker. Specify key construction for source namespaces and logical definition paths during implementation planning; it must distinguish nodes within each scheduled graph.

Construct and validate a complete schedule for the available graph before applying its resolution operations. A blocked dependent is not necessarily a cycle member: diagnostics should identify the actual cycle using shared, deterministic cycle-path logic. Source discovery and parsing may already have occurred; this rule is not a promise to avoid reading invalid configurations.

Scope And Integration

Discovery and resolution are separate operations. An importing source must be read to discover its imports, but its contribution need not be assembled first. Discovery order is not a substitute for the selected resolution schedule.

Both resolvers construct dependency graphs and apply resolver-specific operations through the shared scheduler. Imports retain strict composition; extends retains inheritance overlay behavior. Scheduling does not authorize replacement within a strict composition tier or change precedence between tiers. Shared dependencies can be scheduled once where valid; this does not relax the existing prohibition on repeated source inclusion for imports.

Preserve item-local helper scopes and enclosing-before-nested inheritance requirements. An imported item completes its helper contributions before being placed as an item. Enclosing inheritance establishes the context in which nested relationships are discovered and resolved. Use the same scheduler at those scope boundaries, with the actual prerequisites represented; do not flatten raw files or mappings in a way that loses their scope. Inheritance still resolves after source assembly and precedence have established the effective document.

The integration must account for resulting sequence positions, provenance, history, and diagnostic ordering. It must distinguish source acquisition records from assembly order rather than assuming they are the same. Review both resolvers' contracts and behavioral tests when implementing the new schedule; preserving the old traversal is not a design objective.

Rationale And Validation

Dependency-ready ordering selects the smallest currently eligible node without adding branch preference, batch barriers, or distance-from-root priority. With a fixed total ordering key, it gives the lexicographically smallest valid dependency-first schedule. It can interleave independent branches; branch contiguity is not part of the chosen ordering contract.

The comparison considered deterministic depth-first postorder, dependency rounds, and descending longest-path depth as well. All can satisfy dependency correctness, but their additional ordering policies did not justify choosing them over the uniform eligibility rule. This decision gives no preference to the existing implementation or to minimizing pre-1.0 refactoring.

The scheduler requires O(E + V log V) time and O(V + E) memory for V nodes and E dependency edges, assuming constant-time key comparisons. Source access, parsing, merging, and provenance work are separate costs.

Validate independent branches, unequal chains, branches with multiple dependencies, shared dependencies at equal and unequal depths, cycles with blocked non-cycle dependents, and nested scopes. Equivalent valid graphs and ordering keys must produce identical schedules through the import and inheritance integrations. Verify independence from graph insertion order and preserve each resolver's domain-specific admissibility and combination rules.

Discovery Semantics

Filename Matching

pattern applies to a file's basename, not its full relative path. For example, *.yaml matches both prompts/one.yaml and prompts/weather/daily/summary.yaml when the latter's directory is visited. Recursion changes which directories are visited; it does not change what * means. A nonrecursive search considers only files directly inside dir.

OD-2: settled. Use the existing case-sensitive Go path.Match wildcard grammar for filename filters. Omitting pattern selects all filenames, with no implicit extension restriction. Do not add regular expressions, automatic dialect detection, or recursive ** syntax as part of this work.

Retain glob as a permanent, separate selector using the existing slash-based path wildcard grammar. For example, collections/*/prompts/*.yaml selects files in a particular directory layout without selecting all descendants. Literal dir roots and basename filters do not express that same search. This capability justifies retaining glob independently of compatibility; it uses the same new absence policy as other selectors. glob remains a single string; list support is being added to path, dir, and the filename filters.

Selector Lists And Set Operations

Accept a string or a list of strings for path, dir, and pattern. Normalize a scalar to a singleton list so both forms use the same selection logic. Listed paths and directory roots resolve relative to the declaring file. List order does not introduce precedence or replace the shared dependency-ready resolution schedule.

For directory roots D and filename patterns P, search the Cartesian product D × P and take the union of the matching candidate files:

S = ⋃ {matches(d, p) | (d, p) ∈ D × P}

Each root uses the declaration's recursion, depth, and applicable discovery controls. When pattern is omitted, select all filenames in the visited directories instead. This describes selection semantics, not a requirement to materialize the product or traverse a directory again for each pattern.

Overlapping patterns or directory searches within one declaration select the same candidate once. This local set union is not global source deduplication: existing repeated-source and alias checks still apply to distinct inclusion routes. In particular, it does not authorize silently merging separate alias paths to an imported source.

For path, required: true requires every listed file to be present. For dir, it requires at least one selected file across the complete union after exclusions; it does not require a match per directory, pattern, or pair. A missing directory can therefore contribute nothing while another supplies the required match. The equivalent glob requirement is at least one selected file after exclusions. Invalid supplied configuration still fails under the existing rules.

Exclusions

Accept exclude as a string or list of strings with the same case-sensitive basename wildcard grammar as pattern. Apply it to results from path, dir, and glob. A candidate matching any exclusion is removed before its content is loaded or parsed. An omitted exclusion removes nothing.

This is set difference: for candidate set S and its subset X matching any exclusion, the selected set is S ∖ X. Exclusions win over positive matches. They filter filenames, not directory paths, and do not prune traversal into a directory whose name happens to match. For example, exclude: '*.draft.yaml' removes matching files at every visited depth, including results of a path glob.

For searches, evaluate required on the selected set after exclusions. For an explicit path list, exclusions filter what is loaded but do not waive the settled requirement that every listed file be present when required: true. Excluding a candidate is not permission to suppress discovery, containment, or resource-limit errors. Exclusions are local to the declaration; they do not prohibit another declaration from explicitly selecting the same filename.

Recursive Discovery And Depth Limits

Use recursive: true for recursive discovery, optionally bounded by depth. The motivation is to let authors organize definitions in subdirectories without updating import declarations for every depth. Directory organization should not change resource identity or the effective configuration destination.

The selected model uses an explicit search root and recursion flag, rather than introducing recursive ** syntax or inferring a root from a wildcard prefix.

OD-1: settled. Omitting recursive means false: search only direct files. Authors explicitly opt into descendants. This makes the search scope visible while keeping recursion independent of the permissive defaults for absence, symlinks, and hidden entries.

The settled depth convention is:

• Files directly inside the search root are at depth 1.
• Each additional directory increases depth by one.
• Omitting depth, or setting it to 0, imposes no caller-selected depth limit when recursion is enabled; existing loader resource limits still apply.
• recursive: false selects only direct files regardless of a valid depth value.
• Depth controls discovery only, not namespaces, identities, or destinations.

Remaining directive validation choices are listed below. Recursive discovery must fit the existing filesystem containment, repeated-source, and load-budget contracts rather than silently changing them. In particular, examined entries, including nonmatches, still consume the visit budget; a small number of matches does not authorize an unbounded filesystem scan. This is an existing ConfigKit constraint, not a new Ansible-derived decision.

Symlinks And Hidden Entries

OD-4: settled. Discovery controls are local to the declaration. Directory searches default to follow: true and hidden: true, subject to the application defaults described below. Authors may disable either behavior independently of recursion, depth, matching, or absence handling.

Define hidden entries by a leading dot in the portable source namespace. hidden: false skips discovered hidden files and prunes discovered hidden directories. follow: false skips discovered symlink files and prevents descent through discovered symlink directories. Explicitly named roots and separate direct-file imports retain their existing source-access semantics. The controls do not implicitly propagate to declarations inside imported files.

These are discovery-selection controls, not a load-wide access prohibition. If OD-3 enables these controls on glob, filtering applies to wildcard-selected entries; explicitly named path components remain explicit access. This conditional scope rule does not settle that open decision.

When following links, detect a canonical directory repeated on the active traversal path and fail with a cycle diagnostic. Do not silently prune the loop and continue. Existing dependency-cycle and repeated-source errors remain in force; discovered aliases do not authorize silently deduplicating imported sources. Directory-cycle handling retains the existing containment and native-filesystem capabilities.

These controls narrow selection rather than authorize ignoring errors in a selected source. required: true applies after discovery filters: if the search selects no file, it fails. Native filesystems retain their existing capabilities; this feature does not promise link inspection where a supplied filesystem does not expose it.

Illustrative Examples

These examples describe the proposed interface, not configuration accepted by the current release. They assume the consumer has enabled imports and has not changed the library's policy defaults. File paths and directory roots resolve from the declaring file; destinations use the existing relative-placement rules.

Import One File

configkit:
  imports:
    - path: defaults.yaml

Import defaults.yaml into the declaring source's mapping scope. Under the proposed default, a missing file contributes nothing. Add required: true when its presence is necessary. A present but invalid file still fails loading.

Require Several Named Files

configkit:
  imports:
    - path: [defaults.yaml, site.yaml]
      required: true

Both files must be present. Listing them together shares the declaration's options; their textual order does not establish overlay precedence. Their contributions follow the shared dependency-ready schedule and strict composition rules.

Recursively Discover Mapping Fragments

configkit:
  imports:
    - dir: services
      pattern: '*.yaml'
      recursive: true
      destination: [services]

This discovers files such as services/api.yaml and services/regional/worker.yaml, but not services/README.md. Each file contains named service entries, for example api: {port: 8080} or worker: {concurrency: 4}. They compose beneath services under the existing strict composition rules. Directory names do not create additional mapping keys. Missing directories or no matching files contribute nothing.

Adding depth: 2 limits discovery to direct files and files one directory below services: it still selects services/regional/worker.yaml, but not services/regional/east/worker.yaml. With recursive: false, only direct files are selected, even if depth: 2 remains present.

Hidden entries and contained symlinks participate by default. To narrow the search, the declaration can also include:

      follow: false
      hidden: false

These controls narrow discovery below the explicitly named root; the root continues to resolve under the existing source-access rules.

Search Several Prompt Collections And Filename Patterns

configkit:
  imports:
    - dir: [prompts, shared-prompts]
      pattern: ['*.prompt.yaml', '*.prompt.yml']
      exclude: ['*.draft.prompt.yaml', '*.draft.prompt.yml']
      recursive: true
      required: true
      destination: [prompts]
      placement: sequence-item

The two directories and two patterns form four Cartesian-product pairs; the selected candidates are the union of their matches, minus excluded filenames. This selects prompts/welcome.prompt.yaml, prompts/weather/daily/summary.prompt.yaml, and shared-prompts/greeting.prompt.yml, but not prompts/weather/helpers.yaml or shared-prompts/greeting.draft.prompt.yml. Each selected file contains one prompt mapping, such as id: prompt.welcome and text: Welcome. The consumer registers the prompts sequence with identity field id through the existing Definition.SequenceCompositions API. Distinct IDs compose into one sequence; duplicate IDs fail strict composition. Overlays continue replacing sequences.

Here required: true means at least one file must remain across the entire search after exclusions, not that every directory or pattern must produce a match. One missing root is acceptable if the other supplies a selected file. The filename convention keeps helper files out of this discovery declaration; it does not prevent a selected file from explicitly importing a helper. Existing repeated-source rules still apply if declarations select overlapping sources.

Select A Directory Layout With A Glob And Exclusions

configkit:
  imports:
    - glob: 'collections/*/prompts/*.yaml'
      exclude: '*.draft.yaml'
      required: true
      destination: [prompts]
      placement: sequence-item

This selects files such as collections/support/prompts/welcome.yaml, excluding collections/support/prompts/welcome.draft.yaml. It does not select deeper files such as collections/support/prompts/internal/help.yaml. At least one file must remain after exclusions. The same prompt-item composition setup as the preceding example applies. Exclusion patterns match basenames even though the positive glob matches paths.

Optional Imports By Default

The selected direction is optional-by-default for explicit files, directory searches, and globs, with required: true opting into failure on absence. This deliberately supersedes the earlier suggestion to retain required-by-default imports.

The table assumes the library's default absence policy. Applications may select a different default using the settled precedence rules below.

Situation	Proposed behavior
Missing path entry; required omitted or false	That entry contributes nothing; other listed files may still contribute
Zero selected files across a complete search; required omitted or false	Contribute nothing
Any listed path file missing with required: true	Fail with an import diagnostic
Zero selected files across a complete dir or glob search after exclusions with required: true	Fail with an import diagnostic
One dir root missing, but another supplies a selected file with required: true	Satisfy the declaration's presence requirement
Invalid pattern or malformed import declaration	Fail
Permission failure during discovery, unreadable selected file, or malformed YAML in a selected file	Fail
Composition conflict or other invalid supplied configuration	Fail under the applicable existing rules

An optional declaration is permission for absence, not permission to ignore a selected contribution that cannot be read or interpreted. Optionality must not turn processing failures into apparently successful partial configuration.

This default supports installations with different optional components without requiring ceremony for every potentially absent directory or file. Its tradeoff is that a misspelled path or pattern can also contribute nothing. Authors and applications that need an import to exist can state that requirement explicitly; applications remain responsible for validating their necessary final values. Final validation does not automatically detect every unintentionally omitted contribution.

Who Chooses Strictness?

OD-5: settled. Provide load-level defaults for required, follow, and hidden. Resolve each applicable field independently using this precedence:

1. Explicit value on the import declaration.
2. Application-selected default, when supplied.
3. Library default: false for required, true for follow and hidden.

Apply this rule to transitive declarations too. A declaration does not inherit these field values from its importing parent. Applications may expose the defaults to operators through their own interfaces; simple consumers need no additional setup. Exact Go API spelling belongs to implementation planning.

Explicit declarations remain authoritative, permitting intentional exceptions to stricter application defaults. Defaults are not enforcement controls. Do not add options that override explicit declarations as part of this work without a separate concrete requirement and scope decision. The fields' applicability to each selector remains part of OD-3.

Evidence For Absent Optional Imports

OD-6: settled. Record minimal structured inspection evidence when an optional declaration selects nothing: its declaring source/location, selector, and absent outcome. Emit no warning by default and do not fabricate a loaded-source record. This keeps optional contributions quiet during ordinary use while allowing applications to explain omissions during troubleshooting.

Decide the exact inspection record shape during implementation planning, reusing existing structures where appropriate and retaining existing inspection contracts. Include ownership tests for the new evidence. This addition does not require applications to reconstruct absent-import provenance themselves.

Release Boundary

Ship one final interface with a hard break in a pre-1.0 minor release, following the release policy. There is no transition release, legacy parser path, compatibility switch, or temporary optional alias. Release notes should describe the changed behavior and final syntax; this documentation does not imply migration machinery.

Retaining glob is a settled capability decision, as described under filename matching. It does not preserve the old required-by-default behavior or promise compatibility with every old declaration or use case.

Named Algorithms And Implementation Documentation

Use the common names below in implementation comments and maintained documentation when the feature lands. Keep them beside the relevant logic and in the appropriate owning documents so human readers can recognize the design without reconstructing it from code. This does not call for new public API terminology or duplicate contracts across documents.

Operation	Name and intended use
Shared import and extends scheduling	Kahn's algorithm with a stable ordering key, using a min-heap for the ready set; the same dependency-ready topological sort serves both resolvers
Multiple directory roots and filename patterns	Cartesian product of roots and patterns, followed by set union of matching candidates within the declaration
Exclusion filtering	Set difference between positive candidates and those matching any exclusion
Directory symlink cycles	Active-path cycle detection, using canonical directories on the current traversal path rather than treating every previously visited directory as a cycle

Scalar-to-singleton normalization lets scalar and list forms share selection logic. Set operations describe membership, not resolution order; the shared stable topological schedule supplies that order. Preserve the scheduler's complexity explanation and distinction between cycles and blocked dependents in its implementation documentation. Do not label implementation-specific matching or cycle-path helpers with an algorithm name until that algorithm is actually chosen.

Open Decisions

Only OD-3 remains open. Its identifier is preserved for continued discussion; the recommendations below are not settled decisions. OD-1, OD-2, OD-4, OD-5, and OD-6 are settled above.

OD-3. Directive Validation

Why still open: Permissive discovery does not determine whether malformed or inapplicable option values should be accepted. The draft's existing error boundary remains: invalid declarations fail. We still need to define their valid shapes, rather than infer extra restrictions from that boundary.

Recommendation (not yet accepted): Accept nonnegative YAML integers for depth; zero remains unlimited. Treat negative, null, string, boolean, and fractional values as malformed, even when recursion is disabled. Use exactly one selector per import: path, dir, or glob. Keep pattern, recursive, and depth specific to dir; allow follow and hidden on both dir and glob. exclude applies to all three selectors as settled above. Diagnose unknown fields and options that have no meaning for the chosen selector. This makes likely mistakes visible, but shared templates must omit inapplicable fields. It imposes no arbitrary maximum depth. The settled combination recursive: false with a valid larger depth remains accepted and selects only direct files. The removed optional spelling is not accepted under any variant.

The accepted list forms also need explicit validation rules for empty lists, null values, empty strings, and non-string elements. Recommend allowing empty lists as empty selections (and exclude: [] as no exclusions), while rejecting null values and non-string elements rather than silently coercing them. Under that recommendation, an explicit pattern: [] matches nothing, unlike omission; an empty path list has no files whose presence is required. Empty-string semantics should be reviewed against the existing source-path and wildcard rules rather than introducing a blanket prohibition. These remain OD-3 choices, not additional settled restrictions.

Alternative: Normalize null depth to omission and negative integers to unlimited, and permit unused directory controls on a direct-file declaration. That eases generated configuration but can turn an erroneous bound into a wider search or make a direct-file import appear recursive. These relaxations can be chosen independently; they do not require accepting ambiguous selectors. Another viable selector shape is to allow multiple selectors as an explicit union, but it needs rules for constructing the graph and handling overlaps that one-selector declarations avoid.

For list validation, another viable choice is to reject empty positive-selector or pattern lists as likely authoring mistakes while allowing exclude: []. That catches accidentally empty generated inputs, but requires conditional omission of declarations and is less consistent with permissive empty searches. Normalizing null to omission would ease generated configuration, but for pattern it would broaden selection to all filenames. Neither alternative changes the settled string-or-list support for nonempty valid values.