Document test suite policy audit conclusions

docs/roadmap/audit-findings.md

@@ -36,8 +36,8 @@ and this section must record the new revision.
 
 Coverage ranged from 69.8% (`internal/manifest`) to 100% (`internal/logging`)
 among tested packages. `cmd/narratio` reported 0% because it has no tests. The
-remaining package results ranged from 70.1% to 88.1%. Stage 12 owns the
+remaining package results ranged from 70.1% to 88.1%. The Stage 12 risk-based
-risk-based interpretation; these numbers are inventory signals only.
+interpretation is recorded below; these numbers are diagnostic signals only.
 
 ### Code Graph Freshness And Structural Inventory
 
@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@ These are prioritization signals, not findings:
 | 9: extraction | complete | Configuration, transcript resolution, fingerprinting, Notarius execution, receipt/index/lane validation, immutable promotion, manifest advertisement, catalog hydration, resume, and explicit analyze/publish consumption were traced as one slice. The exact focused command passed. Confirmed `COR-020`; added `DUP-007`, `SIM-002`, and `TST-009`, and refined `ARC-001`, `RSK-013`, and scenario 3. |
 | 10: analyze and dependencies | complete | All five source-policy families, seven built-in catalog entries, configured-artifact execution/reuse, dependency validation/order, previous-cache locality, lifecycle, and publish selection were traced as one slice. The exact focused command passed. Confirmed `COR-021` through `COR-024` and `RSK-015`; added `ARC-007`, `DUP-008`, `SIM-003`, `COM-005`, and `TST-010`; and refined `ARC-001`, `ARC-002`, `RSK-013`, and scenario 9. |
 | 11: maintainability | complete | Production graph metrics, change coupling, dead-code/static patterns, all structural candidates, efficiency workloads, comments, dependencies, and platform assumptions reviewed. Confirmed the narrow `ARC`, `DUP`, and `SIM` corrections recorded below, merged lifecycle wording and extraction proof candidates, rejected generic abstractions and micro-optimizations, added `SIM-004` and `COM-006`, and passed the full normal test suite and vet. |
-| 12: test policy | not_started | Seeded by intended owners and baseline execution observations. |
+| 12: test policy | complete | All 749 tests were inventoried by behavior owner and consequential risk; every prior `TST` candidate was classified, five suite-wide candidates were added, and coverage, doubles, helpers, determinism, offline behavior, runtime, fuzzing, and automation were assessed. The prescribed shuffled run exposed `TST-011`; the prescribed race run reproduced only `TST-001`. |
 | 13: synthesis | not_started | No final ranking or accepted-risk decisions yet. |
 
 ## Area Coverage And Ownership
@@ -133,7 +133,7 @@ has been mapped but not behaviorally audited.
 | File operations | `internal/fileops`, `internal/pathsafe`, local artifact store | 3 (promotion vertical slice in 9) | reviewed |
 | External adapters and storage | `internal/adapters`, `internal/audio` | 7 | reviewed |
 | Shared models and diagnostics | `internal/artifactmodel`, `internal/contracts`, `internal/logging` | 7 (maintainability revisited in 11) | reviewed |
-| Tests, examples, and automation | package test owners, `examples/`, `.woodpecker/` | 12 | assigned |
+| Tests, examples, and automation | package test owners, `examples/`, `.woodpecker/` | 12 | reviewed |
 
 ## Package And Interface Ownership Map
 
@@ -397,9 +397,10 @@ no-output metadata so the pipeline can continue to publish; it is durably
 reused until forced, closing analyze's behavior portion of `ARC-002` and leaving
 the wording gap in `COM-005`.
 
-## Preliminary Risk-To-Test Matrix
+## Intended Risk-To-Test Ownership Matrix
 
-This matrix identifies intended owners only. It makes no sufficiency judgment.
+This Stage 1 matrix identifies intended owners. The final Stage 12 sufficiency
+assessment follows the accumulated behavior-pass observations below.
 
 | Architectural invariant or risk | Implementation owner | Intended test owner |
 | --- | --- | --- |
@@ -469,6 +470,119 @@ Stage 10 test observations for this matrix:
 | Previous-session locality and guidance | Requirement collection covers enabled/disabled, deduplication, required-wins, and stable ordering. Prepare/restore/app tests cover planned requirements; analyze proves manifest/fallback local resolution and explicitly asserts no object-store call. | Selection is absent from the collector API (`COR-022`), while the guidance test asserts only a fragment of the malformed command and therefore preserves `COR-023`. |
 | Scriptorium request and output materialization | Stage tests inspect exact named input paths, vars, generated/reused metadata, render-debug, logs/configuration, and canonical materialization. Adapter tests assert deterministic flags and generated invocation configuration. | Input `artifact`/`path` fields have no consumer or request representation (`COR-024`); no stage-side link/non-regular/oversized result case covers analyze, extending `RSK-013`; and the broad execution/resolution shape remains `SIM-003`. |
 
+## Test-Suite Policy Conclusions
+
+The graph inventory contains 904 functions in 95 test files, including 749
+`Test` functions and no fuzz tests or benchmarks. Review grouped those tests by
+the policy owner they protect rather than by filename. Parsing and validation
+are concentrated in `config`, `artifactpolicy`, manifest decoding, and adapter
+protocol tests; domain and durable state in `manifest`, `artifacts`, and app
+lifecycle tests; filesystem safety in `pathsafe`, `fileops`, and the local
+store; adapter contracts in their owning packages; orchestration and CLI in
+`app`; and representative assembled behavior in app/stage workflow tests.
+
+### Final risk-to-test sufficiency matrix
+
+| Consequential invariant or risk | Current protection | Proper owner and realistic protected defect | Missing modes or cross-layer overlap | Sufficiency conclusion |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| Canonical order, planning, and lifecycle transitions | Registry/planner tables, manifest transition tests, and app first-run/skip/force/failure/rerun cases | App lifecycle tests protect durable state-machine outcomes; manifest tests own field mutation | Run-store failures and resume-validation terminalization cannot be injected; several assembled tests repeat per-stage metadata | Strong ordinary protection; add the narrow persistence seam in `TST-002` and consolidate overlap under `TST-015` |
+| Session/run identity and immutable invocation audit | Per-invocation runner tests and typed manifest load/save tests | App owns identity synchronization; manifest owns serialization | Derived identity conflicts and disagreement states remain visible only through `COR-001`/`TST-002` | Insufficient at the cross-manifest boundary; `TST-002` is the intended addition |
+| Strict configuration, defaults, identity, and examples | Extensive strict-load/default/validation tables plus maintained-example loading | Config tests protect rejected language and normalized values; one example test protects assembly | A 949-line loader/validator table repeats complete YAML and broad default assertions already owned elsewhere | Behavior breadth is strong; restructure for clearer ownership under `TST-014` without reducing contract cases |
+| Confined identities, paths, locks, and atomic persistence | `pathsafe`, `fileops`, artifact, cleanup, and local-store tests | Low-level owners protect no-escape/no-follow/atomicity; one app or stage case protects composition | Unsafe identity, destination-ancestor links, directory sync, stale/release lock faults, and concurrent runner cases are absent; duplicating each at every caller would be wasteful | Insufficient for confirmed safety roots; add one owner-level case per root plus representative composition under `TST-003` |
+| Remote publish commit and cleanup recovery | Publish source/order/failure tests and cleanup path/effect tests | Publish owns pointer-last snapshot visibility; cleanup owns durable retry evidence | Current doubles record calls but do not model prior readable versions, accepted-with-error, barriers, or cleanup reload/retry | Insufficient for recovery/idempotency/concurrency; stateful fake and focused cases in `TST-004` |
+| Restore committed-state authority and partial replacement | Restore plan/execution/workflow tables, conflict/force, malformed manifest, cache tests | Restore package owns snapshot selection, conflict policy, manifest-last commit, and resumable failure | No generation change, committed-vs-stray scope, partial forced overwrite, plan/lock race, same-size replacement, or foreign-path case | Insufficient at durable transition boundaries; package-level stateful cases in `TST-005` |
+| Composition has one resolved configuration authority | Production assembly is exercised; injected environments generally leave `Env.Config` nil | App composition tests protect production-shaped dependency injection | No test intentionally diverges the two configs, so the impossible split fixture remains allowed | Insufficient seam fidelity; one authority test in `TST-006` |
+| Adapter protocol, cancellation, resource, output, and secret boundaries | Strong argument/schema, retry/status, direct-child timeout, ordinary output, S3 one-page, and override-secret tests | Each adapter owns protocol behavior; shared subprocess/file acquisition owns mechanical limits and redaction | Descendant kill, inherited/raw secret leakage, scheme restriction, streaming cancellation, close observation, pagination progress, and non-regular/oversized outputs are absent | Insufficient at adversarial boundaries; targeted additions in `TST-007`, not duplicated protocol matrices |
+| Bounded transcription concurrency and cancellation | Concurrency bound/order and ordinary adapter-error tests | Transcribe owns dispatch/cancel completion; WhisperX fake must honor concurrent interface use | The fake races and no barrier-controlled mid-dispatch cancellation exists | Insufficient; `TST-001` restores race signal and `TST-008` protects cancellation |
+| Ordinary-stage input transitions and run-local output authority | Broad prepare and transcript-stage behavior suites | Prepare owns source replacement/deduplication; stage/shared acquisition owns requested path and multi-output commit behavior | Stale previous state, duplicate audio, alternate adapter path, and partial multi-output materialization are absent; schema tables already overlap heavily | Add only the transition/authority cases in `TST-008`; current schema and protocol coverage is otherwise sufficient |
+| Extraction identity, immutable promotion, and consumer evidence | Strong adapter validation, lifecycle/reuse, catalog hydration, explicit-consumer, and low-level promotion tests | Extract owns direct-input fingerprint and lifecycle; artifact/file owners protect evidence and promotion | Direct input mutation and one assembled unsafe-root case are absent. Post-install orphan residue is not advertised authority and would require private choreography | Add the two marginal cases in `TST-009`; reject a dedicated orphan-residue test and reuse `TST-002`/`TST-003` owners |
+| Analyze effective selection, optional inputs, dependencies, and passthrough contract | Strong source-family, catalog, order/cycle, reuse, local-previous, and publish-filter tests | Analyze/app composition owns effective selection; artifact owners retain source parsing | Optional built-ins, selected-disabled prerequisites, simultaneous errors, actionable guidance, and accepted passthrough fields are not protected | Insufficient at cross-owner seams; focused additions in `TST-010`, without repeating all source spellings |
+| Artifact/source identifiers and remote/local mapping reject hostile structured input | Deterministic tables cover representative traversal, source families, and mappings | `pathsafe` and `artifactpolicy` are pure security-sensitive owners; restore mapping is a secondary seed source | No fuzz target probes arbitrary separators, normalization idempotence, round-trip mapping, or no-escape properties | Add focused seeded property fuzzing under `TST-013`; generic YAML/JSON parser fuzzing has lower marginal value |
+| CLI parsing and operator rendering remain compatible and actionable | Command tables cover valid/invalid flags, dispatch, status/validate rendering, and semantic error fragments | App command tests own supported invocation language and actionable output | A few broad workflow cases repeat downstream policy, but no consequential CLI gap was established beyond `COR-023` guidance | Sufficient once `TST-010` asserts repaired guidance; retain semantic fragments rather than exact full prose |
+| Representative assembled workflows prove boundary composition | App/stage tests run real filesystem/config/manifest collaborators with adapter fakes | App owns a small number of end-to-end success/failure cases; focused packages own details | Stage metadata checklists and a six-adapter generic failure matrix repeat focused suites and generic runner behavior | Overprotected and costly in places; consolidate under `TST-015`, retaining one assembled success and one generic failure |
+| Default suite is deterministic, isolated, offline, and credential-free | Normal full suite passes in about 3.5 seconds using temp dirs, loopback HTTP, and test-binary subprocesses | Each test owns cleanup of process-global state; repository execution owns the aggregate signal | A config-secret test leaves environment values behind and fails under repeated execution; no tests use `t.Parallel` | Offline/credential isolation is sufficient; determinism is not until `TST-011` is fixed |
+| Race diagnostics remain trustworthy | Baseline and shuffled race runs exercise all packages | Concurrent consumers and their doubles jointly own race-safe fixtures | WhisperX fake request capture races, causing the only observed race failure | Insufficient until `TST-001`; no second production race was observed |
+| Repository automation enforces supported validation | Tag release automation cross-builds Linux, macOS, and Windows binaries | Normal change automation should protect test/vet/build compatibility before release | No PR/push test, vet, or build job exists; tag publishing is not tied to a validated revision | Insufficient; record the proportional enforcement decision in `TST-012` |
+
+### Doubles, helpers, redundancy, and brittleness
+
+Most tests follow the preferred collaborator order. Pure validation uses real
+values; filesystem and workflow tests use real temporary directories and local
+manifests; HTTP tests use loopback servers; and protocol subprocess tests run
+the current test binary. Those subprocess argument assertions are interaction
+contracts, not mock choreography, and should remain. Storage and publish are
+the important exception: call-recording stubs cannot express version
+visibility, accepted-with-error outcomes, pagination progress, or concurrent
+commit barriers. `TST-004` and `TST-005` therefore call for one shared stateful
+object-store fake. The WhisperX request-capture fake is the only double proven
+unsafe for its actual concurrent consumer (`TST-001`); sequential fakes do not
+need blanket synchronization.
+
+The largest test, `config.TestLoadAndValidate`, spans roughly 949 lines and
+combines strict YAML loading, normalization/default checks, and validation in
+one repeated full-document table. It matches semantic error fragments rather
+than exact full messages, but its fixture duplication obscures which layer
+failed and raises change cost; `TST-014` owns a split into strict-load cases,
+constructed validator tables, and a small assembly sample. By contrast, the
+large artifact requirement table and protocol helper-process tests express
+meaningful contract cases and should remain table-driven. Existing helpers are
+mostly domain-specific setup; no generic fixture framework is justified.
+
+The broad stage metadata checklist and six-adapter assembled failure matrix
+repeat focused per-stage protocol/behavior suites and generic runner result
+mapping. `TST-015` names the stronger protection that must remain before those
+rows are deleted: focused owners plus one representative assembled success and
+one representative terminal failure. No oversized snapshots or golden files
+were found. Exact full `err.Error()` equality is rare; semantic fragments,
+`errors.Is`, typed errors, and externally visible protocol arguments dominate,
+so no repository-wide error-assertion rewrite is warranted.
+
+### Determinism, coverage, fuzzing, and automation
+
+`go test -count=1 -cover ./...` passed all packages in 3.49 seconds. Package
+coverage ranged from 69.8% in `internal/manifest` to 100% in
+`internal/logging`, with `cmd/narratio` at 0% because it has no test files.
+These percentages are not a quality score: manifest's lowest result aligns
+with the uninjectable save-failure branch in `TST-002`, while logging's 100%
+does not justify more tests and the placeholder notification path remains an
+architectural decision in `ARC-004`, not a coverage target.
+
+The default suite uses no live services, paid APIs, ambient credentials, or
+fixed external ports. It uses temporary paths, loopback servers, and helper
+subprocesses, and no test calls `t.Parallel`; normal runtime does not justify
+parallelizing process-global fixtures. A few bounded sleeps exercise actual
+time/process behavior, but the observed order defect is instead deterministic:
+`go test -shuffle=on -count=3 ./...` failed in 4.71 seconds with seed
+`1786373771816345415` because
+`TestLoadSecretsFromConfigLoadsValidFiles` leaves two secret environment
+variables set. The isolated command
+`go test -shuffle=1786373771816345415 -count=3 -run '^TestLoadSecretsFromConfigLoadsValidFiles$' ./internal/app`
+reproduced failures on repetitions two and three. `TST-011` owns restoration of
+the prior environment state.
+
+`go test -race -shuffle=on -count=1 ./...` failed in 54.21 seconds with seed
+`1786373816980315094`; the only reported race was the known WhisperX fake in
+`TST-001`, now reached by `TestTranscribeStageConcurrencyBounded`. Every other
+package passed. Barrier-controlled cancellation/concurrency tests should
+replace additional timing dependence where `TST-008` touches that path, but no
+general flakiness conclusion follows from the bounded evidence.
+
+There are no fuzz tests. The highest-value additions are seeded property tests
+for confined path normalization/join and artifact source identifiers, with
+properties such as no panic, no root escape, stable normalization, and valid
+remote/local round trips (`TST-013`). Existing YAML/JSON tables already protect
+Narratio's own strict schemas; indiscriminate fuzzing of standard-library
+decoders or every manifest/config wrapper would add less marginal value.
+
+`.woodpecker/release.yml` runs only for tags and cross-builds release binaries
+with Go 1.25 before publishing them. No automation runs the repository's local
+test, vet, or build requirements on ordinary changes. `TST-012` recommends a
+normal validation workflow and requires a release to consume or repeat the
+validated revision. The 54-second race suite belongs in automation after
+`TST-001` is fixed, at a frequency chosen against its cost; repeated shuffled
+runs are suitable for scheduled/audit diagnostics rather than necessarily
+every change.
+
 ## Path, Artifact, Filesystem, And Lock Conclusions
 
 ### Canonical ownership and normalization
@@ -2890,11 +3004,12 @@ credible workload large enough to justify a performance finding.
 
 ## Candidate Register
 
-The `TST` entries remain candidates for Stage 12. Structural entries retain
+The `TST` entries now carry their Stage 12 classifications. Structural entries
-their original locations for traceability, but their Stage 11 classifications
+retain their original locations for traceability, but their Stage 11
-are final for this investigative pass: confirmed recommendations remain for
+classifications are also final for this investigative pass: confirmed
-Stage 13 prioritization, merged entries defer to the named stronger root, and
+recommendations remain for Stage 13 prioritization, merged entries defer to the
-rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
+named stronger root, and rejected entries require new evidence before
+reopening.
 
 ### `ARC-001`: `IODecl` is not a complete or consistently classified stage contract
 
@@ -3082,6 +3197,9 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   valid.
 - Confirmation owner: Stage 12 should classify suite impact and the smallest
   durable fake fix. Do not change the fake during this investigative stage.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. Protect request capture with the fake's
+  own synchronization and expose a safe snapshot accessor. This restores the
+  full race suite without changing legitimate production concurrency.
 
 ### `TST-002`: runner tests cannot exercise invocation-manifest save failures
 
@@ -3097,6 +3215,10 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
 - Confirmation owner: Stage 12 should decide the smallest persistence seam and
   representative boundary cases; avoid exhaustive choreography tests for every
   mechanically identical save call.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. Inject the run-store/terminal-operation
+  boundary and retain one session-first terminal save failure plus one
+  resume-validation terminalization case. Repeating every `SaveRun` call order
+  would test private choreography rather than a distinct defect.
 
 ### `DUP-001`: session save duplicates the shared atomic JSON writer
 
@@ -3302,6 +3424,12 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
 - Confirmation owner: Stage 12 should select one narrow behavior-level case per
   distinct invariant and reuse shared low-level tests across callers. Avoid
   duplicating every path spelling or persistence call sequence.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed and narrowed. Put unsafe identity and
+  symlink-ancestor cases at their low-level policy owners, retain one
+  destructive and one writer composition case, add a durability interaction
+  case at the injectable filesystem capability, and add stale/release failure
+  plus one concurrent assembled runner case. Do not repeat the same ancestry
+  table at every caller.
 
 ### `TST-004`: publish protocol tests do not preserve prior current state or exercise recovery
 
@@ -3322,6 +3450,11 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   with barriers/version semantics and one behavior-level case per distinct
   invariant. Prefer extending current order/cleanup fixtures over duplicating
   all source-family tables, which already have good focused coverage.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. One versioned object-store fake should
+  prove prior-pair readability across the manifest-before-pointer window and
+  failure, accepted-with-error ambiguity, retry, cleanup evidence durability,
+  and concurrent mutation. Existing source-family tables remain the stronger
+  protection for selection and payload composition.
 
 ### `TST-005`: restore tests omit committed-snapshot and partial-transition invariants
 
@@ -3345,6 +3478,10 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   consolidate caller rendering matrices. Avoid a mock for every mechanically
   identical download boundary; retain the existing manifest-invalid case as the
   representative pre-rename validation failure.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. Reuse the stateful store and barriers
+  from `TST-004` for one package-level case per committed-scope, generation,
+  conflict/partial-transition, identity, and recovery root. Keep the existing
+  manifest-invalid case; do not mock every download.
 
 ### `TST-006`: injected runner environments can split configuration authority
 
@@ -3362,6 +3499,10 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
 - Confirmation owner: Stage 12 should inventory intentional divergent fixtures
   and either reject differing configs, always rebind to the resolved config, or
   replace the dual input with a constructor that makes ownership singular.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. No intentional divergent fixture was
+  found. One app composition test should prove that injected collaborators
+  cannot introduce a second configuration authority; production should always
+  bind the environment to the resolved configuration.
 
 ### `TST-007`: adapter tests omit adversarial liveness and output-trust boundaries
 
@@ -3385,6 +3526,11 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   retain protocol-specific argument/schema assertions. It should classify
   automatic fake materialization by the stage risks it protects rather than
   mechanically rewriting every fake.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. Add one focused case per process-tree,
+  inherited/raw secret, URL scheme, streaming cancellation, bounded regular
+  output, response closure, and pagination-progress root. Retain exact protocol
+  argument/schema assertions; they are observable contracts, not brittle mock
+  choreography.
 
 ### `TST-008`: ordinary-stage tests omit transition, cancellation, and output-authority boundaries
 
@@ -3406,6 +3552,10 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   transcribe cancellation, and one cross-adapter output-authority contract.
   Reuse shared safe-output acquisition tests from `TST-007`; do not duplicate
   every schema error or stage fixture already covered.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. Add exactly those transition,
+  duplicate-input, barrier-cancellation, requested-path, and representative
+  multi-output partial-materialization cases. Safe output shape/size stays at
+  the shared owner from `TST-007`; existing schema tables remain sufficient.
 
 ### `TST-009`: extraction tests omit direct-input identity and assembled late-failure boundaries
 
@@ -3431,6 +3581,12 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   downstream invalidation and catalog fixtures rather than creating a broad new
   end-to-end framework; coordinate manifest-persistence faults with `TST-002`
   and destination ancestry with `TST-003`/`COR-003`.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed with one rejection. Add the direct-input
+  lifecycle regression and one assembled unsafe-root case; keep lane size at
+  the shared bounded reader. Reject a dedicated post-install orphan-residue
+  assertion because an unadvertised orphan is not authority and exposing the
+  point would test private choreography. Persistence and ancestry remain owned
+  by `TST-002` and `TST-003`.
 
 ### `TST-010`: analyze tests omit effective-selection and optional built-in boundaries
 
@@ -3456,6 +3612,92 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   rejection for the passthrough fields after their contract is chosen. Reuse
   existing fixtures for publish/source success and do not retest every
   artifact-policy spelling.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed. Add the optional-built-in table, one
+  selected-disabled assembled workflow, deterministic simultaneous-error
+  ordering, semantic actionable guidance, and the chosen passthrough behavior.
+  Existing source-family and publish tables remain the stronger protection and
+  should not be repeated end to end.
+
+### `TST-011`: filesystem-secret test leaks process environment across repetitions
+
+- Category: test-suite determinism defect.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed by isolated reproduction.
+- Evidence: `TestLoadSecretsFromConfigLoadsValidFiles` invokes the production
+  loader, which sets `NARRATIO_TEST_SECRET_A` and
+  `NARRATIO_TEST_SECRET_B`, but the test does not restore their prior state.
+  `go test -shuffle=on -count=3 ./...` failed with seed
+  `1786373771816345415`; an isolated same-seed, three-count invocation failed
+  on its second and third repetitions because the variables were already
+  present and correctly reported as preserved rather than loaded.
+- Realistic defect and marginal value: leaked secrets make the package depend
+  on repetition/order and can conceal whether later cases loaded or preserved
+  values. Restore the exact prior environment state in cleanup, including
+  unset-versus-empty semantics. One cleanup repair protects the behavior; no
+  production change or broad environment fixture is warranted.
+
+### `TST-012`: automation does not enforce repository validation before release
+
+- Category: test-suite execution/automation risk.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed.
+- Evidence: `.woodpecker/release.yml` is tag-only and cross-builds/publishes
+  binaries. No repository automation runs `go test ./...`, `go vet ./...`, or a
+  normal build for pushes or proposed changes, and release publication is not
+  tied to a revision that passed those checks.
+- Realistic defect and marginal value: a change or tagged revision can ship
+  despite breaking tests, static analysis, or a supported build. Add ordinary
+  test/vet/build validation and make release consume or repeat the validated
+  revision. Add race execution after `TST-001` is repaired at a frequency
+  justified by its roughly 54-second cost; reserve repeated shuffle runs for a
+  scheduled/audit diagnostic unless CI capacity supports them.
+
+### `TST-013`: security-sensitive path and source parsers have no property fuzzing
+
+- Category: test-suite sufficiency opportunity.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed narrow addition.
+- Evidence: no fuzz target exists. Deterministic tables cover known separators,
+  traversal spellings, source families, and remote/local mappings, but the
+  `pathsafe` and `artifactpolicy` boundaries accept attacker- or
+  configuration-controlled strings whose combinations are larger than those
+  tables.
+- Realistic defect and marginal value: an unanticipated separator,
+  normalization sequence, or source token can escape a root, classify
+  inconsistently, or break a round trip. Seed the existing tables and assert no
+  panic, no root escape, normalization stability, and valid mapping round
+  trips. Do not blanket-fuzz standard YAML/JSON decoders or every typed manifest
+  wrapper; their Narratio-specific schema cases already have stronger tables.
+
+### `TST-014`: configuration tests conflate loader, defaults, and validator ownership
+
+- Category: test-suite redundancy and maintainability issue.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed consolidation.
+- Evidence: `config.TestLoadAndValidate` is roughly 949 lines with a large table
+  of repeated complete YAML documents followed by broad normalized/default
+  assertions and validator checks. It already uses semantic error substrings,
+  so exact prose is not the defect; fixture breadth and mixed ownership are.
+- Realistic defect and marginal value: changing an unrelated required/default
+  field forces many validation fixtures to change and a failure does not
+  identify whether strict decoding, defaulting, or domain validation owns the
+  contract. Retain small strict-load cases, construct typed configurations for
+  validator tables, and keep one representative load/default/validate assembly
+  case. Those focused owners are the stronger remaining protection; do not
+  introduce a generic fixture framework.
+
+### `TST-015`: assembled stage matrices duplicate focused behavior owners
+
+- Category: test-suite redundancy and brittleness issue.
+- Stage 12 classification: confirmed consolidation.
+- Evidence: `TestStagesReturnExpectedMetadata` is a broad per-stage metadata
+  checklist that overlaps focused stage suites and incidental metadata, while
+  `TestAdapterBackedStageFailureMarksManifestFailed` repeats six adapters to
+  prove the runner's generic terminal-failure mapping. Similar broad success
+  assertions exist in `TestExecuteStagesPlaceholderSuccessUpdatesManifest`.
+- Realistic defect and marginal value: a harmless metadata/default change
+  causes several layers to fail while real stage defects remain better
+  diagnosed by focused owners. Retain focused stage/adapter protocol and
+  behavior tests, one representative assembled success proving composition and
+  durable manifests, and one representative adapter failure proving generic
+  runner terminalization. Delete the per-stage checklist and repeated generic
+  failure rows only after those stronger protections are explicit.
 
 ### `SIM-001`: runner terminalization and persistence ordering lack a narrow owner
 
@@ -3800,8 +4042,9 @@ rejected entries require new evidence before reopening.
   digest that covers profiles, prompts, modules, references, executable build,
   and other transitive inputs, or is documented operator-forced invalidation
   the intended long-term contract?
-- Which native CI runner limitations explain the absence of validation jobs in
+- Which automation service and cadence should carry the validation required by
-  the tag-only release workflow? Stage 12 owns the automation conclusion.
+  `TST-012`, particularly the roughly 54-second race run, and should tagged
+  release builds consume an already validated revision or repeat validation?
 
 No accepted risks or final audit conclusions are recorded yet.
 
@@ -4275,3 +4518,62 @@ No accepted risks or final audit conclusions are recorded yet.
   test-policy audit. Stage 13 owns prioritization, dependency ordering, and
   accepted-risk decisions; it should treat the merged/rejected structural
   dispositions above as resolved rather than reopening them from metric shape.
+
+### Stage 12
+
+- Entry revision: `f387222` (`Document maintainability audit conclusions`).
+  Commits since the pinned audit revision modify audit documentation only, so
+  implementation/test evidence remains pinned to the identity recorded above.
+- Policy and scope reviewed: development guide, exact Stage 12 sequence, every
+  repository policy document, the complete risk-to-test ledger and prior
+  behavior-pass observations, all ten accumulated `TST` candidates, and the
+  repository's test/example/automation inventory.
+- Graph/source evidence: 904 test-file functions, 749 `Test` functions, 95 test
+  files, no fuzz tests, no benchmarks, no `t.Parallel` use, test-size and
+  complexity hotspots, process-global environment/directory mutation,
+  time-dependent cases, test doubles, helper subprocesses, loopback HTTP, and
+  assembled workflow overlap. Exact source inspection followed the graph for
+  large/mixed-owner tests, secret loading, fakes, and release automation.
+- Coverage diagnostic: `go test -count=1 -cover ./...` passed all packages in
+  3.49 s. Tested-package coverage ranged from 69.8% to 100%; `cmd/narratio`
+  reported 0% because it has no tests. Percentages were used only to revisit
+  weak consequential branches and high-coverage duplication. Manifest's low
+  end aligns with `TST-002`; logging's 100% and the notification placeholder do
+  not justify percentage-driven additions.
+- Determinism validation: `go test -shuffle=on -count=3 ./...` failed in 4.71 s
+  with seed `1786373771816345415` because
+  `TestLoadSecretsFromConfigLoadsValidFiles` leaked two environment values. The
+  isolated same-seed, same-test, three-count command reproduced failure on
+  repetitions two and three, confirming `TST-011` rather than random flakiness.
+- Race validation: `go test -race -shuffle=on -count=1 ./...` failed in 54.21 s
+  with seed `1786373816980315094`. The only race was the already recorded
+  WhisperX fake request-slice mutation in `TST-001`, reached by the bounded
+  concurrent transcribe test; every other package passed and no second
+  production race was observed.
+- Final documentation-only verification: `go test -count=1 ./...` passed all
+  packages in 3.50 s and `go vet ./...` passed in 0.78 s. `git diff --check`
+  reported no whitespace errors.
+- Suite conclusions: normal execution is fast, offline, credential-free, and
+  based on temp files, loopback services, or the current test binary. Current
+  focused tests strongly protect ordinary parsing, protocol, lifecycle, and
+  source-family behavior. Confirmed additions target durable disagreement,
+  destructive recovery, adversarial output/resource boundaries, cancellation,
+  effective selection, and direct input identity. Stateful object-store
+  behavior is preferable to additional call-recording mocks; protocol argument
+  assertions remain contractual.
+- Candidate disposition: confirmed `TST-001` through `TST-008` and `TST-010`;
+  confirmed `TST-009` after rejecting its low-value orphan-residue subcase; and
+  added confirmed `TST-011` through `TST-015` for environment isolation,
+  automation, focused fuzzing, configuration-test ownership, and assembled-test
+  consolidation. Every proposed addition names its realistic defect and owner;
+  every consolidation names the focused/representative protection that remains.
+- Explicit no-finding conclusions: no live network, paid-service, ambient
+  credential, fixed-port, oversized snapshot, golden-file, pervasive exact-
+  error, generic fixture-framework, blanket fake-synchronization, or general
+  parallel-test opportunity was established. Existing YAML/JSON tables do not
+  justify indiscriminate parser fuzzing, and bounded evidence did not establish
+  flakiness beyond the reproducible environment leak and known fake race.
+- Later-stage assignment: Stage 13 owns only deduplication, ranking,
+  remediation ordering, accepted-risk decisions, and final audit closeout. It
+  should not reopen the risk-based test ownership and marginal-value decisions
+  recorded here without new evidence.