Plumb line remediate

Remediate plumb-line audit findings

REQUIRED READING FIRST: reference/portable-principles.md (plugin root). If this file cannot be read, stop immediately and report: "Cannot remediate: reference/portable-principles.md is missing or unreadable. Do not proceed from memory — the principles file is the source of truth for what a fix must honor."

The audit finds; this skill fixes. The two never blur: remediation runs only on an explicit invitation, consumes a report the audit produced (any report-format: v1+; v3 is current), and applies nothing the builder has not seen. If there is no report, offer to run plumb-line-audit first, or accept findings pasted in the findings-table shape (Path / Line / Function / Issue / Suggested Fix / Principle).

The contract (what a remediation run IS)

A remediation run produces, in order:

1. a fix plan — every finding classified before any edit,
2. per-finding diffs — each shown before it is considered done,
3. a remediation record — the finding→change table that gives the remediation itself the lineage it demands of the code (P8),
4. a verification step — the project's own enforcement, run, with output.

Editing a file the builder never sees a diff for, or finishing without the record, is a failed run — regardless of whether the fixes were correct.

Step 1 — Classify every finding before touching anything

Read the whole findings table first and classify each row. Print the plan as a table (Finding / Path / Class / Intended action) before the first edit.

Mechanical — the principle determines the fix; no epistemic value must be invented. Typical: remove an upward import (P2 — One-way layering); replace a hardcoded constant with the already-existing injected config (P5 — Injectable priors); add a version constant + validator to an uncontracted output (P7 — Contracted outputs); record lineage fields that are computable from inputs in scope (P8 — State-first lineage); relabel maturity to what the code already is (P6 — Maturity vocabulary); wrap an untagged return in mark/derive where the source is unambiguous (P3 — Confidence + provenance).

Judgment — the fix requires a claim only the builder can stand behind: which confidence a value deserves, whether a stub should stay or become a real integration, which layer a relocated piece of code belongs to, what a changed baseline's explanation is (P9 — Golden baseline + explain-the-drift). For each judgment finding, propose a concrete default and ask; apply only on a yes. When the builder is not present to answer, apply the conservative default (below), mark it applied-conservative in the record, and say it needs their review.

The conservative default: claim nothing the code cannot support. Where an epistemic value must be supplied and nobody has answered, take the weakest honest claim — a fabricated or stubbed value gets the floor (confidence: 0 / lowest rung, source: mock, derivedFromMock: true); an unverifiable origin is labelled as what it is, not what it is hoped to be. Never pick a "reasonable middle" (0.5-ish) for a value that is actually fake: an invented moderate confidence is an invented fact. Two runs on the same input must produce the same claim — the floor is deterministic; optimism is not.

Step 2 — Apply one finding at a time, diff shown per finding

Work finding by finding, smallest first if order is free. For each: make the edit, then show the diff (before/after or unified) labelled with the finding it resolves, in the conversation, as you go — not a bulk dump at the end. The builder must be able to stop a bad direction after finding 1, not discover it after finding N.

Scope discipline. Touch only what the finding requires. Adjacent improvements you notice — a stale comment, a string that could be richer, a refactor begging to happen — go in the record's Proposed (not applied) section, never into the working tree. One exception, because honesty beats minimality: if your edit makes an existing statement in the same file false (a comment or docstring naming a constant you just deleted, a doc line describing behavior you just changed), correct that statement as part of the finding's diff — a remediation must not manufacture a lie by omission. Note the correction in the record.

If a fix for one finding would conflict with the fix for another, stop and surface the conflict rather than picking silently.

Step 3 — The honesty guardrail (what a fix may never do)

A remediation may never resolve a finding — or satisfy a gate, a test, a deadline, or a re-audit — by making the code less honest. Concretely, never:

• clear or hand-set a taint flag (derivedFromMock and kin) on data that is still mock-derived;
• raise a confidence, or swap a source label for a cleaner one, so a check passes;
• delete or bypass a null-result / rejection branch so an output always succeeds;
• drop a provenance, confidence, or lineage field because its honest value is embarrassing;
• update a golden baseline without a recorded explanation of which input moved (P9 — the explanation IS the fix; a silent update is the violation).

When the only change that would satisfy a finding, gate, or instruction is one of these, the finding is blocked, not fixable: record it as blocked with the honest paths out (implement the real thing, or obtain an explicit written waiver that scopes the check), and leave the code truthful. A gate failing on honest metadata is the gate working; the remediation's job was done when the metadata became honest. This mirrors bootstrap's rule: if you cannot name a source-truth layer, that absence is the finding — here, if you cannot fix it honestly, that impossibility is the finding.

Step 4 — Verify with the project's own enforcement

After the last fix, run what the project already trusts, and show the output:

• plumb-line adapters if installed (boundary check, no-provenance-bypass lint, pre-commit gate);
• otherwise the project's own linters/tests that cover the touched files;
• at minimum, an import/load smoke check of every file changed.

Then offer — never auto-run — a re-audit scoped to the touched files, so find-and-fix stay separate acts with separate records. On a yes, invoke plumb-line-audit directly (via the host's skill mechanism) rather than telling the builder to run it — the baton passes by invocation, not instruction.

Step 5 — The remediation record

End every run with the record, then offer — never auto-write — to save it as plumb-line-remediation.md (same always-offer contract as the audit's report file). The record has a header and a table:

remediation-format: v1
source-report:       <path or "pasted findings">
source-report-format: <its report-format version>
principles-revision: <from reference/portable-principles.md>
date:                <YYYY-MM-DD>
commit:              <git SHA before remediation, or "working tree (uncommitted)">

Finding	Path	Class	Action	Change summary

• Action is one of: applied-mechanical, applied-judgment (builder said yes), applied-conservative (default taken, needs review), proposed (suggested, not applied), blocked (honest fix impossible — reason given), skipped (builder said no).
• Below the table: the Proposed (not applied) list, and one line per blocked/applied-conservative row saying what the builder must decide.
• Principle references render inline-named (P3 — Confidence + provenance), never bare codes, exactly as in the audit report.

A run where every finding lands as applied-mechanical still emits the full record — the record is the lineage of the remediation, not a summary of its difficulties.

Quick reference

Situation	Action
No audit report exists	Offer plumb-line-audit first, or accept pasted findings
Fix needs an epistemic value nobody supplied	Conservative floor, applied-conservative, flag for review
Only a dishonest edit would satisfy the finding/gate	blocked + honest paths out; leave code truthful
Noticed an improvement no finding asked for	Record under Proposed (not applied)
Your edit made a nearby comment/doc false	Correct it within the finding's diff; note in record
Two findings' fixes conflict	Stop; surface the conflict
All fixes applied	Run project enforcement, show output, offer re-audit