peter
a0114deff1
Round 5 taught `notifyActionError` to discard a plain-string `detail` in favour
of the caller's translated fallback, because `req` leaves 403/404/429 to the
caller and those routes hand-write English. Three places did not get the
message.
**The demo account lost its explanation.** `require_human` refused with a plain
string, so from that commit on the shared demo account got its caller's generic
"couldn't do that" and no hint that the demo account was the reason — and the
gate is not backed by a UI gate everywhere: the comfort shelf has no `is_demo`
check, so the pin button is live and simply fails. A structured `{code: "demo"}`
and an `errors.demo` string in both locales. The two auth routes that hand-roll
the same check were swept with it.
**`ChatThread` carried a second copy of the contract.** It filtered 404/429
itself and then did `e.detail || t(…)`, the pre-fix order, so the central fix
could not reach it and "That member hasn't set up messaging yet." stayed English
under a Hungarian UI. It goes through the shared helper now, and a contract test
pins the remaining raw-`detail` consumers as an explicit SET — never a count —
so a new copy fails the gate instead of shipping. The five on that list are
inline surfaces (a form field's error line, a setup banner) and are deferred
with the ~60 backend routes whose details they print.
**The Plex "Add to playlist" dialog was still silent.** Same shape as the
collection editor round 5 fixed and the YouTube twin that already had the fix:
no catch, so a playlist deleted on another device answered a structured 404 that
nothing reported — the tick never flipped, the gone row stayed, and the floating
promise became an unhandled rejection.
Also: the `ABORTED` sentinel's VALUE was asserted nowhere. The consumer test
hand-built the error it expected, so replacing `xhr.onabort`'s rejection with a
friendlier message left the lane green — and every upload the user cancels would
then raise a red "the upload failed" toast, which is what the sentinel prevents.
Both producer tests assert through `isAborted` now.
And two backend tests were pinning fewer sites than their own docstrings claimed:
the channel-404 loop said "all five" and issued three requests (explore and
subscribe unexercised, the excuse for subscribe naming a different call site
with a different reason slug), and the recipient/job test named three refusals
and requested two — `share_download`'s `not_found("recipient")` had no test in
the suite at all, nor did the locale keys added beside it. Every site named now
has a request behind it.
6 tests, mutation-checked against 7 mutations: the demo detail at both the gate
and an auth route, a re-hand-rolled ChatThread, the silent Plex dialog, the
abort sentinel, and each unpinned 404 — all red on the test that names them.
Backend conventions
The rules below are already followed across backend/app — they lived only in a few module
docstrings (demo.py, userscope.py, routes/_common.py) until this file collected them (E3 S3,
B-core-20). When you add code, match these so the next reader doesn't have to guess "which pattern do
I copy".
Module layering
Three layers, by who runs the code — not by feature:
-
routes/…— request-only. A route module holds HTTP concerns: auth dependencies, request/ response models, status-code mapping, serialization. It owns logic that runs only on a request. Business logic that a request happens to trigger does not live here if anything else runs it too. -
plex/,downloads/,sync/— domain logic shared by more than one caller. Anything the scheduler or the worker runs (not just a request) lives in one of these domain packages, so the route, the worker, and the scheduler share one definition. Examples from this codebase:downloads/service.pyowns enqueue + the job state transitions (routes call it);plex/sync.pyis run by both the admin route and the scheduler;downloads/pipeline.pyis the worker's child pipeline. -
Flat
app/*.pycore modules — cross-cutting primitives.auth,sysconfig,quota,audit,notifications,userscope,realtime,ratelimit,progress, … are single-file primitives many layers import. They depend on nothing above them (a core module must never import aroutes/…module).
Extraction trigger: the SECOND consumer. Keep new logic inline in its first caller. The moment a second caller needs it (a worker as well as a route; a scheduler as well as a route), extract it down a layer — into the relevant domain package, or a flat core module if it's cross-cutting. Don't pre-abstract for a single caller; don't leave shared logic duplicated once there are two.
Transaction ownership
This follows CLAUDE.md's canonical rule verbatim — "the handler/job-wrapper commits; helpers flush
(only quota owns its session)" — so read it that way, not as an exception to it. The commit belongs
to the operation owner; anything called inside another transaction only stages its change
(db.add / flush) and lets the owner commit, so the whole operation is one transaction.
audit.record() is the reference: it adds the audit row and the caller commits it together with the
mutation it records, so an audit entry can never exist without its change (or vice-versa).
- The operation owner is usually the route handler. A
service.*operation the handler delegates a whole transition to (e.g.service.cancel) is that owner and commits its one transition — it isn't a mid-operation helper. A helper that owns its OWN short-lived session (the worker'sjobdbwrites, the same carve-out CLAUDE.md grantsquota) commits that session. Everything else flushes. SessionLocalisexpire_on_commit=False: after a rawUPDATE+ commit, an ORM object you already loaded is stale. Read the fresh value from the row (RETURNING, or a re-SELECT), not the ORM attribute — seeservice.decr_ref_count.
Shared counters and status: do it atomically at the DB
- Never read-modify-write a shared counter in Python (
x.count = x.count + 1). Concurrent sessions lose an update. Use a DB-atomic statement —col = col + 1, orgreatest(col - 1, 0)withRETURNINGso the caller branches on the post-value under the row lock (service.incr_ref_count/decr_ref_count). - Download job status is a
JobStatusStrEnum (downloads/status.py), not bare strings. TheHOLDINGset defines which states hold aMediaAsset(so release accounting stays correct);STOPPED_BY_ROUTEis the route-initiated stop set. A worker child's terminal write goes throughservice.finalize_if_running(an atomicUPDATE … WHERE status='running') so a finishing child can't resurrect a job a route just stopped.
Config: one home per kind
app.config.settings— boot/env config (DB URL, download root, worker concurrency): read once at startup, not user-tunable at runtime.sysconfig.SPECS— the runtime admin knobs (DB-override-or-default). A new admin-tunable value goes inSPECS; don't invent a fourth store. (state.py'smaintenance_batchpredates this and is slated to fold intosysconfig— do not add more like it.)
The gate
Everything below must be green before a change is done (run via siftlode check):
ruff (backend) · tsc ×3 + eslint + prettier + knip (frontend) · vitest · pytest. The
pytest lane runs in backend/docker-compose.test.yml — an ephemeral Postgres + the backend tree
bind-mounted — so the DB-backed integration tests (the db fixture) actually run; SIFTLODE_TEST_ REQUIRE_DB=1 there turns a would-be silent skip into a hard failure. See docs/development.md.