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The code cited its plan instead of saying why: `E28 review J4`, `(R6 S3b)`, `S1 justified…`,
`deep-review round 5`. That plan lives in the private ops repo, so for every reader of this one the
citation was noise, and a sentence whose subject was the plan step ("round 2 showed…") hid its
lesson behind an id. Each one is gone and the "why" kept: a bare citation is deleted, a sentence
carrying a lesson is reworded around it ("a later attempt showed…").
Measured (`scripts/audit_metrics.py`, product code): 652 lines in 270 files carried an epic code by
the definition the next commit holds (507 / 241 by the old, two-digit-only one) -> 0. Across all
code, tests, scripts and configs: ~1100 epic-code lines plus ~320 sprint/round ids.
Behaviour unchanged, checked mechanically: every changed .py file has the same AST once docstrings
are blanked; css/sh/toml/yml/json files are identical once comments are stripped; the only
non-comment changes in TS/JS are test titles, one description string in a contract table, and five
ESLint messages, whose text is all the gates snapshot diff holds. Not touched: Markdown (docs and
the changelog keep their history), Alembic migrations, TV episode notation (`S2 · E5`), DESIGN.md
ids (`C1`, `B4`, `S3h`), tracker ids (`SEC-16`, `DX-17`).
One stale claim fixed on the way: test_hls_reaper's docstring said the player checkpoints "every
10 s whether or not it is playing", which plex/stream.py calls wrong; it now says what the code does.
Backend conventions
The rules below are already followed across backend/app — they lived only in a few module
docstrings (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/,issues/— 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;issues/bundle.pyis the one definition of a bug report's files, for the zip export and the tracker. -
Flat
app/*.pycore modules — cross-cutting primitives.auth,sysconfig,quota,audit,notifications,userscope,ratelimit,progress,logs(the one logging configuration),logsink(itslog_eventstable),diagnostics(a user's consented log level),debugsession(a recording that tags its user's lines, E16) andcollation(A→Z in the reader's alphabet, E30), … 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 + basedpyright (backend) · the lock check + tsc ×3 + eslint + prettier + knip +
vite build (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; a missing database is a hard failure, not a silent skip, unless a hand run asks
for pure-logic only with SIFTLODE_TEST_REQUIRE_DB=0. See docs/development.md, and docs/gates.md
for what each gate deliberately leaves out.