Files
siftlode/backend/app
peter dc221338be fix(logs): keep what a person typed out of the backend log lines
The E22 redactor is a safety net over addresses and credential params, and every
one of these call sites was leaning on it to do the whole job. What it does not
cover went in whole, and what it does cover came out as a constant.

Not covered, so a real leak:
- routes/search.py logged the raw search term at ERROR. The privacy policy shipped
  in 0.88.0 says a search string is kept only at Teljes/TRACE, with the user's own
  consent. The ERROR line now carries the shape of the failure (source, candidate
  and collected counts) and the term follows on a TRACE line, which nothing emits
  unless that consent is in force.
- downloads/backfill.py logged the full source URL at INFO — a row of the user's
  download history. Now the asset id and the host.
- youtube/client.py logged the upstream error body, which is prose that quotes the
  request back. Every failing YouTube call now goes through one _upstream_failure()
  that logs the API's `reason` code, keeps the body for the same consented TRACE
  line, and raises a YouTubeError carrying `reason` as a field — callers put that
  error in log lines of their own (routes/channels.py) and in a 422 answered to the
  user, so the body must not travel in it either.

Covered, so merely useless: routes/auth.py named the account by an address that
reached both sinks as `[email]`, and app/email.py printed recipient lists that read
as `['[email]']`. Both now carry the uid (or a count) and a reason code, which is
also the first half of E22.5 S4's failed-sign-in coverage.

routes/channels.py branched on the text of that error message to recognise an
already-existing subscription. It now branches on `exc.reason`, with the substring
check kept beside it for a body that carried no reason at all.

tests/test_log_pii.py pins the call sites and the family: a source-level contract
test walks every log call in app/ and fails on an argument naming user-typed
content unless the line says why it is safe (`# log-pii-ok: <why>`). Eight sites
carry that marker today, each with its reason. Gate 8/8 green; all five cases
mutation-checked.
2026-09-18 00:49:43 +02:00
..
2026-06-14 04:40:22 +02:00

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.py owns enqueue + the job state transitions (routes call it); plex/sync.py is run by both the admin route and the scheduler; downloads/pipeline.py is the worker's child pipeline.

  3. Flat app/*.py core modules — cross-cutting primitives. auth, sysconfig, quota, audit, notifications, userscope, realtime, ratelimit, progress, logs (the one logging configuration), logsink (its log_events table) and diagnostics (a user's consented log level), … are single-file primitives many layers import. They depend on nothing above them (a core module must never import a routes/… 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's jobdb writes, the same carve-out CLAUDE.md grants quota) commits that session. Everything else flushes.
  • SessionLocal is expire_on_commit=False: after a raw UPDATE + 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 — see service.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, or greatest(col - 1, 0) with RETURNING so the caller branches on the post-value under the row lock (service.incr_ref_count / decr_ref_count).
  • Download job status is a JobStatus StrEnum (downloads/status.py), not bare strings. The HOLDING set defines which states hold a MediaAsset (so release accounting stays correct); STOPPED_BY_ROUTE is the route-initiated stop set. A worker child's terminal write goes through service.finalize_if_running (an atomic UPDATE … 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 in SPECS; don't invent a fourth store. (state.py's maintenance_batch predates this and is slated to fold into sysconfig — 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.