Problem
Six inspection subsystems each answer "does reality match intent?" with a different notion of reality and intent, and they contradict each other: drift (sha256-of-echo, local-only), diff (normalized KV over SSH), doctor (working-dir labels over SSH), validate (source+printenv), posture (grep .env), status-all (local docker + a metrics file nothing writes).
Concrete contradictions: drift says CLEAN while diff shows pending changes; validate fails a var posture passes; doctor's two adjacent deploy-dir probes disagree (grep-from-file vs process env).
Proposal
Extract one comparison engine — fetch remote artifact (file/label/env) → normalize → diff against local git-resolved intent — which lib/diff.sh already ~80% is (pure, tested, SSH-thin). Re-point drift at it (giving drift real remote awareness and fixing all of #182), and keep drift's unique value (history + alerting + cron) as a thin layer. Migrate doctor/validate/posture onto the same normalize+diff core over time.
Acceptance
drift and diff agree on the same repo/host state; #182 sub-bugs resolved by construction; a single normalize function is unit-tested.
Filed from the 2026-07-03 full-codebase audit (docs/AUDIT-2026-07.md). Line numbers are against v0.29.1.
Problem
Six inspection subsystems each answer "does reality match intent?" with a different notion of reality and intent, and they contradict each other:
drift(sha256-of-echo, local-only),diff(normalized KV over SSH),doctor(working-dir labels over SSH),validate(source+printenv),posture(grep.env),status-all(local docker + a metrics file nothing writes).Concrete contradictions: drift says CLEAN while diff shows pending changes; validate fails a var posture passes; doctor's two adjacent deploy-dir probes disagree (grep-from-file vs process env).
Proposal
Extract one comparison engine — fetch remote artifact (file/label/env) → normalize → diff against local git-resolved intent — which
lib/diff.shalready ~80% is (pure, tested, SSH-thin). Re-pointdriftat it (giving drift real remote awareness and fixing all of #182), and keep drift's unique value (history + alerting + cron) as a thin layer. Migrate doctor/validate/posture onto the same normalize+diff core over time.Acceptance
drift and diff agree on the same repo/host state; #182 sub-bugs resolved by construction; a single normalize function is unit-tested.
Filed from the 2026-07-03 full-codebase audit (docs/AUDIT-2026-07.md). Line numbers are against v0.29.1.