1.44.0: uninstall stops deleting the user's hooks, and check 20 stops trusting a prefix list

uninstall.sh decided hook ownership by directory prefix, so anybody who kept their own scripts
in ~/.claude/hooks -- the conventional place, which vstack installs into rather than owns -- lost
every settings.json entry pointing at them, while the scripts stayed on disk and the tool printed
"vstack hooks ... removed". install.sh already matched on the basenames this repo ships; the two
halves disagreed about what ownership means and only the install half was ever checked. Check 45
now runs a real install-then-uninstall under a throwaway HOME and asserts both directions.

Check 20 matched only three ~/ prefixes, so /push telling the model to run
~/.100xprompt/hooks/pre-push.sh went unseen for the whole life of the check written to catch
exactly that. It now reads every ~/-rooted path; foreign ones must be declared with a reason.
Turning it on surfaced five references across four commands, all repaired here.

Five of fifteen commands were reference documents in a foreign template with no instruction to
the assistant anywhere in the body, documenting six argument interfaces backed by scripts this
repo has never installed. All five rewritten against tools that exist.

Found by audit, not by reading: MEESEEKS M-7 over the 28 skills, NOOBNOOB N-2 over the 15
commands, JAGUAR J-1 driving a clean install and uninstall under throwaway HOMEs, MORTY M-8 on
the command rewrites.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Author: itsvedantkumar

.claude-plugin/marketplace.json

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
   "plugins": [
     {
       "name": "vstack",
-      "version": "1.43.0",
+      "version": "1.44.0",
       "source": "./claude",
       "description": "28 skills that fire without a slash command, 14 agents, 15 commands, and the session hook that routes situations to skills. Most skills are ported from pstack and Superpowers — see claude/skills/ATTRIBUTION.md for per-skill source and license.",
       "category": "workflow"

.claude/verify.sh

@@ -991,10 +991,19 @@ fi
 # machine only because a pre-vstack copy happened to survive there, so the command was broken for
 # every other human on earth and nothing noticed for months.
 #
-# This is the same defect class as the stale `orchestrate.md` — prose and installed tree
-# disagreeing — just pointing the other way. Check 12 counts things; nothing read the paths back.
+# This is the same defect class as the stale `orchestrate.md` -- prose and installed tree
+# disagreeing -- just pointing the other way. Check 12 counts things; nothing read the paths back.
 # A referenced path either maps to something in this repo that install.sh copies, or it is
-# runtime state; anything else is a promise the installer does not keep.
+# runtime state, or it is declared foreign below; anything else is a promise the installer
+# does not keep.
+#
+# The first version of this extractor matched only ~/.claude, ~/.config/agents and ~/.conductor.
+# That is an allow-list wearing a scanner's clothes: `/push` told the model to run
+# `~/.100xprompt/hooks/pre-push.sh`, a path belonging to an entirely different tool's template,
+# and the regex never saw it because it did not begin with one of the three blessed prefixes.
+# The check written to catch a command pointing at a script nobody installs could not catch a
+# command pointing at a script nobody installs, one namespace over. It now reads every ~/-rooted
+# path and a foreign one must be declared, with a reason, rather than pass by being unmatched.
 # Every ~ below is single-quoted on purpose. An unquoted tilde in a `case` pattern or a `${x#...}`
 # prefix is expanded to $HOME before the match, so the first draft of this check compared
 # "~/.claude/CLAUDE.md" against "/Users/<me>/.claude/CLAUDE.md", matched nothing, and reported
@@ -1016,6 +1025,19 @@ runtime_path(){ # paths that exist at runtime but are created by Claude Code or
   esac
   return 1
 }
+# Paths outside every namespace this repo installs into. Each entry states why it is here; a
+# bare addition with no reason is how the ~/.100xprompt reference would have been waved through
+# a second time. "It appears in the tree" is not a reason -- the reason has to be that the path
+# belongs to something the user supplies and the docs are right to name.
+# shellcheck disable=SC2088  # match patterns, not paths -- see runtime_path above
+external_path(){
+  case "$1" in
+    # The repo checkout itself. Docs name it because the installer is run from it; install.sh
+    # cannot create the directory it is being run out of.
+    '~/Projects/vstack'|'~/Projects/vstack/'*) return 0 ;;
+  esac
+  return 1
+}
 # shellcheck disable=SC2088  # match patterns, not paths -- see runtime_path above
 src_for(){ # installed path -> the repo file install.sh copies there, or empty if unmapped
   case "$1" in
@@ -1034,14 +1056,15 @@ errs=""
 while IFS= read -r ref; do
   [ -n "$ref" ] || continue
   runtime_path "$ref" && continue
+  external_path "$ref" && continue
   src=$(src_for "$ref")
   if [ -z "$src" ]; then
-    errs="$errs\n$ref: no install.sh rule puts anything there"
+    errs="$errs\n$ref: no install.sh rule puts anything there, and it is not declared foreign"
   elif [ ! -e "$src" ]; then
     errs="$errs\n$ref: install.sh would copy $src, which does not exist in this repo"
   fi
 done <<EOF
-$(grep -rhoE '~/\.(claude|config/agents|conductor)[A-Za-z0-9._/-]*' \
+$(grep -rhoE '~/[A-Za-z0-9._/-]+' \
     README.md claude/commands claude/agents claude/skills 2>/dev/null \
   | sed 's#[.,:;)`"]*$##; s#/$##' | sort -u)
 EOF
@@ -2609,6 +2632,57 @@ else
   skip "dispatch counter join, both directions" "jq not installed"
 fi
 
+# --- 45. uninstall drops vstack's own settings entries and keeps the user's --------------------
+# uninstall.sh decided hook ownership by directory prefix: any entry whose command started with
+# ~/.claude/hooks was treated as vstack's. That directory is the conventional place for a user's
+# own hooks, and vstack installs into it rather than owning it, so a stranger who kept personal
+# scripts there had every hook entry pointing at them deleted -- while the scripts themselves
+# stayed on disk, and the tool printed "vstack hooks, overrides and unedited policy keys
+# removed". A destructive step reporting a narrower scope than the one it performed.
+#
+# install.sh had the right signal the whole time: the basenames this repo ships, matched with
+# endswith("/hooks/" + name). Two halves of one repo disagreed about what ownership means and
+# only the install half was ever checked. Both directions here, because a fix that removes
+# nothing passes the user's half trivially.
+if command -v jq >/dev/null; then
+  c45_home=$(mktemp -d)
+  c45_errs=""
+  c45_hook="$c45_home/.claude/hooks/not-vstacks.sh"
+  c45_sl="$c45_home/.claude/not-vstacks-statusline.sh"
+  mkdir -p "$c45_home/.claude/hooks"
+  printf '#!/bin/bash\nexit 0\n' > "$c45_hook"; chmod +x "$c45_hook"
+  printf '#!/bin/bash\nexit 0\n' > "$c45_sl";   chmod +x "$c45_sl"
+  jq -n --arg h "$c45_hook" --arg s "$c45_sl" \
+    '{theme:"dark",statusLine:{type:"command",command:$s},
+      hooks:{Notification:[{hooks:[{type:"command",command:$h}]}]}}' \
+    > "$c45_home/.claude/settings.json"
+  if HOME="$c45_home" ./install.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 \
+     && HOME="$c45_home" ./uninstall.sh --yes >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+    jq -e --arg h "$c45_hook" '[.hooks.Notification[]?.hooks[]?.command] | index($h) != null' \
+      "$c45_home/.claude/settings.json" >/dev/null 2>&1 \
+      || c45_errs="$c45_errs\nthe user's own Notification hook is gone: uninstall removed an entry it does not own"
+    jq -e --arg s "$c45_sl" '(.statusLine.command? // "") == $s' \
+      "$c45_home/.claude/settings.json" >/dev/null 2>&1 \
+      || c45_errs="$c45_errs\nthe user's own statusLine is gone: uninstall removed a key it does not own"
+    for c45_f in claude/hooks/*.sh; do
+      [ -e "$c45_f" ] || continue
+      c45_b=$(basename "$c45_f")
+      if jq -e --arg b "$c45_b" '[.. | .command? // empty] | any(endswith("/hooks/" + $b))' \
+           "$c45_home/.claude/settings.json" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+        c45_errs="$c45_errs\n$c45_b is still wired after uninstall -- vstack left its own hook behind"
+      fi
+    done
+  else
+    c45_errs="$c45_errs\ninstall.sh or uninstall.sh failed under a throwaway HOME"
+  fi
+  rm -rf "$c45_home"
+  [ -z "$c45_errs" ] \
+    && ok "uninstall keeps foreign settings, drops its own" \
+    || bad "uninstall keeps foreign settings, drops its own" "$(printf '%b' "$c45_errs")"
+else
+  skip "uninstall keeps foreign settings, drops its own" "jq not installed"
+fi
+
 echo
 # Accounting. Every declared check must have reported either a result or a skip. A check
 # that throws a shell error mid-body, or is wrapped in a conditional with no else, silently

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -4,6 +4,63 @@ Versions follow [semver](https://semver.org). The version lives in two manifests
 `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json` and `claude/.claude-plugin/plugin.json`, and check 13 of
 `.claude/verify.sh` fails when they disagree.
 
+## 1.44.0 — 2026-08-24
+
+**`uninstall.sh` deleted the user's own hook entries and reported that it had removed vstack's.**
+Ownership was decided by directory prefix: any entry in `settings.json` whose command started with
+`~/.claude/hooks` was treated as vstack's. That directory is the conventional place for a person's
+own hook scripts, and vstack installs into it rather than owning it. So a stranger who kept
+personal hooks there ran `uninstall.sh --yes` and lost every entry pointing at them, while the
+scripts themselves stayed on disk and the tool printed `cleaned ... (vstack hooks, overrides and
+unedited policy keys removed)`. A destructive step reporting a narrower scope than the one it
+performed, which is worse than the deletion: the operator has no reason to go looking.
+
+The correct signal was already in this repo. `install.sh` derives the basenames vstack ships and
+matches `endswith("/hooks/" + name)`; the merge half had it right and the removal half never
+asked. `.statusLine` had the same defect for the same reason. Both now match on shipped filenames.
+Recoverable in the old behaviour only via `$BK/pre-uninstall/`, which the tool never mentioned.
+
+Found by exercising a real install-then-uninstall under a throwaway `HOME` with a foreign hook
+seeded first, not by reading the jq. Reading it is how it passed review the first time.
+
+**Check 45, `uninstall keeps foreign settings, drops its own`.** Both directions against the real
+scripts under a temp `HOME`: the user's `Notification` entry and their `statusLine` must survive,
+and every hook this repo ships must be gone. A fix that removes nothing passes the user's half
+trivially, which is why the second direction is not optional. Row 45 reverts the one line to the
+prefix test and the check goes red naming itself.
+
+**Check 20's extractor was an allow-list wearing a scanner's clothes.** It matched only
+`~/.claude`, `~/.config/agents` and `~/.conductor`. `/push` told the model to run
+`~/.100xprompt/hooks/pre-push.sh`, another tool's template path, in a command this repo installs.
+The check written to catch exactly that could not see it, because the string did not begin with
+one of three blessed prefixes. The check that exists because `/bootstrap` pointed at a script
+nobody installs was blind to `/push` pointing at a script nobody installs, one namespace over.
+
+It now reads every `~/`-rooted path. A path outside the installed namespaces has to be declared in
+`external_path()` with a reason; today that list has one entry, the repo checkout itself. Turning
+it on surfaced five references across four commands. Row 20 only ever mutated inside a blessed
+prefix, so it proved the half that already worked; **row 20b** adds the foreign-namespace lane.
+
+**Five of fifteen commands were reference documents wearing a command's frontmatter.**
+`push.md`, `observability.md`, `deploy.md`, `release.md` and `security.md` shipped in the initial
+commit from a foreign template (`## Usage` and `## Implementation` sections, tool tables, code
+samples) with no imperative instruction to the assistant anywhere in the body, and were never
+touched again. Between them they documented six argument interfaces (`/deploy vercel`,
+`/release patch`, `/security network`, `/security full` and others) whose `case` statements lived
+inside fenced blocks describing hypothetical standalone scripts at `~/.local/bin/deploy` and
+`~/.local/bin/release` that this repo has never installed, plus `~/nuclei-templates`. All five are
+now numbered instructions against tools that exist: `push` runs the real gate and names the
+`vstack trust` step, `deploy` defers to `bin/deploy-auto.sh`, `release` defers to the
+`release-manager` subagent it duplicated, `security` marks its external scanners as user-supplied.
+`observability.md` also had a PostHog JS snippet fenced as `bash`, so it failed `bash -n`.
+
+**`doctor --drift` filed vstack's own logs under "presumed yours".**
+`vstack-delegation-log.jsonl` and `vstack-replay-log.jsonl` are written by shipped hooks and were
+absent from `RUNTIME_TOP`, so on any machine that had actually used vstack, doctor told the
+operator its own output might be a stranger's leftover. The names are now derived from the shipped
+hooks rather than listed by hand. The replay log arrived in 1.43.0 and a hand-kept list would
+have gone stale the same afternoon. Cosmetic: `DRIFT` was never set by it.
+
 ## 1.43.0 — 2026-08-24
 
 **`vstack-delegation-log.jsonl` recorded only per-Stop aggregate counts, never which subagent ran

README.md

@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ Two directory pairs differ only by a leading dot, and the difference is the whol
 | path | what it is |
 |---|---|
 | `claude/` | the **shipped payload** — skills, subagents, commands, hooks, installed to `~/.claude/` |
-| `.claude/verify.sh` | **this repository's own gate**, 44 checks; not shipped to anyone |
+| `.claude/verify.sh` | **this repository's own gate**, 45 checks; not shipped to anyone |
 | `conductor/` | payload copied to `~/.conductor/` |
 | `.conductor/` | this repository's own workspace config |
 | `tests/` | the suites: the falsifiability harness, the install matrix, trigger and baseline tests |
@@ -61,8 +61,8 @@ cd ~/Projects/vstack && ./install.sh
 Pin a release rather than tracking `main`:
 
 ```bash
-curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/itsvedantkumar/vstack/v1.43.0/bootstrap.sh -o bootstrap.sh
-VSTACK_REF=v1.43.0 bash bootstrap.sh     # installs that tag, not main
+curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/itsvedantkumar/vstack/v1.44.0/bootstrap.sh -o bootstrap.sh
+VSTACK_REF=v1.44.0 bash bootstrap.sh     # installs that tag, not main
 ```
 
 The curl one-liner above always runs `./setup-machine.sh` first, which installs the tools this
@@ -151,14 +151,14 @@ reaches for `unslop`, reviewing TypeScript reaches for `typescript-best-practice
 
 ## Checks that can fail
 
-The gate is 44 checks. `tests/gate-falsifiability.sh` breaks the repository once per check, at
+The gate is 45 checks. `tests/gate-falsifiability.sh` breaks the repository once per check, at
 least once and more where a check can fail in more than one way, requires the gate to go red
 naming that check, restores the tree byte for byte, and fails if anything was left behind.
 **Check 16 fails if any check has no mutation row**, so a check cannot be added without proof it
 can fail.
 
 ```bash
-./.claude/verify.sh                  # 44 checks
+./.claude/verify.sh                  # 45 checks
 VSTACK_FALSIFY_ROWS=27 ./tests/gate-falsifiability.sh          # one row
 git clone . /tmp/vstack-check && cd /tmp/vstack-check && ./tests/gate-falsifiability.sh
 ```

bin/doctor

@@ -184,6 +184,16 @@ if [ "${1:-}" = "--drift" ]; then
   # Symlinks are skipped on purpose: plugin- and Claude-Code-bundled skills (skill-creator,
   # pdf, docx, pptx, xlsx) link in from elsewhere and are expected.
   RUNTIME_TOP='projects sessions session-env shell-snapshots tasks todos plans telemetry plugins cache chrome daemon downloads paste-cache jobs ide statsig backups scheduled-tasks history.jsonl stats-cache.json mcp-needs-auth-cache.json settings.json settings.local.json .credentials.json .last-update-result.json .last-cleanup .cc-writes CLAUDE.md statusline.sh hooks agents commands skills'
+  # Everything above is Claude Code's own. vstack's hooks write log files into the same
+  # directory, and those were landing in the "presumed yours" bucket -- doctor telling the
+  # operator that vstack's own output might be a stranger's leftover. Derived from the shipped
+  # hooks rather than listed by hand, because the replay log was added in 1.43.0 and a hand-kept
+  # list would have gone stale that same afternoon. If a hook writes it, doctor knows it.
+  for _rt in "$REPO"/claude/hooks/*.sh; do
+    [ -e "$_rt" ] || continue
+    _rtn=$(grep -ohE 'vstack-[a-z-]+\.jsonl' "$_rt" 2>/dev/null | sort -u | tr '\n' ' ')
+    [ -n "$_rtn" ] && RUNTIME_TOP="$RUNTIME_TOP $_rtn"
+  done
   stale=""
   for p in "$CDIR"/* "$CDIR"/.[!.]*; do
     [ -e "$p" ] || continue

claude/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "vstack",
-  "version": "1.43.0",
+  "version": "1.44.0",
   "description": "Skills that fire on the situation instead of a slash command, plus the subagents, commands, and session hook that make them fire. Verification gates, parallel fan-out, code review, and writing discipline.",
   "author": {
     "name": "Vedant Kumar"

claude/commands/deploy.md

@@ -1,97 +1,36 @@
 ---
 name: deploy
-description: One-command deploy to Vercel/Cloudflare/Railway with automatic checks.
+description: Deploy to production (Vercel, Cloudflare, Railway, Fly) with verification.
 ---
 
-# Deploy Command
-
-## Pre-deploy Checks
-
-1. Typecheck
-2. Lint
-3. Tests
-4. Build
-
-## Commands
-
-```bash
-# Vercel (auto-detects)
-/deploy vercel
-
-# Cloudflare Workers
-/deploy cf
-
-# Railway
-/deploy railway
-
-# Fly.io
-/deploy fly
-```
-
-## Implementation
-
-```bash
-#!/bin/bash
-# ~/.local/bin/deploy
-set -e
-
-PLATFORM=$1
-shift
-
-echo "Running pre-deploy checks..."
-
-# Typecheck
-npm run typecheck 2>&1 | tail -5 || { echo "Typecheck failed"; exit 1; }
-
-# Lint
-npm run lint 2>&1 | tail -5 || { echo "Lint failed"; exit 1; }
-
-# Tests
-npm test -- --passWithNoTests 2>&1 | tail -5 || { echo "Tests failed"; exit 1; }
-
-# Build
-npm run build 2>&1 | tail -10 || { echo "Build failed"; exit 1; }
-
-echo "Checks passed. Deploying to $PLATFORM..."
-
-case $PLATFORM in
-  vercel)
-    vercel --prod "$@"
-    ;;
-  cf|cloudflare)
-    npx wrangler deploy "$@"
-    ;;
-  railway)
-    railway up "$@"
-    ;;
-  fly)
-    fly deploy "$@"
-    ;;
-  *)
-    echo "Unknown platform: $PLATFORM"
-    exit 1
-    ;;
-esac
-```
-
-## Quick Deploy
-
-```bash
-# Production
-npm run deploy
-
-# Preview
-npm run deploy:preview
-```
-
-## package.json
-
-```json
-{
-  "scripts": {
-    "deploy": "deploy vercel",
-    "deploy:preview": "vercel",
-    "deploy:cf": "deploy cf"
-  }
-}
-```
+Deploy to production. **$ARGUMENTS**
+
+Deployment is handled by the `deploy-auto` command, which auto-detects your deployment platform (Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, Railway, or Fly.io) and runs the full verification gate before deploying.
+
+1. **Check that the project is deployable.** The deploy-auto helper lives at `~/.config/agents/bin/deploy-auto.sh` (installed by vstack's `install.sh`) or is inlined below if not present.
+
+2. **Run deploy-auto.sh** with the project directory:
+   ```bash
+   ~/.config/agents/bin/deploy-auto.sh "$PWD"
+   ```
+   The script will:
+   a. Run `.claude/verify.sh` if it exists. If verification fails, stop and report the failure.
+   b. Auto-detect the deployment target: if `vercel.json` or `.vercel/` exists, use Vercel; if `wrangler.toml` or `wrangler.jsonc` exists, use Cloudflare Workers.
+   c. Run the deploy command for that platform.
+   d. Health-check the resulting URL (HTTP status code).
+   e. Report the deployment URL and health status.
+
+3. **If deploy-auto.sh is not found,** run verification and auto-detect inline:
+   ```bash
+   bash ./.claude/verify.sh && \
+   if [ -f vercel.json ] || [ -d .vercel ]; then
+     vercel deploy --prod
+   elif [ -f wrangler.toml ] || [ -f wrangler.jsonc ]; then
+     npx wrangler deploy
+   else
+     echo "No deployment config found (vercel.json, .vercel/, wrangler.toml, or wrangler.jsonc)"
+     exit 1
+   fi
+   ```
+
+See `deploy-auto.md` for the full details.