Gotcha 1 said a style in BasedOnStyles that is not built-in and not
already under StylesPath "finds nothing until vale sync fetches it — a
clean run is not proof anything linted". Reproduced against vale 3.15.2:
that case is a hard `E100 [loadStyles] style '<name>' does not exist on
StylesPath`, exit 2. Nothing is linted and nothing is silent.
Worse, the same commit deleted the Gotcha that was the actual diagnostic —
that Packages and BasedOnStyles are separate keys and a style lints only
once it is in both. So the surviving rule sent a reader staring at E100 to
run `vale sync`, which fetches only what Packages declares and reports
"Synced 0 package(s)" against a BasedOnStyles-only name. The remediation
loop did not terminate. Reproduced end to end.
The genuinely silent case is the reverse — declared in Packages and
synced, but absent from BasedOnStyles — and it is now the one labelled as
such. Testing also turned up that StylesPath must exist as a directory
even when Vale is the only style (E201, exit 2), which was documented
nowhere.
references/configuration-reference.md gains a seven-row resolution matrix,
each row backed by a fixture. Its Frontmatter Scopes section claimed
provenance from the vale.sh research corpus, which contains no frontmatter
material at all; it is house-verified and now says so under its own slug.
Issue #99's wave-3 comment recorded this defect as found and repaired. It
was not — the file was byte-identical to the commit that introduced it, so
nothing here was treated as already correct.
Refs #99
Description 657 -> 244 chars, body 504 -> 342 words, Gotchas 50% -> 24%.
The 50% was the worst ratio in the corpus and a real inverted body, not
the denominator artefact the ratio usually flags: half the body was a
Gotchas section doing duty as reference material.
A clean-context audit caught the split leaving a false statement behind.
Gotcha 1's kernel lost the qualifier that only package styles need
fetching, so it asserted that any style vale sync has not fetched fails
-- contradicting the same file twice, since the built-in Vale style and
any committed custom style are never fetched. An agent adding a custom
style would have added a spurious Packages entry and broken vale sync
outright. The qualifier is restored in the body rather than behind a
fourth reference pointer.
Also corrects the moved fixture's framing, which tabulated a control row
under a heading claiming it came from a multi-line fixture.
Refs #99
Four claims in shipped agent-facing docs did not match verified behaviour.
These are read as ground truth by agents in other repos, so each was
reproduced against vale 3.15.2 before rewriting:
- CONTEXT.md and `vale-config/SKILL.md` said both `>` and `|` block scalars
break the description scope. `|` does not — it lints normally and fires every
alert, while `>` yields zero. An agent following the old text would rewrite a
working `|` description into a plain multi-line scalar, which genuinely does
break, inverting the intended remediation. Both now name the forms that do
break and state that `|` does not.
- CONTEXT.md and ADR-0013 described the size hook as failing only above 500
lines, omitting the 2900-word gate it also enforces. Both now describe the
pair and state that `validate.sh` checks the same two.
- ADR-0014 recorded an accepted residual — a wholesale `assets/` deletion going
unflagged — that commit 14c2c91 closed. Left as the point-in-time record and
amended with an update describing the union-with-tag-manifest mechanism,
following the amendment precedent in ADR-0005.
- `vale-config/SKILL.md` asserted a fresh `.vale.ini` fails until `vale sync`
runs, contradicting its own note that built-in styles need no download. The
claim is now scoped to package styles; this repo's two configs declare no
packages and lint clean with zero syncs.
Also repoints AGENTS.md at the seven `gitea:*` skills — the `bin:gitea` route
it named no longer exists.
Refs: #85
Vale's text.frontmatter.description scope silently stops matching once
the description is a YAML block scalar spanning 2+ physical lines —
the style used by most skills/agents in this repo. scripts/vale-wrap.sh
flattens the description to one line in a scratch copy (preserving the
repo-relative path and total line count) before invoking real vale, and
both audit skills plus the pre-commit hook now call it instead of vale
directly. Also tightens the pre-commit hook's file glob to single path
segments so it can't cross into docs/research examples or asset
templates the way the audit skills' scoped invocations already avoid.
Addresses PR #85 review feedback.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01FxG5T8EJDgkABXxuneuFfn
Merge duplicate gotcha in vale-config (Packages vs BasedOnStyles was
stated twice) and align vale-run's category field with vale-config's
(lint, not linting) so sibling skills in the plugin agree.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01FxG5T8EJDgkABXxuneuFfn