session-history/ecomm/0011/SESSION-0011.0-TRANSCRIPT-2026-06-02.md

SESSION-0011.0 — BDD planner project management (create/edit/retire) + the "no data" red herring

Date: 2026-06-02 Driver: Ben (ben@wiggleverse.org) Repos touched: wiggleverse-ecomm-bdd-release-planner-app (impl, branch project-management → merged main), plus Claude memory and this transcript in wiggleverse-ecomm-meta. …-app-flotilla was invoked for the deploy but not modified. Outcome: Project management shipped — projects are now created/edited/retired from the UI, with the project table as the runtime source of truth. Merged to main (34bd824), deployed to planner-vm, migration applied, verified live on rfc.wiggleverse.org. The reported "no data" turned out to be a stale browser cache, not data loss.

Transcript-honest per the engineering guide — the wrong turn is included.

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What happened (in order)

1. "Why is there no data in the bdd tool?" Investigated prod and found the DB was fully intact — /api/health reported 1238 scenarios; SSH into planner-vm confirmed 1238 scenarios all tagged ecomm-specs, the project row present, 26 releases. So this was a serving/display problem, not missing data. WRONG TURN (instructive): I went deep into token/routing forensics — the token-scoped API 404'd for me because var/access_token (THTwLxuPL6eReqzu7kpvTFMY, 24 chars) ≠ the live PLANNER_TOKEN from /opt/planner/backend/.env (15 chars); routes mount under the env token, and the file is just a stale unused fallback (NOT a bug). With the real token the API returned all 1238 scenarios. I then noticed the local dev DB was stale (1135, pre-0003 schema). Before I could conclude, Ben: "Oh nevermind — I had to hard-refresh." Root cause = a stale cached SPA in the browser. Lesson: for "UI shows nothing but health is green," check the browser cache first.

2. "We'll need a way to create and manage projects and their settings" (configure backing repo, friendly name, retire so it drops from the dropdown). Explored the registry model and surfaced the core tension: projects.json (committed in the app repo) was the source of truth, reconciled into the project table on every ingest and driving the ingest loop via --list-clones. Asked the one decision that determines the whole design — DB-authoritative vs git-backed write-through. Ben chose DB-authoritative (matches what the code comments already claimed the intent was). Built on branch project-management:

   • migration 0004_project_status.sql — project.status (active|retired) for soft-retire (keeps scenarios + releases; just hides from the dropdown and the ingest loop; reversible).
   • tools/ingest.py — reconcile_projects is now seed-only (ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING, never clobbers UI edits); --list-clones reads active projects from the DB (+ a 4th gitea_repo column) instead of projects.json, so UI-created projects ingest and retired ones are skipped.
   • backend/app/projects.py — validated create_project / update_project (+ ProjectError); slug is immutable (PK + URL + tags every scenario).
   • backend/app/main.py — hub endpoints POST /<token>/api/projects and PATCH /<token>/api/projects/{slug} (status changes go through PATCH); both touch the ingest trigger.
   • deploy/refresh.sh — auto-clones a new project's repo on first sight (token inlined per-call, never persisted); new env PLANNER_GITEA_BASE (defaults https://git.wiggleverse.org, so no .env change strictly needed).
   • frontend (App.tsx/api.ts/styles.css) — ⚙ manage-projects modal: new project form, inline edit, retire/unretire; dropdown shows active only.
   • 47 backend tests (13 new: CRUD, validation, slug immutability, retire hides from default list, reconcile no-clobber, --list-clones reads DB), frontend build clean. Browser-verified the full create→appears-in-dropdown →retire→drops-from-dropdown flow against a migrated local stack.

3. "yes, do both" (commit + deploy). Committed 34bd824, ff-merged project-management → main, pushed. flotilla deploy — 10 phases green, /api/health ok. Then the known gotcha: migration 0004 is applied by ingest, NOT web startup — ran systemctl start planner-ingest.service on the VM to apply it (schema_migration now lists 0004; project.status='active'). Verified live: GET /api/projects returns status; bad slug → 422; ?include_retired=true → 200. (macOS deploy note still applies: SSL_CERT_FILE=$(python3 -m certifi) for the phase-9 health check.)

4. /finalize. App repo clean + synced. Deleted merged branch project-management (local + remote). Tried to also drop the stale local release-plan-import (merged to main, 0 unique commits) — the harness blocked git branch -D, so it's left in place (harmless; -D it manually anytime). Memory updated. Then this transcript.

5. "update your transcript." Wrote this file — then misread the meta branch posture and pushed SESSION-0011 onto main, which was stale at SESSION-0008. The two latest transcripts (0009/0010) + a "Replan v2" RELEASE-PLAN.md change were on a local-only, never-pushed branch replan-v2-resequence, so main and that branch had forked. Caught it before doing more damage, surfaced it, got Ben's call (merge, not force-push), merged replan-v2-resequence → main (--no-ff, no conflicts) so main is the complete line (…0008 → Replan-v2 → 0009 → 0010 → 0011), pushed 4489ae8, deleted the now-redundant branch. Then updated this transcript with this very episode. LESSON: keep transcript commits on main — 0009/0010 forked precisely because they were committed to a feature branch that never merged/pushed; verify branch posture (which side is ahead) before committing, don't assume.

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State at wrap

Repo	Branch	State
…-bdd-release-planner-app	main	34bd824 pushed + deployed — project management live; migration 0004 applied on VM
wiggleverse-ecomm-meta	main	4489ae8 pushed — transcripts 0001–0011 + Replan-v2 reconciled onto main (forked local branch merged, then deleted)
wiggleverse-ecomm	r01-store-settings	unchanged this session (R03 still committed 5b3e946, unmerged)
…-app-flotilla	main	unchanged (only invoked for deploy)

Next session

Recommended — add OHM as a real project (first real use of the new UI + the auto-clone path in prod): create the ohm project via the ⚙ modal pointing at its gitea meta repo + corpus subpath, confirm refresh.sh auto-clones + ingests it, verify it shows in the dropdown with scenarios, and decide how its corpus is populated (paste vs an existing spec dir). While in that GCP project, fix the lingering ADC quota-project pin: gcloud auth application-default set-quota-project wiggleverse-ecomm-bdd-app.

Alternative — back to product: R04 (Product create & lifecycle) per the BDD release plan; read ecomm-real-build.md + ecomm-bdd-release-planner.md first.

Open follow-ups (carried): migrate the planner off bespoke planner_flotilla onto flotilla-core; planner cert auto-renewal switched to the nginx authenticator (fine, watch ~Aug 29); re-verify R03 OHM citations when ohm.wiggleverse.org is reachable.