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fix(validate): require marker punctuation after a leading TBD/TODO - #1912

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Tyagiquamar:fix/purpose-marker-punctuation
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Fission-AI:mainfrom
Tyagiquamar:fix/purpose-marker-punctuation

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@Tyagiquamar

@Tyagiquamar Tyagiquamar commented Sep 18, 2026

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Closes #1897.

Root cause: LEADING_MARKER in src/core/validation/purpose-placeholder.ts was case-insensitive with a negative lookahead that a plain space satisfies, so the Spanish/Portuguese sentence opener Todo followed by prose matched the TODO placeholder marker and validate --strict failed an authored Purpose.

Fix: keep the existing word-boundary lookahead and add a second lookahead requiring end of Purpose, a line break, or marker punctuation after TBD/TODO. This is the issue's suggested option 2, refined so every existing pinned behaviour still holds: lowercase tbd - / todo - , TODO:, TODO(owner):, TBD. and bare TBD/TODO are still reported, while Todo el... / Todo o... prose is not.

Tests: added Spanish and Portuguese regression cases plus a marker-alone-on-its-line case to test/core/purpose-placeholder.test.ts. New test failed before the fix ({line: 4} instead of null) and passes after. Added .changeset/purpose-marker-punctuation.md (patch).

Validation in Docker (node:22-bookworm, pnpm 10.34.5): pnpm build exit 0; vitest test/core 117 files / 4441 passed / 1 skipped; tsc --noEmit exit 0; eslint exit 0. Full pnpm test was not run to completion: cli-e2e/prompts suites stall in this sandbox; all unit suites under test/core pass.

Assisted by Muse Spark; the change was verified with the Docker runs above.

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • Bug Fixes
    • Improved strict validation of Purpose text to avoid incorrectly flagging ordinary prose beginning with “Todo” or “todo,” including Spanish and Portuguese sentences.
    • Recognizes lowercase and mixed-case TODO/TBD placeholders when followed by the end of the Purpose, a line break, or marker punctuation.
    • Continues detecting uppercase TODO/TBD markers used before placeholder content.

@Tyagiquamar
Tyagiquamar requested a review from a team as a code owner September 18, 2026 07:34
@Tyagiquamar
Tyagiquamar requested review from clay-good and removed request for a team September 18, 2026 07:34
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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The purpose validator now avoids treating “Todo” followed by prose as a placeholder marker. It still detects standalone TODO or TBD markers and documented punctuation forms. Regression tests and a patch changeset were added.

Changes

Purpose validation

Layer / File(s) Summary
Leading marker validation
src/core/validation/purpose-placeholder.ts, test/core/purpose-placeholder.test.ts, .changeset/purpose-marker-punctuation.md
The validator now uses separate uppercase and punctuated marker patterns. Tests cover Spanish and Portuguese prose, standalone markers, and uppercase placeholder markers. The changeset records the patch release.

Priority: ➖ Normal

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Change: Bug fix · Severity of issue fixed: Medium

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 05b81

The supplied evidence does not establish a merge-blocking regression in the requested marker-detection behavior.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5
✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title describes the leading-marker validation change and is related to the main code change. It does not state the uppercase exception or the Spanish and Portuguese false-positive fix, but the sum…
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Issue #1897 requires authored Spanish and Portuguese Purpose prose beginning with Todo to avoid PURPOSE_IS_PLACEHOLDER, while genuine markers remain detected. The validator now treats uppercase `T…
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed The source change directly fixes the marker classification required by Issue #1897. The added regression tests verify the required behavior. The patch changeset documents the fix and release impact. N…
Docstring Coverage ✅ Passed Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 1 functions across 2 files. (1 skipped: 1 …
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@Tyagiquamar

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Hi, just following up on this when you get a chance. The branch is up to date and checks are green. If it looks good from your side, it should be ready to merge. Happy to make any changes if needed. Thanks!

Tyagiquamar and others added 2 commits September 22, 2026 14:51
Requiring marker punctuation after a leading TBD/TODO fixed the Spanish
and Portuguese false positive, but it also stopped reporting the plainest
unwritten Purpose there is: `TODO write this once the capability settles
down.`

Case is what actually separates the marker from the word. In capitals it
is the marker whatever follows it. In any other case it is a marker only
when punctuation or the end of the line says so, which is how the
lowercase forms an agent leaves behind are written (`todo - `, `tbd.`)
and is not how a Spanish sentence opens.

Covers `todo el ...` in lowercase too, which the capitals-only reading of
the original fix would have reported.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@clay-good
clay-good force-pushed the fix/purpose-marker-punctuation branch from 2a43341 to 6a45649 Compare September 22, 2026 19:58

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Actionable comments posted: 1


  • 🪄 Fix CodeRabbit comments on this PR
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only still-valid issues, skip the rest with a brief reason, keep changes
minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In @.changeset/purpose-marker-punctuation.md:
- Line 8: Update the example in the changeset prose so the inline code span
contains no leading or trailing spaces: use the code span “todo -” and describe
the following space outside it, while preserving the sentence’s meaning.

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Comment thread .changeset/purpose-marker-punctuation.md Outdated
@clay-good

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Thanks for the fix @Tyagiquamar, and sorry for the wait. I rebased this onto main and pushed one follow-up commit.

What I changed and why. Requiring marker punctuation fixed the Spanish/Portuguese false positive, but it also stopped reporting the plainest unwritten Purpose there is:

TODO write this once the capability settles down.

No punctuation, so the leading marker no longer matched, and PURPOSE_TOO_BRIEF doesn't catch it either because the sentence is long enough.

Case turns out to be what actually separates the marker from the word. In capitals it's the marker whatever follows it; in any other case it's a marker only when punctuation or the end of the line says so — which is how the lowercase forms an agent really leaves behind are written (todo - , tbd.), and is not how a Spanish sentence opens. That also covers lowercase todo el ..., which the original regex reported and a capitals-only reading would still have.

Behaviour now, all pinned by tests:

Purpose Result
TODO write this later reported
TBD pending the load tests reported
TODO / TBD / TODO: / TODO(owner): / todo - / tbd. reported
Todo el conocimiento... / Todo o catálogo... not reported
todo el conocimiento... not reported
TODOs / TBDs / TODOé / TBD١ not reported

Your two regression tests still fail on main and pass here; the new shouted-marker test fails against the punctuation-only version. Full suite matches the main baseline exactly (the two failures in artifact-workflow and config-profile reproduce on clean main in the same sandbox). tsc --noEmit and eslint src/ are clean.

CI is green. Ready for maintainer review.

markdownlint MD038. Changeset text only; no behaviour change.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Purpose placeholder check: case-insensitive TODO false-positives on the Spanish word "Todo"

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