[anish-inf]

Re-reviews on consumer repos (e.g. [zdr]) inter-
mitted with:

whip exited 1: whipcode: unknown model "glm-5.3" (models: deepseek-v4-flash-0731, glm-5.2-fast, kimi-k3, kimi-k3-fast)

Root cause: those repos' CI install steps still download the latest whip release and save it as /usr/local/bin/whip. Since v1.0.0 the latest release's binary is whipcode (renamed CLI, different config dir), so loupe's PATH check passed while the binary was actually whipcode — which ignores the materialized WHIP_HOME panel, reads the runner's real ~/.whipcode con
fig, and rejects loupe's -m glm-5.3.

Fix: loupe never trusts an unverified whip. resolveWhipBinary now identity-checks the PATH binary with whip --version before using it (isGenuineWhipOnPath):

• output starts with whip v (genuine whip, any version) → used as-is
• anything else (whipcode masquerading as whip, broken binary, etc.) → discarded; loupe downloads and uses the pinned [v0.6.5](https://github.com/con
  labs/whip/releases/tag/v0.6.5) release from its own ~/.loupe/bin/whip cache instead

So regardless of what a CI workflow installs — "latest", unpinned, or a renamed imposter — harness whip now always ends up running genuine whip, pinned to 0.6.x via the fallback. Version bumps to the pin remain a deliberate change in loupe.

Verified: oxfmt --check, oxlint, tsc --build clean; 454/454 tests passing (including the new whip-resolution tests on main).

---

Note

Medium Risk
Changes which whip executable runs in CI and local harness paths; wrong behavior would break reviews but the fallback pin limits blast radius.

Overview
Fixes intermittent harness failures when CI installs the latest upstream release as /usr/local/bin/whip but that binary is actually whipcode (post–v1.0.0 rename). Loupe used to treat any whip on PATH as valid, so reviews could hit whipcode: unknown model "glm-5.3" because whipcode ignores loupe’s materialized WHIP_HOME panel.

resolveWhipBinary now verifies the PATH binary via new isGenuineWhipOnPath, which runs whip --version and accepts it only when output starts with whip v. Imposters, whipcode, or broken binaries are ignored and loupe falls back to the existing pinned v0.6.5 download in ~/.loupe/bin/whip, same as when nothing is on PATH.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 6ad775b. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}