[nicho1ab]

Pull Request Evidence

Governing issue and intended outcome

• Governing issue: Make preserved-artifact backfills safely repeatable #475. The issue remains open after merge until its separate deployed production-style acceptance gate passes.
• Intended outcome: Eliminate representation-only writes during repeated preserved-artifact backfills while preserving legitimate governed source changes, provenance, stable identities, import scope, audit history, and reviewer-created state.

Implementation scope

• Major files or components changed: src/ccld_complaints/hosted_app/seeded_import.py, tests/unit/test_hosted_ccld_backfill.py, and tests/unit/test_hosted_seeded_corpus_import.py.
• The importer compares and persists only the final projection for each stable source_record_key while retaining established deterministic flattened-record order and final-write semantics.
• Unique source-derived records remain present.
• Important behavior intentionally unchanged: canonical schema, migrations, data contract, live retrieval, reviewer-created state, source identity, source hashes, provenance, import scope, and genuine governed change detection.
• Issue Fix preserved-artifact backfill failures for 27 facilities #476 hard-failure remediation is out of scope.
• Reviewer UI regression contracts: RT-RC-004 and RT-RC-006 are affected only as protected invariants. The change preserves stable source/facility identity, valid source-document relationships, fixture integrity, reviewer-created-state separation, and audit relationships; no reviewer-facing presentation or interaction changes.

Root cause

Multiple preserved source documents can project the same stable complaint, allegation, or event identity. The importer previously compared and wrote every sequential projection. Intermediate projections temporarily changed source-document and governed-field representation before the final projection restored the same deterministic final state, so equivalent replay still reported updates. Unique source-document and extraction-audit records were not the cause.

Acceptance-criteria evidence

Acceptance criterion	Evidence and result
Equivalent normalized inputs produce equivalent stored representations	PASS - duplicate projections are reduced to the final projection for each exact stable source-record key before comparison/persistence.
Existing final-write behavior is preserved	PASS - no sorting or alternate precedence was introduced; the final occurrence in established flattened-record order remains authoritative.
Multi-document facility replay is covered	PASS - regression uses two preserved complaint reports projecting the same complaint/allegation/event identities.
Immediate equivalent dry run performs no update	PASS - regression asserts updated == 0 and unchanged == 1.
Second equivalent apply performs no source-derived write	PASS - regression asserts zero updates and unchanged persisted source-row snapshot.
Genuine governed source changes remain detectable	PASS - Substantiated to Inconclusive produces one update and governed conflict provenance.
Conflict traceability remains deterministic	PASS - retained conflict traceability is asserted across repeat processing.
Stable identities and source hashes are preserved	PASS - regression snapshots stable identities and source-document hashes before and after replay.
Import scope is preserved	PASS - source-record/import-batch relationships are asserted unchanged.
Reviewer-created state and audit history are preserved	PASS - reviewer/audit snapshot remains unchanged through apply and repeat.

Validation and failure classification

Validation	Result	Failure classification, if applicable
Ruff	PASS in CI	none
mypy	PASS in CI - 91 source files	none
Full pytest suite	PASS in CI - 2038 passed, 9 skipped	none
Documentation check	PASS in CI	none
Required workflow contract	PASS in CI	none
New focused regressions	PASS locally - 2 passed	none
Backfill/import/CLI plus isolated PostgreSQL regression group	PASS locally - 22 passed, 1 skipped	explicit local PostgreSQL test configuration unavailable
Artifact/reload/retrieval import paths	PASS locally - 53 passed	none
git diff --check	PASS	none
Initial PR evidence verification	FAIL	PR evidence-body formatting/contract defect only; implementation validation passed

• Implementation-caused test failures: None.
• Pre-existing failures relied upon for passage: None.
• Environmental failures: one locally configured PostgreSQL case could not run because the explicit local test-database configuration was unavailable; CI did not report an implementation test failure.
• Tests intentionally not run: None relevant after CI completed the full repository test suite successfully.

UI and accessibility evidence (when applicable)

Not applicable - no hosted UI, reviewer presentation, interaction, accessibility behavior, or visual output changed.

Reviewer-facing redesign artifact classification (when applicable)

Not applicable - no reviewer-facing redesign occurred.

Documentation, assumptions, and remaining risks

• Documentation impact: No documentation was changed. A pre-existing documentation mismatch regarding the later canonical-complaint-observations operation was observed and remains outside this focused correction.
• Assumptions and limitations: The correction preserves the existing contract that one current persisted row exists per stable source_record_key and preserves established final-projection ordering semantics; the retained production 29-facility list was not available locally and was not fabricated.
• Remaining risks or follow-up: Issue Make preserved-artifact backfills safely repeatable #475 remains open after merge. Deployment and governed QNAP acceptance must still prove the retained 29-facility replay and final 312-facility repeat dry run with updated=0, unchanged=312, warnings=0, and failed=0.

Governed-boundary review

Governed boundary	Status	Specific explanation or evidence
Schemas and migrations	No change	No schema, migration, or canonical persistence shape changed.
Ingestion and source-connector contracts	Authorized change	Seeded/preserved source-derived import behavior now removes intermediate duplicate projections for the same exact stable source-record key before comparison and persistence; no connector retrieval contract changed.
Security and privacy	No change	No authentication, authorization, secrets, privacy boundary, or private-data handling changed.
Production data and correction behavior	Authorized change	The correction changes preserved-artifact backfill/import comparison behavior but no production data was accessed or mutated during implementation; production acceptance remains separately governed.
Deployment and infrastructure	No change	No deployment, container, QNAP, Cloudflare, or infrastructure behavior changed.
Repository governance	No change	No governance document, workflow policy, branch policy, or development-loop rule changed.
Required GitHub workflows and checks	No change	No required workflow or required check changed or was weakened.
Tests or checks weakened to obtain passage	Authorized change	Tests were modified and added to strengthen idempotence and genuine-change regression coverage; no test, assertion, or required check was removed, skipped, relaxed, or weakened to obtain passage.

Required GitHub checks

• validate
• docs-check
• fixtures
• security