Build v0.1.6 founder-ready verified-experience proof loop

[yao23]

Status

Founder usability gate passed; product-proof experiment remains prepared, not frozen, 0/3 arms.

PR #28 remains Draft. The clean-profile founder test validates onboarding usability and discoverability only; it is not evidence of better repair success, speed, cost, adoption, product-market fit, or generalization.

What changed

• keeps AEG: Start with Verified Experience as the single dominant workflow while preserving all existing command IDs and the collapsed Advanced tools
• adds deferred onStartupFinished activation so a normal workspace initializes AEG even when the VSIX was installed while VS Code was closed
• opens the founder walkthrough on first activation through an AEG-owned, versioned global marker
• records recoverable opening, opened, and failed states; successful opening suppresses later windows, failures retry, and stale opening state recovers safely
• keeps activation fire-and-forget so marker or walkthrough failures never block VS Code startup
• makes AEG: Start here visible in the status bar even when automatic opening is skipped or fails
• preserves manual walkthrough reopening from the AEG sidebar and command
• records the completed clean-profile founder acceptance

Root cause of the original discovery failure

The contributed walkthrough was valid, but AEG relied entirely on VS Code's generic install-session auto-open behavior. VS Code only adds an extension to the walkthrough auto-open set when the focused workbench receives that extension's install event. A command-line VSIX install while every VS Code window is closed has no such session. On the next launch the walkthrough is registered, but is not selected for opening.

AEG also had only view/command activation events, so the extension did not initialize until the founder used an AEG surface they did not yet know. There was no AEG-owned first-run fallback.

Founder acceptance — PASS

Date: 2026-08-14 (America/Los_Angeles)
Tested VSIX SHA-256: 18ef493b9290e28832e54527d7fb92624387a17d749ec228b60087c3b6917224

• PASS: the founder used a clean VS Code profile
• PASS: the first empty workspace automatically opened AEG verified-experience proof loop
• PASS: the founder completed all five steps: task entry → verified record inspection → capsule copy → validation outcome → local feedback
• PASS: the local feedback file was created successfully
• PASS: a second workspace using the same profile did not force the walkthrough open
• PASS: AEG: Open Founder Proof Walkthrough manually reopened it successfully
• PASS: no repair-performance experiment arm was run

Validation

• TypeScript compile plus extension/retrieval/UX/schema suite: 39/39 passed
• retrieval and verified-experience Python suite: 11/11 passed
• semantic verified-library validation: 2 records / 2 unique IDs passed
• site regression suite: 8/8 passed
• founder-tested local VSIX hash rechecked: 18ef493b9290e28832e54527d7fb92624387a17d749ec228b60087c3b6917224
• packaged verified library remains byte-identical to source
• experiences/verified.json remains unchanged against origin/main
• git diff --check and scope/privacy scan passed

Evidence and authorization boundaries

• founder usability/discoverability gate: passed
• product-proof protocol: prepared, not frozen
• experiment arms: 0/3 executed
• no claim of repair-performance improvement, adoption, product-market fit, or generalization
• no D001 arm, merge, release, Marketplace publication, user contact, or verified-library change occurred
• selecting a target, freezing the protocol, or executing an arm requires separate explicit authorization