An external review found the evidence record honest and the gates real, but raised three
concrete defects. Each is fixed at its cause rather than at its symptom, and the reasoning
is recorded in docs/tool-verification/REPO-DECISIONS.md.
build_scripts.py -- the audit reported 37 findings, most of them noise
It matched any `X:\...` literal, so `C:\Program Files\...`, `C:\Python314\...` and literal
placeholders all counted as machine-specific leftovers. A gate whose output is mostly noise
stops being read -- the same failure scan_leaks.py names when it refuses to exempt the
RFC 5737 ranges. Two explicit exemption families are added instead of a looser regex:
GENERIC_PATH_PREFIXES (install locations that exist on every host of that platform) and
`_leaks_nothing()` (also exempts an already-redacted path, since a placeholder or an
ellipsis means a normalisation pass already ran).
Two traps surfaced only because the change was tested rather than merely run. BARE_ABS stops
at whitespace, so `C:\Program Files\...` arrives truncated as `C:\Program` and a one-way
`startswith` misses the exemption; the comparison is now bidirectional under a minimum
length. And with a lookahead of only `[a-z0-9]` the optional `\\?` backtracks to empty, the
next character is the separator, it passes, and a real personal path is swallowed -- the
lookahead has to exclude the separator as well. Both were caught by the case table, not by
the audit run.
Result: 37 -> 0 findings, exit 2 -> exit 0. The real hits (`E:\apk-reverse\...`,
`E:\agb_apktool.jar`) were fixed in the documents, not by widening the list.
Three absolute paths on the published surface
EXTENSION-desensitization.md, EXTENSION-extraction-shell-bench.md and EXTENSION-vmp-diff.md
quoted a workbench root, a tool jar and an SDK location absolutely.
docs/tool-verification/ already states the rule -- a record may say a run happened at a
`tools/...` path, written relatively -- so the three files were made to match the rule they
were already under. The tool-jar and SDK cases are rephrased rather than placeholder-ised,
so no reader has to learn a new token.
check_budget.py -- blind to the half of the problem it was not measuring
The gate budgets the always-loaded part and could not see the corpus, where a new reference
costs exactly one index line: the corpus can double while the narrative count stays green.
Two note-level thresholds now report it. Notes, not failures -- a large corpus is a choice,
a growth nobody measured is the defect. The first run reports 47 references + 55 scripts =
102 files, 31,423 lines.
A cross-tool inconsistency this pass ran into, recorded rather than papered over
build_scripts.py now exempts any `<...>` placeholder; scan_leaks.py recognises a fixed token
list. An invented placeholder in a source comment passed the first and was read by the
second as the very personal name its `user_path_windows` rule exists to catch, turning
check_repo.py red. That is by design -- a strict list is what stops a real name hiding
behind a plausible-looking placeholder -- but the two tools disagree about what "already
redacted" means, and the disagreement stays invisible until someone writes a new token.
Rephrased here; a future pass may want one shared list.
Verification
- build_scripts.py: 37 -> 0 findings on a clean clone, exit 0.
- An 18-case table pins both directions, 0 failures: generic and already-redacted paths are
exempt, while a real workbench path, a real personal name after `C:\Users\`, a real POSIX
home and a real project path still report. It found two defects in the first
implementation.
- All four gates pass: check_repo 0 problem, check_refs 0 dangling / 0 warning,
check_budget 0 failure / 0 warning / 3 notes, build_scripts 0 findings.
The docstring promised "a smali tree or a directory of dex files" and delivered neither: iter_files() yielded only .smali, a direct .dex was read as UTF-8 text and regex-matched against smali syntax, and a dex-only directory yielded nothing at all. A real dex, a dex directory and a typo path all printed [total refs] 0 and a note blaming the needle, so the one tool the skill recommends for judging blast radius before patching returned a confident false zero.
A .dex is now decoded through dexutil (no baksmali needed), a directory is walked for .smali and .dex alike, an archive is opened for its classes*.dex, input that cannot be read is refused with exit 2 and a reason, and every run prints [scanned] N file(s) so the two cases can never print identically again. Also corrects the recorded exit code for this defect: it was 1, not 0, which moves it from "no signal at all" to "the signal was there and the message contradicted it".
Verified against a fixture whose call graph is known by construction (docs/tool-verification/fixtures/make_fixture_dex.py, committed as the evidence): the .dex and the equivalent smali tree both return 3/2/2, matching what was written. And against the real target: Ljava/lang/String;->length gives 356 refs in 2.3 s where it previously gave 0; a five-dex directory gives 9,472; a typo path exits 2.
Docs updated with it: F9 records the opcode-table finding the fix exposed, F2/F3 and TOOL-VERDICTS.md are corrected, and dex-patching.md now tells the reader to look at the [scanned] line before the count.
Capability-first tooling guidance, plus removal of target identity from the repo.
Toolchain (references/toolchain.md):
- New ASC (droidasc) section + README Requirements row. An agent should reach for an
indexer before any full decompile. Covers install, query subcommands, the division
of labour with ddc (ASC locates, ddc reads), and its measured limits -- including the
unverified-negative trap when a non-ASCII needle goes through a shell, and the
mangled-class case where ASC is the only route.
- ddc: two measured limits -- a renamed class is unreachable via -c, and a decompiled
body can be semantically wrong rather than merely ugly.
- New "Closing a capability gap": installing the missing tool IS the task, with measured
install costs set against the cost of the workaround.
- New "Using the kit's scripts instead of writing your own", with two-tools-disagreeing
as the bug detector it is.
- Ghidra section for the aarch64 case: headless invocation, the flattening caveat, and
the "a decompiler cannot go where the data is not" boundary.
- HaE placed in Tier 3 as traffic triage, naming the three situations where it is the
wrong next step.
Observation ordering:
- SKILL.md: new Tooling section with four obligations; G2 now requires a written
capability inventory; symptom index gains four rows (silent feature loss with no
request at all, telling your patch apart from the target's own behaviour, spawn keeps
the Activity stack down, the device server being killed by the ROM).
- dynamic-frida.md: the patch-then-detach ordering, and device-server survival notes.
- New scripts/spawn_patch_detach.py and scripts/hook_patch_only.js.
Neutrality:
- docs/verification-jiongnew/ -> docs/tool-verification/. Target-specific transcripts
dropped; all target identity removed. The record keeps the measurements and loses
the specimen.
- No target identity remains anywhere in the tree.
check_repo.py: 0 problems. check_refs.py: 182 reachable, 0 dangling, 0 warnings.
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