v0.4.9 — tester mode + search status fix

[jinhongkuan]

Summary

Phase 2 of the v0.4.8 "Second Moment" bucket. Adds an opt-in tester mode (BICAMERAL_TESTER_MODE=1) that makes bicameral.search and bicameral.brief emit blocking action_hints the agent must address before any write operation. For onboarding, demos, and skill evaluation flows.

Four hint kinds:

• review_drift (search + brief) — drifted decisions in scope
• ground_decision (search) — ungrounded matches
• resolve_divergence (brief) — contradictory decisions on same symbol
• answer_open_questions (brief) — open-question gaps

Regular mode (tester_mode=False, default) is byte-identical to v0.4.8 except for the new empty action_hints=[] field.

Bug fix (load-bearing): handle_search_decisions was reading status from raw_regions[0] but code_region rows don't carry a status field — it's an intent property. Every match had been silently reported as pending regardless of real state, masking drifted decisions from callers. Now reads intent-level status from the search_by_bm25 row.

Surfaced during an end-to-end drift demo on Accountable — see the full walkthrough in the parent repo: thoughts/shared/plans/2026-04-14-accountable-drift-demo.md.

Test plan

• 24 new cases in tests/test_v049_tester_mode.py covering every hint kind (fires / doesn't fire), both generators, backward compat, tester_mode env parse
• Full v0.4.9 regression: 146 passed in 12s
• Manual: verified on Accountable ledger — tester_mode=OFF returns empty hints; tester_mode=ON fires review_drift with refs to the edited file, brief fires same hint via its own generator
• Skill contracts updated: bicameral-search, bicameral-brief, new top-level bicameral-tester

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[coderabbitai]

Warning

Rate limit exceeded

@jinhongkuan has exceeded the limit for the number of commits that can be reviewed per hour. Please wait 39 minutes and 39 seconds before requesting another review.

Your organization is not enrolled in usage-based pricing. Contact your admin to enable usage-based pricing to continue reviews beyond the rate limit, or try again in 39 minutes and 39 seconds.

⌛ How to resolve this issue?

After the wait time has elapsed, a review can be triggered using the @coderabbitai review command as a PR comment. Alternatively, push new commits to this PR.

We recommend that you space out your commits to avoid hitting the rate limit.

🚦 How do rate limits work?

CodeRabbit enforces hourly rate limits for each developer per organization.

Our paid plans have higher rate limits than the trial, open-source and free plans. In all cases, we re-allow further reviews after a brief timeout.

Please see our FAQ for further information.

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 637ba6f1-1214-41b7-a478-500100d3ef31

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 71b0c8a and 897fec0.

📒 Files selected for processing (11)

• CHANGELOG.md
• context.py
• contracts.py
• handlers/action_hints.py
• handlers/brief.py
• handlers/search_decisions.py
• pyproject.toml
• skills/bicameral-brief/SKILL.md
• skills/bicameral-search/SKILL.md
• skills/bicameral-tester/SKILL.md
• tests/test_v049_tester_mode.py

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch chore/bump-v0.4.9

---

Thanks for using CodeRabbit! It's free for OSS, and your support helps us grow. If you like it, consider giving us a shout-out.

❤️ Share

• X
• Mastodon
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands and usage tips.}