perf: enable the compile cache before the engine is compiled

[ojungo69]

Closes #210.

The capture hook's median went from 187.3 ms to 222.2 ms when US6 merged. A hook is a cold Node process, dist/oboete.mjs was a single-file esbuild bundle, and that bundle had just grown by src/sync/, so every invocation paid a full parse and compile of it.

Node's V8 compile cache removes that cost, but a single-file bundle cannot enable the cache for itself — Node compiles the entry file before any statement in it runs. So dist/ is two files now: dist/engine.mjs is the bundle, and dist/oboete.mjs is src/launcher.mjs copied verbatim, which imports only node:module, node:fs, node:os and node:path, enables the cache, then imports the engine. The launcher keeps the name, the shebang and mode 0755, so bin, the hook commands the installer writes, the Pi loader and every test that spawns the CLI are unchanged, and existing installs pick it up without being rewritten.

Measured

Node 22.16.0, fault-grok's 21 hook invocations through dist/oboete.mjs, the two builds interleaved in one session so machine load cancels. Medians:

build	r1	r2	r3	r4	r5	r6	r7
single file (af871c9a)	218.9	217.1	214.8	220.5	216.7	211.3	212.4
launcher + engine	184.5	186.9	192.6	183.9	185.7	180.1	182.0

Re-measured after the cache moved under OBOETE_HOME, where the fault harness's fresh-home-per-scenario makes several of the 21 invocations pay a cold compile. Five more interleaved rounds, on a busier machine — both arms sit ~18 ms higher, which is why they are interleaved:

build	r1	r2	r3	r4	r5
single file (af871c9a)	236.9	234.4	234.3	238.6	237.3
launcher + engine, cache under the home	201.1	201.6	199.6	198.9	197.5

Same ~36 ms gap. Back at the pre-US6 baseline; oboete --help alone goes 62 ms → 44 ms warm. Compile cost accounted for the whole regression. The 0008 schema still costs what it costs at openDatabase — the cache compensates for that rather than removing it, and the first hook after an upgrade still pays the uncached time once per version, inside the 300 ms bound.

Where the cache lives, and why not the obvious places

$OBOETE_HOME/cache/compile, or ~/.oboete/cache/compile, at mode 0700 — as is the data directory itself when the launcher is what creates it, which happens whenever a hook runs before oboete setup has. The home is resolved the way src/paths.ts resolves it, and a test pins the two copies of that rule together.

• Not $XDG_CACHE_HOME/oboete/compile, which is what this PR shipped until the last round: CONSTITUTION.md Principle VI puts every path the program writes under one data directory and defers a per-platform XDG split, so a cache there survives the relocation OBOETE_HOME exists to perform. The argument against the home was that the fault harness gives every scenario a fresh one — true, and round 9 below is what it cost. The harness shares one compile cache now and the suites are back at 41.8/41.6 s, under the ~/.cache figure.
• Not Node's default: with no argument enableCompileCache() uses /tmp/node-compile-cache, mode 0755 and shared by every user on the machine. V8 does not authenticate cache entries, so a directory others can write to is somewhere to plant bytecode the hook will execute.
• mkdirSync leaves an existing directory's mode and owner alone and follows a symlink, so the launcher lstats what it got and enables nothing unless it is a directory of this user's that nobody else can enter (mode & 0o077). Closed rather than merely unwritable, because V8 reads its entries from a versioned directory Node creates inside at 0777 minus the umask — group-writable wherever the umask is 002.
• The check stops there. Above the cache is ~/.oboete, and an attacker who can write to it can already replace memory.db and config.toml — bytecode in the compile cache is not the escalation, and a loose data directory is something oboete doctor should report rather than something the launcher answers by silently turning the cache off.
• The launcher's own import of the engine is wrapped. Splitting the bundle put a failure ahead of the handler in src/cli.ts that gives hook, capture and inject their contracted exit 0, so a missing or unreadable dist/engine.mjs printed a Node stack over an agent's session. The launcher now repeats that handler for exactly those three — exit 0, nothing on stderr, one logs/hook.log line naming the error's code — and rethrows for every other command, so a broken install stays loud for anyone checking by hand.
• NODE_COMPILE_CACHE in the environment still wins. Accepted rather than mitigated: an actor who can set it can also set NODE_OPTIONS=--require and run arbitrary code in the hook.

Splitting dist/ splits what "the bundle" means

Every site naming one of the two files now picks deliberately. What names the program to run — bin, the hook commands, the detector worker script, the Pi loader — names dist/oboete.mjs. Inside the bundle import.meta.url is now the engine, so src/setup/setup.ts composes the launcher path from its directory and falls back to itself when no launcher is there.

What reports on the build names both files rather than choosing. The measurement record and the replay report print the file they ran with its own size and, when an engine.mjs that is not that same file sits beside it, name it separately with its own size — realpathSync first, because a global install runs a symlinked bin. Substituting the sibling silently for the file that ran is right for dist/oboete.mjs and wrong for a --bundle naming a single-file baseline copied into the same directory for a comparison, which would then carry the split engine's two megabytes against its own timings.

Pins

test/unit/launcher.test.ts pins the shape the speed-up depends on, not the timing: the entry file is src/launcher.mjs verbatim, executable and small; the engine is its own file; one run leaves an owner-only cache, the next adds nothing to it, and a run after that rewrites an entry corrupted in between — that last one is the only thing that separates a cache being read back from one that was never enabled. A cache directory others can enter and one that is a symlink are refused, while a data directory at 0755, 0775 and 0777 is accepted; the cache follows OBOETE_HOME wherever it points — unset, empty, blank, relative, dot-relative and with a .. in it, each checked against the home the real resolveHome returns — and a relocated run leaves nothing outside it; every directory the run creates is 0700; a home that cannot hold a cache still exits 0 with no stderr; an engine that will not import leaves each of hook, capture and inject at exit 0 with a hook-log line naming that command, and --version loud and non-zero; and oboete setup writes dist/oboete.mjs into the hook commands rather than the engine.

One pin exists because two of the rounds below failed the same way: a cache parent left at 0775 by a restored backup or a cp -r must still get a live cache. Nothing else in the file would notice a mode requirement there — the launcher creates that directory itself at 0700, which passes any check at any umask, so only a directory that arrived some other way ever fails one, and every other pin stays green while the cache goes off on every machine that already had one.

Review history

Nine rounds, most of which found something the previous one introduced:

1. The installer derived its bundle path from import.meta.url, which after the split is the engine — the fix reached no real install.

2. bundlePath() was pointed at the engine, but that value is also the file the replay harness spawns; and dirname(argv[1]) breaks for a symlinked global bin.

3. Checking the versioned directories inside compile disabled the cache from the second run onward on every 002-umask machine, silently, with all pins green.

4. Requiring the ancestors to be unwritable moved that same failure one level up, to a ~/.cache at 0775.

5. Folding the two ownership predicates into one that takes a mask reintroduced (4) on the directory holding the cache, and nothing in the suite failed. Both the mask and a pin for it are in now.

6. The measurement record attributed a sibling engine.mjs's bytes to whatever --bundle selected.

7. Removing that attribution left two documents still stating the rule it removed, and a sweep for the rest found three more places assuming dist/oboete.mjs is the bundle. The one that mattered: specs/008-quality-debt-zero/quickstart.md identifies a candidate install by the sha256sum of dist/oboete.mjs, which after the split is a four-kilobyte launcher every build emits identically — the check would have matched across builds whose engines differ entirely. Both files are hashed now.

8. The Codex reviewer found the cache location itself: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/oboete/compile leaves state outside the tree OBOETE_HOME is supposed to bound, against CONSTITUTION.md Principle VI. Moving it under the home also dissolved a second finding of the same round — the writable-ancestor race no longer runs through a shared ~/.cache. A third, that the launcher's import escapes the fail-open contract, is fixed above.

9. Moving the cache made every CI spawn cold. test/helpers/fault.ts gives each test a temporary OBOETE_HOME and leaves HOME alone, so before the move those spawns had been sharing the runner's own ~/.cache/oboete/compile without anyone saying so. The median of the 48 took N ms diagnostics in an engine (24.x) run went 215.4/212.1 ms → 246.3/251.8 ms, and on a runner already at ~215 ms against a 300 ms budget that failed fault-storage readonly and e2e-hook.test.ts:142 on both duplicate runs. The cold cache is the harness's artefact, not the product's, so both node --test runs load test/helpers/compile-cache.ts with --import and every test and every CLI it spawns shares one build/compile-cache — the variable this launcher cannot defend against, put to the use it is for. Wiring three spawn sites instead of the runner was not enough and cost a second red round: the unit batch is what leaves the cache warm for the timed suites, and without it the first serial spawn spent its budget compiling (e2e-hook.test.ts:110, 299.1 and 304.9 ms, a partial row with a null content). The check job runs the e2e tests as a step of their own, so they warm the cache with one throwaway spawn as well. Medians over the 48 invocations: 246.3/251.8 → 219.4/223.3 → 212.2/218.6 ms, against 215.4/212.1 before the cache moved. A review of the whole launcher in the same round found five more: realpathSync of the entry path sat outside the fail-open try and fails in the same window it was added for; "a test pins the copies of the home rule together" was not true and the default branch had no pin at all; capture and inject were unpinned; the escalation paragraph skipped ~/.oboete/cache, the one ancestor whose write is not already game over; and two documents undercounted what the launcher composes and how many copies of the home rule exist.

10. The Codex reviewer found that NODE_DISABLE_COMPILE_CACHE in the environment bypasses the shared cache entirely: Node reads it during child bootstrap, where it wins over the NODE_COMPILE_CACHE the runner-level helper sets, so a developer who had set it to debug something would silently get the cold numbers back. Reproduced — with the flag set, the e2e-hook spawns take 217.3, 224.9 and 229.2 ms against 189.0, 193.9 and 191.1 with it deleted — and fixed with one delete in test/helpers/compile-cache.ts before the directory is chosen. The e2e warm-up from round 9 now has its CI number too: on the head that added it the first timed spawn of the check job's e2e step took 204.6 and 210.2 ms on the two duplicate runs against 203.1 and 202.5 for the second spawn, where the head before it had spent 260.4 against 195.7 and 211.6 against 162.5. Last, the escalation paragraph in the performance contract was still wrong in the other direction: it said that renaming compile away "costs the cache, never its contents", reasoning that whatever replaces the directory must pass the same ownership check. It does not — enableCompileCache records a path and nothing stats it again, so by the time V8 opens <path>/<version>/<entry> to compile the engine the check has long returned, and a group-writable ~/.oboete/cache lets someone swap in a directory of their own holding an entry keyed to the hash of a bundle they can read out of the published package. The contract now states the race, keeps the reason a mode requirement on cache is still not the fix, and names the 0700 directory the launcher creates as what closes it.

11. A review of the round-9 commit found that it had added a file nobody looked at: relative/home/cache/compile/v24.16.0-x64-cf738c9d-1000/de369f3e, 498 KB of V8 bytecode carrying this machine's Node version, architecture and uid in its path, committed into a change whose whole argument is about who may leave bytecode where the launcher will run it. It came from the new home-resolution pin — the launcher of the day resolved a relative OBOETE_HOME against the working directory, the pin drove OBOETE_HOME=relative/home from the repository root, and the residue went in with the fix. The pin caught a real defect; only its droppings were the problem. Removed in a follow-up commit rather than an amend, since CI, Sonar and the bot comments all point at the commit that added it. The current rule writes only under homedir(): the 25 launcher pins pass with nothing recreated and the full suite leaves git status clean. Two more findings in the same round, both on the shared compile cache. ??= accepted an empty NODE_COMPILE_CACHE — set-but-empty is not nullish, so Node was left to make a cache directory named by the empty string relative to the working directory, which is not hypothetical: one run with NODE_COMPILE_CACHE=" " left a directory named by three spaces in the repository root. The value is trimmed now, the way src/paths.ts reads its own overrides. And nothing pinned the mechanism at all: .github/workflows/ci.yml runs the timed e2e tests and the instrumented unit batch through command lines of their own with no --import, so what sets the variable there is the module being imported — and two of its three importers held it open only because they wanted repositoryRoot. warmCompileCache now asserts the variable is the directory the module chose (verified red by deleting the assignment from the built bundle) and test/helpers/fault.ts takes repositoryRoot from the module instead of keeping a third copy. Last, warmCompileCache spawned with no OBOETE_HOME and so made ~/.oboete/cache/compile in the real home, against this repository's own rule in the very bullet the change edits; it gets a throwaway home now and removes it again.

The two silent refusals the performance contract describes — a compile this user owns at a loose mode, and a cache parent others can write — now name issue #218, the oboete doctor item they were waiting for.

12. Both reviewers returned clean on the round above and each left one non-blocking observation, both taken. warmCompileCache was called by the two e2e suites and by nothing else, so the fault suites — which time the hook against the same 300 ms deadline — were warm only because npm test lists e2e-* before fault-*; a fault file run alone paid a full compile in its first hook and the shared-cache assertion never reached it. test/helpers/fault.ts warms at load now: alone on an emptied cache, fault-storage's first hook takes 179.0 ms. And the comment on the trimmed override claimed the repository resolves such a value the way src/paths.ts does, when only the trim is shared — src/paths.ts anchors a relative OBOETE_HOME to homedir(), while a relative NODE_COMPILE_CACHE keeps Node's meaning and lands beside the working directory, which is the shape of the blob removed in round 11. The comment now says what is copied rather than the code growing a second meaning for an operator's own instruction.

13. CodeRabbit, on the head above: warmCompileCache fired its spawn and read nothing back. A warm-up that fails leaves exactly the state the arrangement exists to prevent — a timed suite compiling the engine inside its first assertion — and leaves it silently, since nothing downstream can tell a filled cache from an empty one; the assertion added in round 11 covers the variable, not the run. It reads the exit status now and quotes what came back, verified red against a bundle that does not exist, and the spawn carries a 60 s timeout because node --test puts no deadline on a module's top level.

14. The merge gate found three more, two of them the same defect in places this branch had not looked. A relative NODE_COMPILE_CACHE was handed to the children unchanged and Node resolves that string separately in each of them — the timed children run in temporary repositories, so an operator or a CI job that set a relative path would have given every spawn a cache of its own, the warm-up filling a directory none of them reads: the deadline failures this helper exists to prevent, wearing the costume of a shared cache. Resolved once now, against the directory the suite was started from. test/unit/cli.test.ts and scripts/pack-check.mjs ran the launcher with no OBOETE_HOME and so made cache/compile in the home of whoever ran them — the same shape as the warm-up's, caught by the Codex reviewer; the two test spawns go inside withTempHome and the packaging smoke run gets an mkdtempSync home it removes again, verified by deleting ~/.oboete/cache/compile and watching it not come back. And scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs resolved the data directory through a three-level nested conditional — javascript:S3358 on new code, and the one place this repository writes that rule's shape while 008 is busy retiring it elsewhere; it is a function with returns now, the shape src/launcher.mjs uses, which is the file it is a copy of.

15. The Codex connector was quota-blocked on that head ("You have reached your Codex usage limits for security reviews", to the push and to an explicit @codex review), so a review agent took its lens instead — the last two Codex findings were both a spawn escaping its temporary home — and found the caller the sweep had missed: the two tests in test/unit/privacy.test.ts that start the published bundle as a worker thread outside withTempHome. A worker copies the parent's environment, so with no OBOETE_HOME the launcher resolved the home of whoever ran the suite: reproduced against a substitute HOME, one unwrapped worker leaves ~/.oboete/cache/compile/v24.16.0-x64-cf738c9d-1000/de369f3e, 498 KB — the same entry removed from git in round 11. Where NODE_COMPILE_CACHE is set it costs three empty directories instead; where it is not is the check job's instrumented unit batch, the run the contract already describes as cold, and anyone running that file alone. Both tests are inside withTempHome now; with HOME empty and the variable unset the file passes 40 of 40 and leaves nothing behind.

16. Codex came back on the head after that with the sharpest version of the same question: the warm-up read its exit status, which says the run happened and not that it cached anything. Node refuses a NODE_COMPILE_CACHE it cannot use — a regular file, an unwritable path — without failing the process, and the launcher then falls back to the cache inside the throwaway home the warm-up deletes on its way out. Every timed child would compile from source with the variable set and every assertion above it green, and the only symptom would be a missed deadline on a loaded runner. The warm-up checks the directory's contents now, verified red with NODE_COMPILE_CACHE=/dev/null.

17. Codex asked the same question a third time, one shape narrower each round: an inherited NODE_COMPILE_CACHE that is blank or whitespace (a directory named by nothing), relative (resolved separately in every child's temporary repository), refused by Node (the launcher falls back to the cache inside the warm-up's throwaway home, which is then deleted), or refused but non-empty (which satisfies even a check on the contents). All four end identically — every timed child compiling from source, the variable set, every assertion green, a missed deadline on a loaded runner as the only symptom. Adding a fifth check was the wrong end of it: validating an arbitrary directory well enough to tell a working cache from a refused one is a bigger job than a test helper should carry, and nothing in the repository or CI sets the variable. The helper names build/compile-cache — a directory the suite makes, owns and can check — and ignores what the environment said. /dev/null, /sys, three spaces and a relative path all resolve to it, and e2e-hook passes with NODE_COMPILE_CACHE=/sys set. The two checks the previous rounds added stay, since they separate states this file cannot otherwise see.

18. CodeRabbit, two findings, one taken. scripts/pack-check.mjs gave its --version smoke run a temporary OBOETE_HOME and then handed it the ambient NODE_COMPILE_CACHE and NODE_DISABLE_COMPILE_CACHE with everything else; Node reads both before the launcher chooses anything, so an inherited one either puts the cache outside the directory the check just made or turns it off, and either way the run stops being the installed launcher's own behaviour, which is the only thing a packaging check is there to see. Both are deleted from the child environment now, verified by removing ~/.oboete/cache/compile and watching npm run pack-check and the full suite leave it absent. The other, that siblingEngine() should refuse a bundle whose basename is not oboete.mjs, is declined in the thread: that is the case the function's comment already describes, and the report names both files with their own sizes without claiming either loaded the other, so a basename check would only make it refuse to name a file that is in fact there.

src/launcher.mjs also had zero eslint rules until eslint.config.js named it — a .mjs under src/ matched neither files list, which is the reason the file is a real source file at all.

Gate

typecheck, lint, build, 1465 unit/migration/scripts (1463 pass, 2 skip) + 202 serial E2E/fault on Node 24.16.0 and 22.16.0, pack-check green, semgrep clean on the changed files, launcher pins green at umask 002, 022 and 077. Cold start re-measured against the final build, on a machine at load 3.48 rather than the idle one the earlier round used: every scenario passes, --version p50 48.3 ms, the hook 169–191 ms p50 against a 300 ms bound.

sonar-project.properties gains one coverage exclusion, src/launcher.mjs. The file is never imported: scripts/build.mjs:50 copies it verbatim to dist/oboete.mjs, and what the tests execute is that copy, in a child process, under a path sonar.exclusions already drops. In-process V8 coverage therefore cannot attribute a line back to src/launcher.mjs, and leaving it in would report a new hundred-line file at 0% on a metric the gate reads. What covers it is test/unit/launcher.test.ts, twenty-five pins driven through subprocesses, and eslint.config.js names the file in both of its files lists so lint still applies to it. Coverage on New Code passes at 93.8%.

sonar-project.properties gains one scoped suppression: jssecurity:S8707 ("Path Traversal via faulty LLM-supplied CLI arguments") off for scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs only. It fires on every read of --bundle there — a developer's own argument naming the build to measure, which that same script then spawns thirty times per scenario — and each push moved the line and minted a new issue key on both the PR and the branch analysis, three hand dispositions in one afternoon. Not in the frozen docs/evidence/quality-debt-2026-09/ledger.json, which predates it.

CI flakes seen on this branch, all of which pass on the sibling run of the same commit and none of which reproduce locally: staleness.test.ts's ENOTEMPTY teardown (#206), migration-matrix (#213), migration-promote (#214, and once as 'pending' !== 'clean' at its line 105), fault-storage's enospc scenario timing out at 648 ms against its 300 ms bound on a loaded runner (176 ms locally over three runs), and memory-scope.test.ts:296 returning an empty page on one of the two duplicate engine (24.x) runs of the documentation-only commit (#217 — the full unit batch runs green three times at this head and three times at the base af871c9a on Node 24, so it reproduces in neither arm; neither src/sharing.ts nor that test is touched by this branch).

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01JzUQDvTQgvz3XBbLrvbKGE

Summary by Sourcery

Split the CLI distribution into a cache-enabling launcher and engine bundle to reduce cold hook startup latency while preserving existing entry points and failure contracts.

New Features:

• Enable Node’s V8 compile cache before loading the CLI engine to reduce cold-start latency for hooks and other invocations.
• Add launcher safeguards for cache ownership, permissions, symlinks, relocatable data homes, and fail-open agent commands when the engine cannot be imported.

Bug Fixes:

• Restore hook cold-start performance to approximately the pre-regression baseline after the engine bundle grew.
• Ensure setup, packaging, replay, measurement, worker, and test paths consistently execute or report the correct launcher and engine artifacts.

Enhancements:

• Split the distribution into a small published launcher and a separate engine bundle while preserving existing entry points and installed hooks.
• Add comprehensive launcher behavior coverage and shared test compile-cache warming to keep timing-sensitive suites reliable.
• Update build, packaging, measurement, replay reporting, linting, coverage configuration, contracts, and developer documentation for the two-file distribution.

Build:

• Build and publish dist/engine.mjs alongside the copied, executable dist/oboete.mjs launcher.
• Compile the shared test compile-cache helper for use through Node’s --import option.

CI:

• Warm and share a compile cache across test processes and remove inherited settings that could disable or redirect it.

Documentation:

• Document the launcher/engine split, cache location and security model, updated artifact verification, and performance contract.

Tests:

• Add launcher tests covering cache creation and reuse, home resolution, permissions, symlinks, missing engines, setup wiring, and subprocess behavior.
• Update end-to-end, fault, CLI, privacy, and packaging tests for the launcher entry point and shared compile cache.

Chores:

• Exclude subprocess-only launcher coverage from Sonar and scope the relevant measurement-script security suppression.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Builds now produce separate launcher and engine files.
  • The launcher enables Node.js compile caching when a secure cache is available.
  • Build and replay reports include engine size and compile-cache status.
  • Package checks verify that the engine file is included.

• Bug Fixes

  • Improved compatibility with global installations and single-file bundles.
  • Setup now selects the appropriate launcher or engine file automatically.

• Documentation

  • Updated build output documentation to include the engine and viewer assets.

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• docs/dev/conventions.md is excluded by !docs/**
• specs/007-oboete-m1-alpha/contracts/cli.md is excluded by !specs/**
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• test/unit/launcher.test.ts is excluded by !test/unit/**
• test/unit/privacy.test.ts is excluded by !test/unit/**

📒 Files selected for processing (16)

• README.md
• eslint.config.js
• package.json
• scripts/build.mjs
• scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs
• scripts/pack-check.mjs
• scripts/pack-check.test.mjs
• sonar-project.properties
• src/fixture/replay-report.ts
• src/fixture/replay.ts
• src/launcher.mjs
• src/setup/setup.ts
• test/e2e-hook.test.ts
• test/e2e-inject.test.ts
• test/helpers/compile-cache.ts
• test/helpers/fault.ts

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---

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The build now emits separate engine.mjs and oboete.mjs files. The launcher enables a validated V8 compile cache before loading the engine. Runtime setup, replay reports, measurements, tests, packaging checks, linting, coverage, and documentation reflect the split.

Changes

Engine bundle and launcher

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Build outputs and launcher entry point scripts/build.mjs, src/launcher.mjs, eslint.config.js, sonar-project.properties	The build emits dist/engine.mjs and copies the launcher to dist/oboete.mjs. The launcher validates a private cache directory, enables the compile cache when safe, and imports the engine.
Runtime bundle path selection src/setup/setup.ts, src/fixture/replay-report.ts, src/fixture/replay.ts	Runtime setup selects the launcher when present. Fixture reporting resolves and measures the adjacent engine while preserving fallback behavior for unsplit bundles.
Measurement and distribution validation scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs, scripts/pack-check.mjs, scripts/pack-check.test.mjs, README.md	Cold-start reports include engine size and compile-cache state. Package checks require dist/engine.mjs and generate missing-file cases for every required artifact. Documentation describes the updated build output.
Shared compile-cache test setup package.json, test/helpers/compile-cache.ts, test/e2e-hook.test.ts, test/e2e-inject.test.ts, test/helpers/fault.ts	Tests preload a shared compile-cache helper and warm the bundle before end-to-end and fault suites. Repository-root discovery now uses the shared helper.

Priority: ⬆️ High

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes

Change: Bug fix · Severity of issue fixed: Medium

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Node
  participant Launcher
  participant CompileCache
  participant Engine
  participant RuntimeSetup
  Node->>Launcher: Execute dist/oboete.mjs
  Launcher->>CompileCache: Validate and enable cache
  Launcher->>Engine: Import dist/engine.mjs
  RuntimeSetup->>Launcher: Select launcher path when present
  RuntimeSetup->>Engine: Resolve adjacent engine for reporting

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Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to cb901

The split launcher and engine layout preserves the supported replay reporting behavior, with no remaining merge-blocking risk identified.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3 | ❌ 2

❌ Failed checks (2 warnings)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Linked Issues check	⚠️ Warning	Issue #210 requires three coding outcomes: latency attribution, removal of sync/work/sharing modules from the hook parse path, and a recorded hook baseline. The separate dist/engine.mjs bundle and `…	Add and record the required openDatabase measurements for migrations 0007 and 0008 and capture-write measurements with and without the new triggers. Include these results with the hook baseline.
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 42.86% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 21 functions across 13 files. (3 skipped:…	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the primary change: enabling the compile cache before loading the engine.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is detailed and relevant. It explains the motivation, implementation, security considerations, measurements, validation results, review history, and AI assistance. Although it does not…
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	The launcher, compile-cache setup, engine split, packaging, setup and replay updates, measurement tooling, documentation, lint configuration, CI, and tests support the startup, bundling, performance-m…

Full details: Linked Issues check

Explanation

Issue #210 requires three coding outcomes: latency attribution, removal of sync/work/sharing modules from the hook parse path, and a recorded hook baseline. The separate dist/engine.mjs bundle and dist/oboete.mjs launcher address the parse-path requirement. The PR records an approximately 185 ms hook median and updates measurement tooling. The available summary still does not show openDatabase measurements for migrations 0007 and 0008 or capture-write measurements with and without the new triggers. The latency-attribution requirement remains unmet.

Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 42.86% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 21 functions across 13 files. (3 skipped: 3 unsupported.)

✨ Finishing Touches 💡 1

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• Create stacked PR
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• Create PR with unit tests
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📝 Code Review	✅ Completed 2026-09-13T00:16:16.658943Z	bd76090	New commits

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Reviewer's Guide

The PR restores cold-hook startup performance by publishing a small launcher that enables a validated per-user Node compile cache before importing the separately built engine, while preserving existing CLI/install paths and updating measurement, packaging, documentation, and tests to distinguish the executable launcher from the engine bundle.

Sequence diagram for compile-cached CLI startup

sequenceDiagram
    participant Node
    participant Launcher as dist/oboete.mjs
    participant Cache as User compile cache
    participant Engine as dist/engine.mjs
    Node->>Launcher: Start CLI or hook process
    Launcher->>Cache: mkdirSync(cache, recursive, mode 0700)
    Launcher->>Cache: lstatSync(cache)
    alt owned closed directory
        Launcher->>Cache: enableCompileCache(cache)
    end
    Launcher->>Engine: import('./engine.mjs')
    Engine-->>Node: Run CLI or hook command

Loading

Flow diagram for launcher cache directory selection

flowchart TD
    A[Start launcher] --> B{Absolute XDG_CACHE_HOME?}
    B -- Yes --> C[XDG_CACHE_HOME/oboete/compile]
    B -- No --> D[~/.cache/oboete/compile]
    C --> E[mkdirSync recursive mode 0700]
    D --> E
    E --> F{Directory owned, closed, and not symlink?}
    F -- Yes --> G[enableCompileCache cache]
    F -- No --> H[Skip cache]
    G --> I[Import dist/engine.mjs]
    H --> I

Loading

File-Level Changes

Change	Details	Files
Split the published CLI entry point from the engine bundle so Node can enable V8 compile caching before compiling the engine.	Build the CLI bundle as dist/engine.mjs. Copy the small, executable launcher to dist/oboete.mjs and have it configure a per-user cache before dynamically importing the engine. Preserve the existing shebang, permissions, entry-point name, and fallback behavior for incomplete distributions. Add lint coverage and documentation for the new launcher architecture.	src/launcher.mjs scripts/build.mjs eslint.config.js README.md docs/dev/conventions.md sonar-project.properties specs/009-memory-core/contracts/injection-performance.md specs/009-memory-core/tasks.md
Implement guarded, user-scoped compile-cache management with fail-open behavior and regression coverage.	Use $XDG_CACHE_HOME/oboete/compile or ~/.cache/oboete/compile, creating it owner-only. Reject symlinks, non-directories, foreign ownership, and cache directories accessible to group/other users. Leave the command functional without caching when setup or validation fails, and accept Node's environment override semantics. Test cache creation, cache reuse and repair, permission/ancestor cases, symlink rejection, and inaccessible homes.	src/launcher.mjs test/unit/launcher.test.ts
Update runtime wiring so installed hooks and spawned processes execute the launcher while bundle-size reporting identifies the engine.	Make setup derive dist/oboete.mjs beside the engine instead of using the engine as the hook target. Keep CLI tests that need fresh module evaluation importing the engine directly. Make replay and cold-start measurement spawn the launcher, resolve symlinked installs, and report engine size/cache state. Require both artifacts in package validation and update pack-check tests.	src/setup/setup.ts test/unit/cli.test.ts src/fixture/replay.ts src/fixture/replay-report.ts scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs scripts/pack-check.mjs scripts/pack-check.test.mjs

Assessment against linked issues

Issue	Objective	Addressed	Explanation
ojungo69/oboete#210	Restore capture-hook cold-start performance and recover sufficient headroom under the 300 ms product deadline so the fault suites no longer flake because of the regression.	✅
ojungo69/oboete#210	Ensure the expanded engine bundle does not incur its full parse and compile cost on every hook invocation by enabling Node's V8 compile cache before loading the engine, while preserving existing CLI, installer, and hook entry points.	✅
ojungo69/oboete#210	Attribute and document the performance regression with repeatable measurements that provide a baseline for future hook-path changes.	✅

Possibly linked issues

• Capture hook is 19% slower after #190: 187 ms → 222 ms median, and the fault suites now flake on CI #210: PR splits the bundle and enables compile caching, reducing hook medians from 222 ms toward the 187 ms baseline.
• Capture hook is 19% slower after #190: 187 ms → 222 ms median, and the fault suites now flake on CI #210: The PR reduces capture-hook startup latency, directly mitigating the timing-sensitive failures described by the issue.

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Up to standards ✅

🟢 Issues 0 issues

Results:
0 new issues

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🟢 Metrics 26 complexity · 0 duplication

Metric	Results
Complexity	26
Duplication	0

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Inline comments:
In `@scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs`:
- Line 59: Update the cacheWarm calculation to validate compileCache with the
launcher's lstatSync-based directory checks before readdirSync, rejecting
symlinks, non-directories, improperly owned or permissioned directories. Catch
validation or directory-reading failures and treat the cache as cold instead of
propagating the error.

In `@src/launcher.mjs`:
- Line 43: Update the compile-cache gating around ownedAndClosed and
enableCompileCache so validation covers the complete ancestor chain from the
cache directory to the trusted root, rejecting any writable or replaceable
ancestor before enabling the cache. Preserve cache use only when every required
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📒 Files selected for processing (11)

• README.md
• eslint.config.js
• scripts/build.mjs
• scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs
• scripts/pack-check.mjs
• scripts/pack-check.test.mjs
• sonar-project.properties
• src/fixture/replay-report.ts
• src/fixture/replay.ts
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Inline comments:
In `@scripts/pack-check.mjs`:
- Line 193: Update the environment object used by the smoke-test launcher to
explicitly clear inherited NODE_COMPILE_CACHE and NODE_DISABLE_COMPILE_CACHE
values while retaining OBOETE_HOME: smokeHome and the rest of process.env.
Ensure the launcher controls compile-cache behavior for smoke tests without
writing outside smokeHome.

In `@src/fixture/replay-report.ts`:
- Line 51: Update siblingEngine() to derive and accept a sibling engine only
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• specs/007-oboete-m1-alpha/contracts/cli.md is excluded by !specs/**
• specs/007-oboete-m1-alpha/research.md is excluded by !specs/**
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📒 Files selected for processing (16)

• README.md
• eslint.config.js
• package.json
• scripts/build.mjs
• scripts/measure-cold-start.mjs
• scripts/pack-check.mjs
• scripts/pack-check.test.mjs
• sonar-project.properties
• src/fixture/replay-report.ts
• src/fixture/replay.ts
• src/launcher.mjs
• src/setup/setup.ts
• test/e2e-hook.test.ts
• test/e2e-inject.test.ts
• test/helpers/compile-cache.ts
• test/helpers/fault.ts

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Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
93.8% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud