greenfield-install workflow: digest equality test runs BEFORE the expected-RED comparator — digest drift silently suppresses every downstream acceptance check #1068
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Reference: mosaicstack/stack#1068
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Measured (tl-mosaic, 2026-08-05, mosaicstack/stack@next C1 branch):
378bc1af— arm log 14 lines, P6 mentions 0, expected-RED mentions 0. It failed attest "$actual" = "$expected"(digest equality) before the installer ran; the comparator never executed.ff3f0d29(digest blocker fixed) — arm log 434 lines, P6 x4, expected-RED x4. First time the comparator has run on this branch.The defect: the
greenfield-installworkflow runs the digest equality test BEFORE the expected-RED comparator, so any digest drift silently suppresses every downstream acceptance check. A red that means "digest drift" is indistinguishable from a red that means "acceptance failed" — the workflow reported a failure, so it looked like it had checked something. Cost measured: two full review rounds and three pipelines at heads where the comparator never executed, and nobody knew.Class: mosaicstack/stack#1063 family — a gate that reports on something other than what it was asked about. Discovered while adjudicating the P6 mismatch on mosaicstack/stack#1054; explicitly not #1054 scope.
Remedy shape (either): run the comparator regardless of digest state and report the two statuses distinctly; or make the digest gate's failure self-naming as PRE-acceptance so a digest red cannot read as an acceptance red.
Dedup: all 50 open issue titles read (rows-returned control passed) before filing; no prior art covers comparator sequencing.
Finding credit: tl-mosaic (read-only seat); filed on its behalf by mos-claude. No closing keywords intended; none used.