COHERENCE.md §1.2 makes "a `pcall` around background wiring must log
attributed failure, never discard it" a standing rule, and names
`ensure_server`'s swallowed spawn failure as its canonical case — the
exact function this branch modifies. Round 1 deferred the resolver's
silent `pcall` as a Stage 3 concern. Under that rule it is not a
deferral, it is a fresh instance of the named anti-pattern added by a PR
touching the cited function, made worse by the memo: a raised error is
buried permanently for that directory and never observed again.
A resolver that raises, or returns a non-string non-nil, now leaves an
attributed trace naming the language and the directory. Returning nil
remains the documented decline and stays silent — pinned, so "report
failures" cannot be satisfied by reporting every resolution.
The report goes through `pmacs.editor.set_status`, NOT `pmacs.error`,
and that choice is the finding:
**`pmacs.error` does not exist.** Fifteen call sites across `async.lua`
(5), `syntax.lua` (4), `lsp.lua`, `mcp.lua`, `fs.lua`, `editops.lua`,
`autosave.lua`, and `commands/default.lua` report background failures
through it, each guarded `if pmacs.error then ...`. It is defined
nowhere in production; the only assignment in the tree is a test stub at
`src/editor.rs:9881`, and `type(pmacs.error)` is nil in a fresh
`EditorState` (probed, not inferred). `pmacs.errors` (plural) in
compile.lua is an unrelated namespace. So all fifteen reports are dead,
and the guard makes the silence look deliberate — which is why nobody
noticed. Writing the test is what caught it: the first version of this
fix used `pmacs.error` and its pin failed against a working
implementation.
Both bites recorded: dropping the report entirely fails the pin, and so
does reporting ONLY through `pmacs.error` — the dead-channel variant
this nearly shipped.
Not fixed here, deliberately: defining `pmacs.error`, the fifteen dead
sites, and surfacing the spawn failure itself. That last is Priority 1
work and a user-visible product behavior — what message, where, with
what guidance — so it needs its own framing rather than being smuggled
into an affinity PR.
Levi Neuwirth
ebcd2c4f6f