test(conformance): enforce authority-defect mutations and helper boundaries

[CompleteDotTech]

Ready-for-review re-creation of draft PR #3 (same head 9e1162724a60): GitHub's REST PATCH {"draft":false} returns 200 but silently leaves the draft flag set (verified 3×). The working conversion path is the GraphQL mutation markPullRequestReadyForReview (GraphQL mutations work with this token; only queries fail) — confirmed afterwards on this PR (HTTP 200, isDraft:false). The draft was held through the complete gate before this PR was opened: local corepack pnpm@10.34.0 verify exit 0 and fork CI run 33304638130 concluded success on exactly this head.

Summary

Audit of OpenCoven#38 against upstream PR OpenCoven#74 found the aggregate/release-binding machinery fully covered upstream, while two harness-quality requirements of OpenCoven#38 were not yet enforced by tests anywhere in-repo:

• "mutation-test representative authority defects, not only helper functions"
• "negative-test every assertion helper" (the SDK-side validator helpers had only indirect coverage)

This PR lands exactly those two suites on top of main (PR OpenCoven#73 state), without duplicating any OpenCoven#74 content (it extends, and is compatible with, OpenCoven#74's lock/schema/release-binding work).

What changes

• tests/conformance-authority-mutations.spec.ts — a 58-case representative authority-defect matrix (plus controls) proving the aggregator rejects a record whenever an authority misbehaves: wrong pairing secret accepted, replay accepted, pairing deny/expiry hidden, shared failure budget and rate limit dropped, double exchange, missing Content-Length: 0 control case, proxy-rejection envelope collapse, stale/replaced discovery, malformed/non-canonical cursors, revoked-credential reads, missing deadlines, native-keychain/trust-binding fail-open, Unix peer-identity / malicious COVEN_HOME / wrong-peer-UID / Windows constructed- and foreign-pipe defects, evidence-redaction assertions (prompts, message bodies, attachments, command output), authority-takeover downgrades (mode/discovery-version/mechanism), TTL drops, engine/registry/commit/tarball provenance drift, operator-state mutation, retained socket handles/private paths, non-loopback networks, workspace-link and source-checkout dependencies, reordered assertion lists — and, at the engine level, a coverage check blind to missing assertions, a summary that counts skips as passes, and a lying renderer are all caught structurally.
• tests/conformance-helper-boundaries.spec.ts — direct negative tests for every assertion helper (expectTimestamp, expectCommit, expectSha256, expectTarballs, expectCoverage, expectNotCovered, expectIsolation, expectCrossAssertion, expectAssertionArray, expectString, expectBoolean, expectInteger, expectCaveRecord, expectExactObject, registry validation, duplicate-JSON-key rejection) plus an exhaustive redaction-scan matrix: all 19 forbidden field names (in normal and upper-case forms), all six secret patterns (bearer, header, private-key, JWT, ghp_/npm_ tokens, 43-char credential runs), all five private-path families (19 paths), non-JSON values, the 32-level depth bound, the 50,000-node bound, and the 16 KiB string bound. Also pins that sdk/chat scope IDs can never appear in notCovered ([SDK 0.1.0][P0] Prove the packed SDK with cross-repository real-authority conformance OpenCoven/sdk#38 AC3).
• .github/workflows/ci.yml — one inert line (workflow_dispatch:) so the fork can run real CI on this branch; droppable in review.

OpenCoven#38 acceptance-criteria audit (this branch + upstream OpenCoven#74)

OpenCoven#38 criterion	Status
One command produces a deterministic evidence record	✅ in-repo (conformance:aggregate; order-independence tested here and in OpenCoven#74)
Complete Cave+Coven journeys pass on every supported OS/arch	⛔ cross-repo — pending Chat schema-v2 records (below)
SDK and Chat absent from notCovered for read-only 0.1.0	✅ in-repo — coverage must be all-true; notCovered allowlist excludes sdk/chat (now directly tested here)
Fixture/vendored/packed/consumer-lock digests match	✅ in-repo — cross-platform digest equality enforced and tested
Every required assertion ID appears exactly once	✅ in-repo — coverage + exact-order checks, missing/duplicate/unexpected/fail/skip all rejected (tested here)
Representative broken-authority mutations are caught	✅ landed by this PR (58-case matrix)
Harness cannot touch operator state	✅ in-repo — isolation proofs (before/after digests, owned roots) enforced and mutated-tested here
Retained evidence passes redaction scans	✅ in-repo — bounded scan; exhaustive pattern matrix landed by this PR
Release candidate cannot advance without a named passing aggregate	✅ via upstream OpenCoven#74 (conformanceEvidence.aggregateRecord + publish-mode gate); null on main until records exist

Outstanding cross-repo evidence (cannot be produced in this repo)

OpenCoven/chat (owner: Chat/BunsDev) owes schema-v2 platform records produced by Chat's native harness, one each for darwin-arm64, linux-x64, and win32-x64, embedding the unmodified Cave renderConformanceRecord output, against the committed registry at the candidate SDK commit, with matching Cave/Coven/SDK/Chat commits, release versions, tarball digests, isolation proofs, and redaction. Until all three exist, aggregateRecord stays null and publication stays blocked — by design. No evidence is fabricated here.

Observable behavior / compatibility

Test-only plus one inert CI line: no runtime, schema, CLI, or packaging behavior changes. conformance:aggregate, the evidence schema, and the release gate are untouched. Both new suites run inside the ordinary verify gate and CI; no new dependencies.

Validation

• corepack pnpm@10.34.0 verify — exit 0 on the pushed head (typecheck, build, 1,366 tests / 60 files incl. 153 new, verify:contracts, verify:package, verify:release, coverage, stress, lint)
• git diff --check — clean
• New suites: 69 + 84 tests, all green

Release implications

None by itself; it hardens the evidence gate that OpenCoven#38/OpenCoven#41 depend on. A release candidate still cannot advance without the named passing aggregate — unchanged.

Assignee: @CompleteDotTech

Advances OpenCoven#38

Upstream PR (one click for a maintainer): https://github.com/OpenCoven/sdk/compare/main...CompleteDotTech:sdk:feat/conformance-evidence-38?expand=1

[CompleteDotTech]

Recreated upstream as OpenCoven#77: OpenCoven#77. Closing this duplicate fork PR; review continues upstream.