compiler-parity: STEP 17-18 gist publication is best-effort, not gh-only

[ruvnet]

Hypothesis

Given the Dream Machine's self-hosted compiler, when STEP 17-18 is changed from unconditionally requiring gh gist create --public to describing gist publication as best-effort across whatever tool the environment actually provides (explicit GIST=LOCAL fallback), then future gh-less nights should no longer need to reinvent the fallback — subject to: no other step's semantics change, tests stay green, and the ACCEPT/REJECT/INCONCLUSIVE / no-self-merge / no-fabricated-GIST_URL invariants are untouched.

Candidate

packages/compile/src/index.ts → step17to18Publish(): replaced the unconditional `gh gist create --public` instruction with best-effort wording (gh, an MCP gist tool, or — if neither exists — GIST=LOCAL + commit the report into the PR), and made explicit that missing gist tooling is not a FALLBACK/stop condition. ~10 line diff, one conceptual change.

Evaluation Receipt

Real evaluator: npx vitest run.

• Baseline (parent 7933c359): Test Files 7 passed (7), Tests 98 passed (98).
• Candidate: Test Files 7 passed (7), Tests 99 passed (99) — 98 baseline + 1 new pinning test, 0 regressions.
• Golden snapshot regenerated; diff is exactly the STEP 17-18 paragraph (see the snapshot hunk in this PR).
• Self-hosting closure: re-ran node packages/cli/dist/bin.js compile dream.config.json after the fix against this repo's own real dream.config.json and confirmed the corrected wording is what tonight's routine prompt actually contains.

Baseline

Parent commit 7933c3599abe22df5290f4609d1f93f598feb3de (main, pre-cycle). 98/98 tests green.

Darwin Lineage

Not run — no numeric fitness landscape for a documentation/prompt-text fix. Skip recorded explicitly rather than fabricated.

Evidence

• OBSERVATION: which gh → absent this session; live MCP tool search for a gist-creation tool → none found.
• OBSERVATION: docs/dream-cycle/2026-08-13-security-adversarial-report.md (lines 229-234) independently hit the identical gap 17 nights earlier and improvised GIST=LOCAL.
• MEASUREMENT: npx vitest run 98/98 → 99/99.
• DECISION: encode the fallback into @dream-machine/compile (this repo's own stated single source of truth) instead of leaving it as per-night improvisation.

Reward-Hack Check

Self-adversarial pass (no second agent spawned — recorded limitation): no assertions removed (one added, asserting the old unconditional sentence is gone via not.toMatch, so a revert would be caught); no gold answers touched; evaluator unmodified; no threshold/cache changes; ~10-line diff. No unresolved signal.

Security Review

No security-sensitive surface: no prompt-injection vector, no MCP/tool authority change, no credential path touched, no filesystem/network scope change; snapshot regenerated deterministically from source.

Regression Analysis

99/99 tests pass, including all 98 pre-existing tests unmodified in assertion content (only the golden snapshot's expected string changed, as the deliberate output of this diff). npm run build and npm run lint both clean. Pre-existing, unrelated: npm run typecheck's tsc -b --noEmit path fails with TS18002: the 'files' list in config file tsconfig.json is empty — reproduces identically on the parent commit before this diff (root tsconfig.json is a references-only composite file); not touched or caused by this candidate.

ADR

None — this is a wording/parameter-level fix inside the compiler, not an architectural decision (per this repo's own STEP 19 guidance: "never for parameter changes, benchmark additions, docs, or minor prompt/routing tweaks").

Gist

No gh/MCP gist tool available tonight (the exact gap this candidate fixes) — published as a committed artifact instead: docs/dream-cycle/2026-08-30-compiler-parity-report.md. GIST=LOCAL.

Issue

#54

Witness

report_sha256 : 53947cfb707b7102627113c64687bb04e24adea7648ad2977447cbdd609c1e8d
session_commit: 7933c3599abe22df5290f4609d1f93f598feb3de
witness       : c1fe7926ffa1cd4cb49688c30de3115622582682948c001c935fce9d5f664eb5

Verify: sha256sum docs/dream-cycle/2026-08-30-compiler-parity-report.md then printf '%s%s' "<that hash>" "7933c3599abe22df5290f4609d1f93f598feb3de" | sha256sum must equal the witness above.

Merge Policy

Guarded auto-merge is enabled for this repo (dream.config.json → autoMerge: true) but only for a PR carrying the repo's explicit low-risk label, green on every required check, touching no evaluation/gate/safety infrastructure. This PR does not carry that label — it changes the compiler's own prompt-generation logic (arguably gate-adjacent: it changes what future nightly sessions are told to do), so it is being left human-review-only. This session never merges and is not requesting auto-merge.

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