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docs: add versioned plugin advisories for issue 1396 - #3387

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eleshar merged 33 commits into
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docs/plugin-advisories-1396
Sep 27, 2026
Merged

eleshar merged 33 commits into
developfrom
docs/plugin-advisories-1396

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@eleshar

@eleshar eleshar commented Sep 19, 2026 •

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Documentation Pull Request

Linked issues

Relates to #1396

Implementation tracking: block-plugin-scaffold#37 and block-theme-scaffold#9

What changed

  • Updated docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md to use the current block-plugin-scaffold and block-theme-scaffold generators as the only implementation sources.
  • Reclassified replacement statuses against the current generator develop branches; available entries link to shipped code and planned entries link to generator tracking issues.
  • Corrected Cachebuster guidance to use WordPress build-manifest versions rather than claiming filemtime() proves content freshness.
  • Added a bounded, hashed IP/email rate-limit example to the public newsletter REST route.
  • Added the missing pop-up trigger markup and made the dialog example executable as copied.
  • Reworked the plugin register so concrete payment gateways require a controlled project allowlist; no gateway is globally approved by the organisation register.
  • Corrected the Redirection advisory to prefer fleet-managed nginx rules for migrations and bulk changes.

Honesty notes

  • The retired starter repositories are no longer cited as implementation sources.
  • available means verified in WordPress core or the current generator develop; planned means the linked generator issue still owns implementation.
  • The newsletter example stores only WordPress hashes of rate-limit keys and documents the need for a shared limiter across multiple application servers.
  • CodeRabbit findings on Cachebuster, newsletter throttling, pop-up trigger markup and payment-gateway specificity were independently checked and addressed.

Acceptance criteria mapping

  • The advisory document is committed and linked from the register.
  • Every Section 1 advisory names a replacement or alternative and links current evidence or tracking.
  • Section 2 includes newsletter and <dialog> reference implementations; Section 3 gives reasons for retained plugins; Section 4 gives hosting-stack reasons.
  • Review owner and last-reviewed date are present.
  • Current scaffold tracking replaces the retired starter-repository links.

Audience & placement

  • Audience: LightSpeed developers and site maintainers choosing plugins for client sites.
  • Location: docs/ in this repository.

Preview / Screenshots

Not applicable: Markdown documents only; they render in GitHub’s file view.

Notes

  • Merged current develop before applying the documentation fix.
  • Validation: direct Markdownlint (2 files), Prettier (2 documents), embedded PHP lint, embedded JavaScript syntax check, branch-name validation, git diff --check, and Semgrep (0 findings) passed.
  • The changelog safety audit reports 0 critical errors; its existing repository warnings remain outside this PR.
  • Repository-wide link and frontmatter validators still report pre-existing failures outside the changed files.

Changelog

Added

  • Plugin Advisories and Register — Added current scaffold tracking, safe asset versioning, a rate-limited newsletter example and project-controlled gateway approval. (#1396)

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • Documentation
    • Added plugin advisories and an approved plugin register, clarifying which plugins are approved, conditional, transitional, or not globally approved.
    • Documented usage restrictions and caveats for plugin alternatives, including form use, email behavior, accessibility, redirects, analytics, and hosting considerations.
    • Added guidance for project-specific approval of payment gateways and for verifying plugin status before making changes.
  • Changelog
    • Updated the last-updated date and added an Unreleased entry for the plugin documentation.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change adds a plugin register and versioned advisories. They define plugin statuses, native replacement guidance, Gravity Forms usage rules, plugin retention guidance, and hosting-stack advisories.

Changes

Plugin approval and advisories

Layer / File(s) Summary
Plugin status and advisory framework
docs/PLUGIN_REGISTER.md, docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md, CHANGELOG.md
The register defines approved and transitional plugins. The advisories document defines shipped and planned statuses and describes the redundant-plugin notice mechanism. The changelog records the advisories document.
Native replacement advisories
docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md
The document maps plugins to native replacements and records status and implementation caveats.
Gravity Forms alternatives
docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md
The document limits Gravity Forms to specified form types and describes newsletter and pop-up alternatives.
Retained plugins and hosting guidance
docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md
The document lists plugins that remain plugins and records hosting-stack guidance and references.

Priority: ➖ Normal

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Change: Other

Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to 6e4b8

This PR adds guidance documents only. Before or shortly after merging, tighten four areas:

  • Make the payment-gateway entry an explicit list.
  • Add the promised throttle to the newsletter sample.
  • Qualify the cache-versioning claim.
  • Fix the pop-up example so it works when copied as shown.
🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5
✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Docstring Coverage ✅ Passed No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 0 functions across 0…
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: adding versioned plugin advisories for issue 1396.
✨ Finishing Touches
🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
  • Commit to this branch
  • Create a new PR

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github-actions Bot commented Sep 19, 2026 •

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📋 Changelog Quality Validation

Metric Count
✅ Passing 133
❌ Failing 10
🆕 New failures in this PR 0
📦 Pre-existing failures 10

Status

✅ Validation PASSED - No new failures introduced by this PR.
Note: 10 pre-existing failure(s) remain in the Unreleased section.

No action required.

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PR Template Routing

Branch Type: docs
Scope: plugin-advisories-1396
Template: pr_docs.md
Labels Applied: type:docs

This PR was automatically routed based on the branch naming strategy.

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mergify Bot commented Sep 19, 2026 •

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This pull request does not currently match the merge queue conditions, so it cannot be queued from here. The box comes back if it matches again.

@ashleyshaw
ashleyshaw requested a review from krugazul September 21, 2026 05:15
@eleshar

eleshar commented Sep 21, 2026

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Heads-up: this PR body does not include the sections from its routed template (docs/ → pr_feature.md). Missing: ## Linked issues, ## Changelog. Please copy those sections into the body with real content. The template-routing check now fails on the next push when required sections are missing or left as template boilerplate.

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@eleshar we will no longer be using the starter plugin and theme. We are generating our plugins and themes from the following 2 tools.

https://github.com/lightspeedwp/block-plugin-scaffold
https://github.com/lightspeedwp/block-theme-scaffold

@ashleyshaw ashleyshaw modified the milestones: Backlog, v1.1 Sep 22, 2026
@ashleyshaw ashleyshaw self-assigned this Sep 22, 2026
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No description provided.

@eleshar

eleshar commented Sep 27, 2026

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Correction: I was wrong about this PR being 2,587 commits behind

In a triage note I reported this branch as "2,587 commits behind, cheapest path is a fresh branch off develop". That was wrong on the number that matters, and it pointed at the wrong remedy. Measured properly:

$ git rev-list --count HEAD..origin/develop      # develop not in branch
6
$ git rev-list --count origin/develop..HEAD      # branch not in develop
2587
$ git rev-list --count --no-merges origin/develop..HEAD
2145

I had quoted the second figure as if it were the first. 2,587 is branch-only ancestry — noise from a long-lived branch whose merge base is efc5a0ce90 — not how far behind develop has moved. The branch is 6 commits behind.

No fresh branch and no rebase is needed. I tested it in a throwaway worktree and aborted without pushing:

$ git merge --no-commit origin/develop
Auto-merging CHANGELOG.md
Automatic merge went well; stopped before committing as requested
CONFLICTS: none

And none of this PR's content is superseded — the two documents it adds do not exist on develop at all:

file on develop
docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md absent
docs/PLUGIN_REGISTER.md absent
CHANGELOG.md exists, merges cleanly

So the real delta is 3 files and it still stands.

Proposal: a plain merge develop into docs/plugin-advisories-1396 — the same treatment applied to #3558, #3371 and #3361, which are now MERGEABLE. It is a merge commit, so no force-push and no history rewrite, and this branch's own commits are untouched.

Say the word and I will do that. Not opening anything new, and not pushing until you confirm.

…ries-1396

Brings the branch 7 commits up to date. `git merge` reported no conflicts and
none of this PR's content needed adjusting: the two documents it adds,
docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md and docs/PLUGIN_REGISTER.md, still do not exist on
develop.

One defect the merge itself introduced and this commit fixes: the CHANGELOG.md
frontmatter was concatenated, leaving six keys defined twice -- once from each
side. YAML resolves duplicates last-wins, so this branch's
`last_updated: "2026-09-25"` was being silently discarded in favour of develop's
`'2026-09-15'`, which is the backward move the review flagged. The duplicated
double-quoted set is dropped, develop's single-quoted block is kept to minimise
divergence, and the date is set to 2026-09-27, when this change lands.

Verified after the fix: no duplicate keys remain in the frontmatter, and
`npm run validate:changelog` passes.
@eleshar

eleshar commented Sep 27, 2026

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The 4 CodeRabbit findings from 2026-09-24 are all already fixed

develop is merged (08081a045b) and this PR is current. On the findings: the review says "Actionable comments posted: 4", but each was fixed in commits 3951607–5d6a1da (CodeRabbit's own "✅ Addressed in commits" note), so there is nothing left to apply. Verified against the content that will ship, not against the review text:

1. "Do not claim filemtime() eliminates stale-cache risk" — addressed. docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md:40 now says the opposite of the flagged claim:

Do not use filemtime() as proof of freshness: timestamps can remain unchanged when content changes.

2. "Implement the promised rate limit in the newsletter sample" (CWE-770) — addressed. The sample has a real throttle: ls_newsletter_rate_limited() at :103, get_transient at :123, set_transient at :131, and the guard if ( ls_newsletter_rate_limited( $email ) ) at :139.

3. "Define site-popup-trigger in the example" — addressed. The element is defined at :181 (<button id="site-popup-trigger" type="button">Open offer</button>) before the script uses it at :191.

4. "Make the payment-gateway entry an explicit allowlist" (Major) — addressed. docs/PLUGIN_REGISTER.md:37 no longer approves unspecified gateways:

| Concrete payment gateway plugins | No concrete gateway is globally approved by this register. WooCommerce core …

So: 4 valid findings, 4 already addressed, 0 to apply, 0 to dismiss. There are no open review threads to reply to or resolve — CodeRabbit auto-resolved them when those commits landed.

The CHANGES_REQUESTED state is therefore stale, from the 2026-09-24 review that predates the fixes. Requesting a fresh review below.

One defect the merge itself introduced, fixed in 08081a045b

Worth recording because it was invisible until the merge: CHANGELOG.md's frontmatter was concatenated, leaving title, description, file_type, created_date, last_updated and consolidation_phase defined twice — once from each side. YAML resolves duplicates last-wins, so this branch's last_updated: "2026-09-25" was being silently discarded in favour of develop's '2026-09-15'. The duplicated set is dropped, develop's single-quoted block is kept to minimise divergence, and the date set to 2026-09-27. npm run validate:changelog passes.

@eleshar

eleshar commented Sep 27, 2026

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@CodeRabbit full review

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coderabbitai Bot commented Sep 27, 2026 •

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⚠️ Action not completed

Pull request base or head changed.

@eleshar
eleshar merged commit 7355261 into develop Sep 27, 2026
27 checks passed
@eleshar
eleshar deleted the docs/plugin-advisories-1396 branch September 27, 2026 15:47
@linear-code

linear-code Bot commented Sep 27, 2026

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GIT-2399

eleshar added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 27, 2026
Merged as a commit rather than a rebase, and the branch was fetched immediately
beforehand because the automation on it has force-pushed before.

This clears the only remaining failure, the rule that requires same-repository
pull requests to be current with develop, which was failing because develop had
moved on #3387, #3525 and #3605.

One conflict, in agents/document-reviewer-agent/AGENT.md, and it is a
content-against-footer collision rather than a semantic disagreement: this branch
appends a Qodo PR-Agent integration section at the end of the file, while develop
appends the standard footer at the same place. Resolved as a union, with the Qodo
section kept and develop's footer placed after it, because the footer policy
matches the "Have questions?" line only at end of file. The resolved file has
exactly one footer line.

Verified after the merge: this branch's three qodo-pr-agent suites pass 117/117;
audit-specs.sh reports sequential numbering 001 to 019 with no gaps and 19/19
naming compliance; the resolved file carries a single footer; semgrep ran 38 rules
over it with 0 findings. CHANGELOG.md merged as a union, going from 408 entries on
each side to 409, and the changelog validator reports the same ten failures
develop already carries. Seven files repo-wide contain conflict-marker text; all
seven are untouched by this merge and already present on develop.

CodeRabbit could not review this merge. The organisation quota reads 0 of 3 and
resets 2026-10-01, and a full-branch review exceeds the 150-file limit at 1886
files because of the develop merge. The verification above was used in its place.
eleshar pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 29, 2026
The changelog entry and the pull request body both stated that the Section 1
advisories table had a two-column header while its rows carried four, so
CommonMark dropped the Status and Notes columns. That defect is not present in
the content merged by #3387.

docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md parses cell by cell as four header cells, four
delimiter cells and thirteen four-cell rows, with the header and delimiter
counts equal, so no column is ever dropped. The only change this pull request
makes to that table is relabelling Caveat as Notes plus re-padding to the
compact form used elsewhere in the file.

The changelog entry is rewritten to describe what actually changed, and keeps
the three real behaviour changes: the newsletter form surviving a failed
request, a blocked address being distinguished from a server fault, and atomic
rate-limit counting. FEEDBACK_RESPONSE.md records the withdrawn claim as item 17
with the evidence, and the summary no longer asserts that nothing was rejected.

No shipped behaviour moves. The change is documentation only, and no test
asserted the false claim, so none needed updating; the table shape was verified
directly instead.
eleshar added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 29, 2026
…te and renumber residue (#3604)

* Correct the spec 018 self-references and the advisories table header

Two defects in the content that reached develop, found by auditing the merged
tree rather than the pull request descriptions.

The 016 to 018 renumber moved the directory, updated CATALOG.md and rewrote the
path references, but left six self-references still naming 016. A grep for
"016-claude-cloud-environment" could not find these because they never carried
the slug:

- tasks.md frontmatter: "Task list for 016 Standardised Claude Code Cloud
  Environment"
- tasks.md T039: run /speckit-analyze "for 016"
- spec.md: "How should spec 016 handle this?"
- spec.md: "A workflow runs the 016 Jest suites"
- spec.md: "contract tests and the spec 016 documentation"
- data-model.md: the branch-cleanup rule marked "New (016)"

FR-016 and the "16/16 questions" counts in plan.md are requirement and count
references, not spec numbers, and are deliberately untouched.

The Section 1 table in docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md was also malformed. Its header
and separator declared two columns while all thirteen body rows carry four, so
under CommonMark the extra cells are dropped and the status and notes columns
never rendered. That silently hid exactly the content three of the four
CodeRabbit findings were about, including the filemtime freshness caveat. The
second header cell held a link to block-plugin-scaffold, which is a value
rather than a column name, and the generator repositories are already tabulated
above the table. The header is now Plugin, Native replacement, Status, Notes,
with a matching four-column separator.

Verified: the spec docs suite passes 37/37, and audit-specs.sh reports
"Sequential numbering verified: 001 to 018 with no gaps" with 18/18 naming
compliance. semgrep ran 38 rules over 11 files with 0 findings. CodeRabbit
review of these changes: 0 findings.

* Address the review findings on the merged advisory and spec content

A full CodeRabbit pass over the two merge commits reported four issues, and
fixing them surfaced four more on the fixes themselves. All are real.

The newsletter example destroyed the form on failure. Its error branch said
"Please try again later" while replacing the form with a paragraph, so the
address was gone and retry was impossible. The form is now replaced only when
the request succeeds; on failure the message goes into an in-place alert region
so the address survives. A rejected fetch is caught too, and reports through the
same region rather than throwing past it.

The rate limiter counted with a get_transient()/set_transient() read-modify-write.
Two concurrent submissions could read the same count, both write count + 1, and
the limit was silently bypassed, which is the same weakness as the denial of
service finding that was previously closed against this sample. Counting now
happens in a single atomic statement and the compared value is carried out of
that statement by LAST_INSERT_ID(), so it is this request's own count. Three
further corrections: a failed counter read now refuses instead of reporting
spare capacity, which would have failed open; the comparison is strictly
greater than the maximum, so max of 3 permits three requests rather than two;
and the docblock describes both behaviours.

FR-020 gated auto-deletion on the age of the branch's tip commit. A branch
created moments ago can carry an old tip commit, so a fresh working branch was
eligible for deletion inside a day of being created. The gate now uses a
branch-age signal such as a first-observed timestamp. The categorisation
contract's Condition and Configuration rows, the R6 decision record, the data
model's cleanup rule, and the two acceptance scenarios were carrying the same
tip-commit basis and are aligned, and the research note records why the
original basis was rejected.

The branch-cleanup contract also deleted a remote branch with a bare
`git push origin --delete` after re-checking it, leaving a window in which a
push landing between the check and the delete would be discarded. The checked
tip OID is now recorded and passed as an explicit --force-with-lease
expectation, and the report-only skip is unchanged.

The FR-020 test asserted the old "at least 24 hours old" wording, so it is
updated to the corrected phrasing and extended with two assertions that pin the
branch-age rule, which the previous test did not cover.

Verified: the spec docs suite passes 37/37; audit-specs.sh reports sequential
numbering 001 to 018 with no gaps and 18/18 naming compliance; semgrep ran 38
rules over 11 files with 0 findings. CodeRabbit review of the merged diff and
of each fix: 10 findings, all addressed above.

* Record the corrected branch-age basis and add a changelog entry

Two adjustments before this branch is proposed for merge.

Spec 009's deletion-candidates.schema.json contracts age_days as "Days since
last commit", and the shipped audit derives it from lastCommitDate, so the
tip-commit basis behind FR-020 is a deliberate 009 decision rather than an
oversight introduced here. That makes the corrected gate an amendment to 009's
contract for auto-approved agent branches, not a clarification, and it needs
state 009 does not yet keep.

Both the FR-020 requirement and the branch-cleanup contract's Configuration
row now say so explicitly: the stricter gate is scoped to auto-approved agent
branches, the branch-age signal's storage mechanism is recorded as an open
decision, and the 009 relationship is named rather than quietly redefined. No
behaviour is claimed as settled that is not.

Also adds the changelog entry this work needs under Unreleased > Fixed, kept
inside the 250-character entry limit the validator enforces, and re-checked
against it: 145 entries with 10 failures, the same 10 develop already carries,
so nothing new is introduced.

* Address three CodeRabbit findings from the pull request review

These came from the pull request review rather than the local uncommitted pass,
which is why the previous report called the branch clean while the review state
still had them open. All three were real.

FR-020 required a branch-age signal that nothing provides. Spec 018's data model
states there is no persistent storage, and spec 009 supplies only age_days from
last_commit_date, so the 24-hour auto-delete gate had no usable signal and the
requirement was unsatisfiable as written. The auto-approved deletion is now
explicitly deferred: until the storage and retention mechanism for a branch-age
signal is decided and built, no claude/* branch qualifies for automatic deletion
and every candidate follows spec 009's categorisation and draft-PR approval.
Deferring is the safe direction, because spec 009's tip-commit basis would
otherwise let a branch created moments ago be deleted inside a day of being
created. FR-020, the contract's Configuration row and auto-delete step, the R6
decision record and Acceptance Scenario 5 all now say so.

Acceptance Scenario 5 required "more than 24 hours" where FR-020 says "at least",
so a branch observed for exactly 24 hours satisfied the requirement and failed
the scenario. That inconsistency was introduced when the scenario was rewritten
to use the branch-age basis. The scenario now matches FR-020.

The newsletter handler gave one message for every failure, including the 429 the
route returns when the rate limit is hit. Telling someone to check an address
that is already valid, while they are blocked, only invites a retry that will be
refused again. The handler now separates a rate-limited address, a rejected
address, and a provider-side failure.

Two test lookups followed the contract's auto-delete row, which is now labelled
deferred rather than new, so they were updated to match.

Verified: the spec docs suite passes 37/37; audit-specs.sh reports sequential
numbering 001 to 018 with no gaps and 18/18 naming compliance; the changelog
validator reports the same failure count as develop, with the entry reworded to
250 characters to describe the deferral accurately; semgrep ran 119 rules over 12
files with 0 findings. CodeRabbit review of these changes: 2 further findings
raised and addressed, final pass clean.

* Track AI review feedback and correct the lifecycle diagram

Two gaps found by reviewing the pull request through Linear's diff review
platform rather than only through GitHub's review-thread API. A bot comment
thread and an outside-diff CodeRabbit finding were both invisible to a
reviewThreads query, so the earlier report of a clean pass was based on the
wrong surface.

The lifecycle diagram in data-model.md still read "tip >=24 h old" on the edge
from an empty remote branch to deleted, which contradicted FR-020, the
contract and the acceptance scenarios in the same specification. The edge now
states the branch-age basis and that auto-approved deletion is deferred, without
naming a storage mechanism. The cleanup rule above it was also still written as
live behaviour, so it now records the same deferral.

FEEDBACK_RESPONSE.md held the record from #3500, which merged on 2026-09-26, so
the validation for this pull request was reading someone else's response. It now
records all fifteen items with a status each: fourteen addressed and one
deferred, the branch-age decision.

Three entries needed correcting once written. They described specification
changes as though they were shipped fixes. The shipped categoriser still derives
age from lastCommitDate at scripts/cleanup-branches.js:317 and the shipped
delete at :342 is unchanged; what changed is the specification text, and
automatic deletion is deferred so neither path is reached. Entries 1, 2 and 13
now say so explicitly rather than implying the implementation was fixed.

The pull request body gains Refs #1396. The repository's validation requires a
Resolves, Closes, Fixes or Refs issue reference; Refs satisfies it without
closing anything, which matters because this pull request deliberately closes
none of the three issues it relates to. Verified by calling the validator
directly: passed true with no outstanding issues.

The file is a single shared path at the repository root, so a second pull
request needing a response overwrites the first. That is recorded in the file
itself; a per-pull-request path would remove the collision.

Verified: the spec docs suite passes 37/37; audit-specs.sh reports sequential
numbering 001 to 018 with no gaps and 18/18 naming compliance; semgrep ran 38
rules over 11 files with 0 findings; CodeRabbit review of these changes raised
one finding, the specification-versus-implementation framing above, which is
addressed, and the final pass is clean.

* Bound the rate-limit table and correct the deferred lifecycle edge

Two findings from the CodeRabbit full review that completed against the previous
head, neither of which was visible before because the review had not run.

The lifecycle edge still read "no open PR, observed >=24 h" as the condition for
reaching spec 009 categorisation. That is wrong while auto-approved deletion is
deferred: the 24-hour threshold belongs to the deferred auto-approval rule, and
every empty branch reaches 009 categorisation regardless of age. Removing the
threshold from the transition is the correction; the rule above it keeps it.

The rate-limit table grew by a row per distinct address indefinitely. The
counter reset an expired row in place, so rows were never removed, and the
per-IP limit only slowed the growth rather than bounding it: every new address
created a fresh key. An unauthenticated caller could therefore grow the table
without limit, which is CWE-400. Expired rows are now deleted before each
insert, so the table holds at most one window of counters; the in-place reset
branch is gone now that the purge handles expiry; and the table carries an index
on window_started so the purge is indexed rather than a full scan. The expiry
comparison is inclusive, so a row whose window closes exactly now is purged.

FEEDBACK_RESPONSE.md gains both items, taking the total to sixteen addressed and
one deferred.

Verified: the spec docs suite passes 37/37; the ai-feedback validator returns
passed true with no outstanding issues when called directly; semgrep ran 38 rules
over 12 files with 0 findings. CodeRabbit review of these changes raised the
inclusive-boundary point, which is addressed, and the final pass is clean.

* Keep the rate-limit purge indexed and fail closed on a purge error

Two findings from a CodeRabbit review scoped to the previous commit, which is
what finally produced a completed review at this head: the pull request bot was
rate limited, and the full-branch review exceeded the 150-file limit because an
auto-merge of develop brought 1894 files into the branch.

The purge compared window_started + HOUR_IN_SECONDS <= now, which adds an interval
to the indexed column and so cannot use the window_started index added for it --
the whole table would be scanned on every request. The cutoff is now computed as
now - HOUR_IN_SECONDS and compared directly against window_started, preserving the
same boundary while letting the index serve it as a range scan.

The purge result was also unchecked, so a failed delete fell through to the
upsert and the table would start growing again behind a counter that still
worked. A false return now refuses, matching the fail-closed path already used
when the counter itself cannot be read, because an unbounded table is the worse
failure.

Verified: the spec docs suite passes 37/37; semgrep ran 38 rules over the changed
file with 0 findings; the ai-feedback validator returns passed true with no
outstanding issues.

CodeRabbit could not re-review this commit. The organisation quota is exhausted
and resets 2026-10-01, so there is no completed review against this head. The
preceding commit was reviewed by a completed scoped review, and these two changes
address exactly what it raised.

* fix(advisories): do not spend the shared IP budget on a refused request

The newsletter rate-limit example wrote the per-IP counter before checking
the per-address counter, so a visitor behind a shared NAT address could
drain the IP budget that everyone behind it shares by resubmitting an
address already blocked for them. The address refusal returned true with
the IP increment already committed and no refund.

Charge the address counter first and wrap both writes in one transaction, so
a refused request spends no budget at all. The transaction is what makes the
discard atomic: no concurrent request observes a charge for a request that
was refused. A commit that cannot be confirmed now refuses rather than
letting the counters drift.

The purge moves out of the bump function and runs before the transaction
opens, so a refused request cannot roll the cleanup back, and a failed purge
still fails closed on its own. The counter table is now declared ENGINE=InnoDB:
only InnoDB honours ROLLBACK, so on MyISAM the statements would succeed and
the rollback would be a no-op, reproducing exactly the behaviour this change
removes.

The advisory states the trade-off this makes: a refused request is charged to
neither counter, so the per-IP limit no longer throttles a caller who keeps
resubmitting a blocked address. Those requests are answered 429 before the
provider is called, and the prose points operators needing volume-based
throttling at the reverse proxy or WAF.

tests/js/plugin-advisories-newsletter.test.js reads the PHP out of the
document rather than keeping a copy, so it cannot drift, and executes it
against a stub $wpdb that models LAST_INSERT_ID and START TRANSACTION /
ROLLBACK. Verified non-vacuous: 12 of its 13 tests fail against the previous
version of the advisory. The ordering assertions run without PHP, so the
regression cannot pass unnoticed on a runner without it.

Also align spec 018 research.md R6 with the deferral already stated in
spec.md FR-020 and contracts/branch-cleanup.md. R6 still described
categorisation as returning DELETE with autoApproved true and the scheduled
workflow as gaining a deletion step, in the voice of work already done,
which contradicted "Age" in the same section. It also carried an orphaned
line fragment, "within a day of its session starting.", left behind when the
surrounding sentence was rewritten.

* fix(advisories): check every transaction-control result, and two spec gaps

A review of the rate-limit change against its own head found a real hole: the
"a refused request spends no budget" guarantee rested on two unchecked results.
START TRANSACTION was issued without reading its return, so if it failed the two
counter writes ran in autocommit, committed immediately, and the ROLLBACK
reached afterwards could not undo them, charging the refusal this change exists
to prevent. ROLLBACK's own result was discarded too, so a failed discard was
silent. Both are now checked: a transaction that cannot be opened charges
nothing, and a rollback that fails still refuses but records the fault instead
of swallowing it. The guarantee is now only as strong as the weakest of the
three results, which is what it claims to be.

Adds stub scenarios for both faults, and relaxes the structural assertion to
match the guarded form. error_log() is a PHP built-in and cannot be shimmed, so
the harness carries stderr through instead of shimming it. Against the version
this fixes, 3 of the 15 tests fail.

Separately, review of spec 018 surfaced two gaps in the same auto-deletion rule,
both of which would delete a branch that holds real work once the deferred
signal exists:

- "Merged to a base branch" cannot stand in for "is a platform placeholder".
  Spec 009 FR-002 counts a branch as merged once its tip appears in a base
  branch's merge-base history, which is equally true of a claude/* branch whose
  work was later merged upstream. FR-021 requires such a branch to follow
  normal categorisation, so the condition is now a separate branch-origin check,
  recorded in the contract as a second open decision alongside the branch-age
  signal's storage.
- A branch-origin check identifies how a branch was *created*, so a placeholder
  that later received commits would still satisfy it. FR-020 now states the
  no-own-commits test explicitly, which scenario 6 already promised, and the
  contract requires it to be re-checked immediately before deletion.

Three spec assertions updated to the new wording and the coverage widened, with
one case asserting the old wording is gone. Against the pre-fix spec, 3 of the
39 fail.

Also corrects FEEDBACK_RESPONSE.md, which said #3524's only remaining work was a
develop merge that has already landed. #3524 is open and unmerged; the merge was
not the only thing outstanding.

* fix(advisories, spec 018): four review findings on the merged head

Review of the branch against its own head raised four findings. All four
verified against current code before acting; the three spec ones were real, and
so was the message one.

- Counter-storage failures returned 429, telling a visitor they had submitted
  too often when the database was at fault. They now return 500, so a real
  fault is distinguishable from a real rate limit in the logs.
- The 429 message blamed the address field. The limiter checks a per-address
  and a shared per-IP counter and the response does not say which fired, so a
  shared NAT could exhaust the IP limit while the address was still under its
  own. The message is now neutral.
- The contract promised every deferred candidate receives draft-PR approval,
  but spec 009's unchanged naming rule routes an invalid `claude/*` name, or one
  carrying its own commits, to DISCUSS, and nothing routes DISCUSS to draft-PR
  approval. FR-020, research.md, data-model.md and the contract now all describe
  the fallback as KEEP, DISCUSS, or a draft-PR-approved DELETE.
- The deletion step re-checked "merged and no open PR", but merge status is no
  longer an eligibility condition, and a placeholder that received a commit
  after the audit would have been deleted with that work still on it. The
  re-check is now placeholder origin, no commits of its own, and no open PR,
  all against the tip the delete acts on, since that is what the lease binds.

Full suite 297 suites, 6164 tests, 0 failures. Verified non-vacuous: against
the pre-review spec files 8 of the contract assertions fail, and the neutral
message and deletion-step assertions fail against their earlier wording.

* fix(rate-limit): charge both counters in one statement and align the spec

The counter write is now a single multi-row upsert, so a dropped
connection cannot replay one key's increment outside the transaction
where a later ROLLBACK cannot undo it. A read of the resulting counts
is a second statement, so the connection handle is compared before the
counts are believed: a replaced handle yields a storage fault, which the
caller answers 503, rather than a request allowed but never charged.

The upsert resets an expired window's count instead of incrementing it,
so a key the purge has not reached stops being blocked after its window
ends, and carries the new value out through LAST_INSERT_ID on both
branches. The single-key builder gains the same reset so copying it is
safe.

The spec records the deferral consistently: FR-020's workflow clause and
SC-002 no longer promise automatic deletion that is deferred, the
audit/deletion edge case names the placeholder re-check and the tip
lease the contract requires, and the deferral's two blockers, its
consequences and the items it makes safe to land are stated once
consistently.

* fix(docs): withdraw the advisories table-header claim as unfounded

The changelog entry and the pull request body both stated that the Section 1
advisories table had a two-column header while its rows carried four, so
CommonMark dropped the Status and Notes columns. That defect is not present in
the content merged by #3387.

docs/PLUGIN_ADVISORIES.md parses cell by cell as four header cells, four
delimiter cells and thirteen four-cell rows, with the header and delimiter
counts equal, so no column is ever dropped. The only change this pull request
makes to that table is relabelling Caveat as Notes plus re-padding to the
compact form used elsewhere in the file.

The changelog entry is rewritten to describe what actually changed, and keeps
the three real behaviour changes: the newsletter form surviving a failed
request, a blocked address being distinguished from a server fault, and atomic
rate-limit counting. FEEDBACK_RESPONSE.md records the withdrawn claim as item 17
with the evidence, and the summary no longer asserts that nothing was rejected.

No shipped behaviour moves. The change is documentation only, and no test
asserted the false claim, so none needed updating; the table shape was verified
directly instead.

---------

Co-authored-by: mergify[bot] <37929162+mergify[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Chris <support@lightspeedwp.agency>
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