TLDR zero-input false PASS — MC #900160

TLDR zero-input false PASS — MC #900160

Incident

On 2026-08-23 the TLDR briefing/actionizer chain produced no actionable output. The absence of input is the incident signal; it must not be reported as a healthy run.

Verified current behavior

1. com.john.tldr-briefing finds zero eligible emails, writes a JSON sentinel with reason: no_unbriefed_emails, and exits 0.
2. com.john.tldr-actionizer reads zero insights, emits no result/task, and exits 0.
3. com.john.tldr-watch maps the zero-input sentinel to VERDICT=PASS.

This is fail-open observability: missing input is converted into green health and the operator receives no useful run result.

Required outcome

• Explicitly distinguish a day when no TLDR run is expected from a scheduled run that expected input.
• Any unexplained zero-input scheduled run returns actionable UNKNOWN or FAIL, never PASS.
• The run output names the missing stage/source and preserves evidence.
• Positive no-content policy, if retained for weekends/holidays, must be explicit and tested rather than inferred from a sentinel.

Evidence

• /Users/makinja/system/evidence/tldr-incident-2026-08-23/status.md
• /Users/makinja/system/logs/tldr-briefing.log
• /Users/makinja/system/logs/tldr-actionizer.log
• /Users/makinja/system/logs/tldr-watch.log
• /Users/makinja/system/logs/tldr-insights/2026-08-23.json