tests/ has held 14 test programs for months with no way to run them. CI does
not run them. The convention printed in their own headers
(`elc soul.el && ./soul --test tests/x.el`) refers to a --test flag the El
runtime does not implement. So the tests were documentation, not gates — which
is how a P0 safety regression shipped with a test directory sitting right
there.
scripts/run-el-test.sh compiles and runs one test program. It reuses the
gen-soul-amalgam.sh discovery: elc emits only an extern prototype for a module
that has a .elh beside it, and inlines the bodies when it does not, so a test
importing ../chat.el must be compiled in a scratch tree with the headers
removed. Scratch copy on purpose — the worktree is shared. It runs the binary
under a throwaway HOME so a test can never reach the live engram.
Exit status is the gate: the El tests print failures and still exit 0, so the
runner greps for FAIL lines and for a zero assertion count as well.
tests/test_history_amplification.el pins the invariant #129 violated: the
window the safety screen READS must be the window conv_history_record WRITES.
Not "must be called conv_history" — must AGREE.
THIS COMMIT IS RED BY DESIGN. On this tree the test fails one assertion:
3. REGRESSION #129 — agentic screen reads the session's own window
FAIL: distress history escalates the agentic screen to hard_bell
got: soft_bell
expected: hard_bell
history amplification tests: 8 passed, 1 failed (runner exit 1)
The next commit turns it green by changing one line. Two legs, one variable —
that is the whole point of committing the test first.
Two flaws in the older harness that this one does not copy: the idiom
`let pass_count = pass_count + 1` inside an assert function declares a local
that dies with the call, so every existing suite prints "0 passed, 0 failed"
regardless of outcome; and a test program without a `cgi` block compiles as a
'utility', which may not reference the self-formation primitives chat.el's
agentic loop calls — it fails to build on a capability violation it never
triggers at runtime.
Refs #129
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Tim Lingo
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