A prod box with zero drift could not make `cast diff` say clean: sixteen
lines of `live-only (orphan var — apply never removes)`, every one of them a
var Coolify MINTED — `SERVICE_FQDN_API` for a compose app's per-container
domains, `SERVICE_PASSWORD_POSTGRES`/`POSTGRES_*` for the one-click umami
service's bundled datastore. They held two resources permanently in `change`.
`remove-candidate` means "a live-only var the manifest does not declare;
apply never removes it; read it by eye". For a name cast did not put there,
cannot declare in any vocabulary, and will never remove, that is a category
error — and a report that can never say clean is how an operator learns to
stop reading it. #78's own Impact section made the argument: "an operator who
learns these always show change stops trusting the diff."
cast already knew: draft.ts has held this exact judgment since #27 and used
it to refuse copying these into a draft. diffEnv just never asked. So the
vocabulary moves to reserved.ts — which already owns "names the platform, not
the manifest, controls" — and both callers consult it.
TWO WIDTHS, deliberately, because over-matching is safe in a draft and unsafe
in a diff:
- draft (WIDE): over-matching withholds a value for review — loud and
recoverable. Under-matching copies the source box's DATABASE_URL into a
new box that boots against the OLD box's database. It errs wide.
- diff, applications (NARROW): over-matching HIDES a live-only var. A
hand-left DATABASE_URL still pointing at a box nobody declares is the one
orphan most worth printing — and it matches the wide rule. Probed against
prod: the wide bucket on a real application held DATABASE_URL and
REDIS_URL, both of them cast's OWN declared vars.
- diff, services (WIDE): a Coolify service is a vendored bundle whose
internals cast does not model — `type` + `service_domains` + an
env_template is the whole vocabulary, and the rest is the template's.
Also fixes a real gap the #87 tests found: the pair-rule missed `POSTGRES_DB`
outright, because [POSTGRES, DB] is datastore + datastore with no connection
word. A db NAME is a connection coordinate like any other, so `DB` joins them
— it is exactly the var a one-click service mints for its bundled Postgres.
And corrects LiveEnvVar's comment: it still cited #79's "stale real_value, a
stored column Coolify does not refresh". That was false — an accessor cannot
go stale, and real_value tracks value on every row of a real box. The split
is still right (real_value is an ESCAPED rendering: 'true' is not true); only
its motivation was wrong. The drift it chased was #85's preview shadow.
Tests: an application carrying only SERVICE_* reads clean; a hand-left
DATABASE_URL on an application is STILL reported; a service carrying the
one-click template's wiring reads clean; a non-generated live-only var on a
service is STILL reported.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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