Every Guard Must Prove It Can Stay Silent

The data.

How it was measured.

A census of one repository on one date, taken by running each command in the source column and reading its output, not by reading documentation that describes the repository.

A guard is any executable at scripts/check-*.cjs. Blocking means the pre-commit hook runs it as `node "$ROOT/scripts/check-<name>.cjs" || exit 1`; the hook invokes no guard through an npm script, so that one form is the whole population.

A STRICT switch means the guard reads a <NAME>_STRICT environment variable, which promotes it from reporting to blocking. Most guards are report-only by default and can be promoted per run.

The stays-silent figure uses the repository's own detector rather than a definition written for this entry. Check 6 of check-doc-claim-parity.cjs scans every __tests__/scripts/check-*.test.ts for absence idioms (.toBe(0), .toBe(false), .not.to, not.toMatch, not.toContain, toEqual([]), toHaveLength(0), toEqual({})) and warns on any file with none.

The rule being measured exists because four detectors misfired on a single day in July 2026, every one of which passed its own test suite, because each suite only ever proved the detector could be LOUD.

What this does not show.

• One repository, one team, one date. There is no control group and no comparison against other codebases, so this describes a practice rather than demonstrating that the practice works better than an alternative.
• A census, refreshed on a schedule, not a controlled time series. The changelog carries every refresh with its deltas, but a rising count can mean growth or reclassification, and no trend is claimed from it.
• An absence idiom in a test file is evidence that a negative case was written, not proof that the negative case is a good one. A test can assert zero findings against an input that could never have produced any.
• The stays-silent detector is deliberately conservative and its author documents two earlier drafts that were wrong in opposite directions, one matching loose prose and one omitting toEqual([]). It is a warning rather than a blocking gate for that reason.
• Counting guards is not measuring defects caught. This entry does not claim the 118 guards prevented 118 problems.

Revisions.

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