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Vesper Review — D2.2 feat/wallet-truth-reconciliation

To: Orion (he/him) From: Vesper (she/her) CC: Atlas, Katja (Captain) Date: 2026-04-19 Re: D2.2 review — APPROVED. Apply and merge.

Status: APPROVED

D2.2 is clean. Apply the 9-patch bundle and merge to main.

Startup Gate Review

The gate implementation matches the D2.1 ruling exactly.

The four arms are correct:

  • ok → silent pass, no log, no state writes. test_26 pins the silent-pass contract. ✓
  • warn → [STARTUP_WARN] log, engine proceeds, no halt or audit keys written. test_25 covers both override-set and override-not-set cases. ✓
  • halt without override → RuntimeError with signed deltas, realign command, and --accept-truth-divergence hint. halt.reason = "startup_failure", halt.detail contains startup_gate_refused. Override audit key not written. test_23 covers this. ✓
  • halt with --accept-truth-divergence → [STARTUP_GATE_OVERRIDE] WARNING, three startup.truth_divergence_* audit keys persisted, halt.reason NOT written (correct — this is not a halt, it's an acknowledged divergent start into DEGRADED). test_24 covers this. ✓

Gate ordering is correct: refuse-to-start check runs before _apply_truth_check_result. Refused sessions leave no DEGRADED ghost row. That's the right sequencing — if the operator didn't override, there should be no trace of a DEGRADED run on engine_state.

The test_24 detail on halt.reason not being written is important and correct. A session starting in DEGRADED via --accept-truth-divergence is not a startup failure — it's a deliberate operator choice. The audit trail lives in the three startup.truth_divergence_* engine_state keys, not in the halt lifecycle. Dashboards will correctly show the session as DEGRADED rather than FAILED.

Refusal message is clear and actionable. An operator seeing that message for the first time knows exactly what to do.

CLI wiring via run_paper_session.py --accept-truth-divergence with action="store_true" and threaded kwarg is the right shape. Existing invocations are unaffected.

Full Branch Summary (D2.2 — 9 commits, 26 tests)

Commit Scope Status
910f765 C1 Schema + config Approved (D2)
47e0cda C2 InventoryTruthChecker core Approved (D2)
316a96b C3 DEGRADED state machine Approved (D2.1 — code was correct, memo was wrong)
db21372 C4 Startup/runtime/shutdown wiring Approved (D2)
d5a5650 C5 Pre-trade gate Approved (D2.1 — gap fixed, WARN pass-through confirmed)
6f495e5 C6 Realignment CLI + event type Approved (D2)
826209a C7 16-test suite Approved (D2)
adeddd0 fixup Gate gap + Q3 rate-limit + Q4 docstring Approved (D2.1)
dbc9363 D2.2 Refuse-to-start gate + --accept-truth-divergence Approved (this review)

26 tests passing. FLAG-036 closed by this branch.

Apply Instructions (Windows)

From C:\Users\Katja\Documents\NEO GitHub\neo-2026\:

git checkout -b feat/wallet-truth-reconciliation main
git am "C:\Users\Katja\Documents\Claude Homebase Neo\02 Projects\NEO Trading Engine\patches\feat-wallet-truth-reconciliation-d2.2\*.patch"
python -m pytest tests/test_flag_036_wallet_truth_reconciliation.py -v

Expected: 26 passed in ~0.5s.

Then:

git checkout main
git merge --no-ff feat/wallet-truth-reconciliation -m "feat(flag-036): wallet truth reconciliation + DEGRADED mode + startup gate + realignment tool (D2.2)"

What's Next

Per Atlas revised priority order (Apr 19):

  1. ~~feat/wallet-truth-reconciliation~~ ✅ — this branch
  2. feat/reconciler-disappeared-order-audit-log — next. Tasking already issued. Build and deliver per that spec.
  3. fix/reconciler-disappeared-order-conservative (FLAG-037) — after audit logging has at least one session's worth of data
  4. Anchor saturation guard → corridor guard → drift guard

— Vesper