24 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
24 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
# Hard deletes refuse missing targets instead of reporting idempotent success
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`issue delete` on a nonexistent issue errors with `ISSUE_NOT_FOUND`; `label delete` on a nonexistent label errors with `VALIDATION_ERROR`.
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This deliberately narrows a literal reading of AXI Principle 6 ("mutations should be idempotent").
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## Considered Options
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**Idempotent success ("already deleted")** (rejected) — Consistent with the literal principle text and with the silent-success behavior of `--remove-label` and `blocks remove`.
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But a missing hard-delete target usually means the agent's world-model is wrong (wrong number, wrong repo), and reporting success would confirm a false belief — the agent walks away thinking it deleted something it never identified correctly.
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**Refuse with a specific error** (chosen) — Matches gh-axi's behavior for both commands.
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The destructive command is exactly the one that should refuse to guess.
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## The dividing line
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Relationship removals (`--remove-label`, `blocks remove`, `blocked-by remove`) stay silent-success: the *entity* was correctly identified and fetched; only the relationship is absent, so the desired end state already holds.
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Hard deletes error: the *target itself* is missing, which signals a stale or wrong reference rather than an already-achieved goal.
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## Consequences
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- `issue delete <n>` on a missing issue → `ISSUE_NOT_FOUND` (falls out of the path-based 404 classification automatically).
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- `label delete <name>` on a missing label → `VALIDATION_ERROR`, consistent with every other label-name lookup.
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- Principle 6's idempotency guarantee is scoped in the spec: state transitions and relationship add/removes are idempotent; hard deletes are not.
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