Title: Username leak conversation and agent handoff
Updated: 2026-11-02
Status: Checklist delivered; remediation not started
Purpose: Preserve conversation context and progress for another agent
Format: Sanitized conversation summary, not a verbatim transcript
Sensitive-value: [EXPOSED_USERNAME]

Objective: Remedy accidental disclosure of the user's host username in the application and content repositories without taking down the instance.
Authorization: User requested a concise remediation checklist and then a running conversation log. No cleanup, history rewrite, deployment, remote update, or deletion has been requested yet.
Availability: Keep the instance online. The assistant explained that the existing content-history purge pauses writes while pages continue serving; the user has not explicitly accepted that tradeoff.
Privacy: Never put the literal exposed username or identifying absolute home paths into this log, commands recorded here, commit messages, or new public artifacts. Obtain the exact search value privately from the user if the next agent lacks the conversation.
Continuation: Update this file after substantive exchanges and work, recording decisions, authorization, changed files, verification, failures, and next steps. Preserve corrections explicitly. Keep the summary useful without reproducing sensitive material.

Entry: 001
Date: 2026-11-02
User: Invited the assistant to pray, then replied Amen.
Assistant: Offered a brief prayer for peace, courage, wisdom, kindness, and compassion; replied Amen.

Entry: 002
Date: 2026-11-02
User: Reported accidentally leaking their username into the repository, including the content repository; requested a concise checklist to remedy this without taking down the instance.
Assistant-action: Read repository guidance and relevant deployment, retraction, purge, and export documentation. Performed read-only searches in this application checkout.
Observed: Exact-string git grep found current tracked matches in these three files:
- docs/plans/public_busy_error_message_fix_plan.md
- docs/runbooks/high_traffic_mode.md
- docs/runbooks/phone_site_development_live_walkthrough.md
Coverage: This was a current tracked-file search, not an inventory of all history, untracked files, the content repository, remote copies, or public endpoints.
Finding: Existing purge-history targets post/signature paths named by accepted deletion receipts. It does not provide general username replacement or commit-identity scrubbing. Retained receipts and signed records need separate inspection; blindly replacing signed bytes would break verification.
Finding: The history-purge runbook says the writer lock is held through the purge and full rebuild while pages continue serving. Actual deployed behavior and duration were not tested.
Finding: Retraction cleanup excludes independent Docs releases, attachments, backups, and remote copies. Docs publication and archive cleanup have their own operational procedures.
Result: Delivered the following checklist in chat. No remediation was performed.

Checklist: Proposed remediation; every item remains uncompleted
[ ] Inventory both repositories: current files and filenames, all branches/tags and history, commit messages and author/committer metadata, published docs, source views, downloads, and caches.
[ ] Prevent new occurrences: generic examples in tracked docs, corrected Git identity if affected, real deployment paths in private configuration.
[ ] Prepare a restricted recovery backup outside public/download directories, including .git; verify restoration and treat the backup as containing the disclosure.
[ ] Clean current files and affected posts using supported mechanisms; inspect retained receipts and identity records without altering signed bytes indiscriminately.
[ ] Refresh affected read models and static pages; publish Docs separately; run applicable retraction cleanup and inspect offline snapshots, exports, LLM exchanges, and attachments.
[ ] Preview accepted-deletion history purge. Rehearse a separate approach for arbitrary text and Git identity metadata in either repository. Coordinate writers, imports, and mirrors to avoid reintroduction.
[ ] Replace affected hosted refs and arrange fresh clones as needed; clean obsolete archives/releases under normal locking rules and request remote-cache cleanup where applicable. Already downloaded copies cannot be recalled.
[ ] Rescan both repositories and histories; fetch actual public pages, source/history endpoints, Docs, and downloads. Verify reading during cleanup, posting afterward, and failure/retry recovery. Keep recurrence scans private rather than embedding the username in tracked checks.

References: Reuse existing contracts and operational entry points
- AGENTS.md; PRINCIPLES.md; CONTRIBUTING.md
- docs/plans/retraction_simplification_handoff.md (read before retraction-related work; later current references describe subsequently implemented history purge)
- docs/reference/author_post_retraction.md
- docs/reference/retraction_sweep.md
- docs/runbooks/history_purge.md
- docs/runbooks/production_deploy.md
- docs/runbooks/archive_export_recovery.md
- src/ForumRewrite/Retraction/HistoryPurge.php
- src/ForumRewrite/Retraction/HistoryPurgePlanner.php

Entry: 003
Date: 2026-11-02
User: Requested a running log of the conversation to hand off to another agent when usage limits are reached.
Assistant-decision: Store this sanitized Key: value plain-text log in the existing docs/plans destination. This is a direct documentation task, not the start of a Railspike implementation cycle.
Action: Created this file, including earlier context, the proposed checklist, findings, authorization boundaries, and next steps. No commit or publication requested or performed.

Entry: 004
Date: 2026-11-02
User: Expressed thanks while the log was being prepared.
Assistant: Acknowledged the thanks and continued completing the handoff log.

Workspace-baseline: Pre-existing changes observed before creating this file; preserve them and do not include them in this task's changes.
- Modified: public/.htaccess
- Untracked: docs/plans/zenmemes_import_http409_findings.md
- Untracked: public/.dh-diag
- Untracked: public/assets/sql-wasm.0734155c83e4.wasm
- Untracked: public/assets/sqlite_query_catalog.994ac05f13b1.sql
- Untracked: public/assets/zenmemes_import_http409_findings.txt
- Untracked: public/favicon.gif

Verification: Read-only repository/documentation inspection only for the incident. No content-repository scan, full Git-history scan, live-instance check, cleanup, or application test run. Read back the log with a local script; verified all four entries exist and the host username and absolute home paths are absent. No application tests needed for this documentation-only change.
Dependencies: None added or changed.
Next-step: Continue maintaining this log. If the user requests remediation, first establish the actual content repository and deployed configuration, inventory privately, and resolve online/write-pause constraints before dependent implementation. Follow applicable project workflow and approval requirements; the checklist and logging requests do not authorize destructive actions.
Constraints: Do not edit todo.txt. Do not overwrite unrelated changes. Do not launch sub-agents unless explicitly requested or required by applicable instructions.