8e978fef9d
New: gotchas-skills.md (non-ASCII frontmatter, per-profile skill dirs). Updated: gotchas-bash.md (+((var++)) with zero), decisions.md (+python3 for JSON), process-lessons.md (+cat -A diagnostic). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Process Lessons
Start reporting/read-only scripts without set -e
Debugging set -e failures in scripts that aggregate data from multiple sources (git repos, file stats, etc.) consumed significant time — the script worked in isolated tests but failed silently on real data. Begin without -e and add it only for scripts that perform destructive actions where fail-fast is critical.
Spec-driven testing catches real bugs early
The spec → implement → test workflow caught real bugs during development (grep flag parsing, local keyword misuse, binary detection false positives). Writing tests that exercise dryrun against spec expectations is an effective pattern for this project.
Use cat -A to diagnose invisible character issues
When a file looks correct but tooling rejects it, cat -A reveals non-printing characters (e.g., M-bM-^@M-^T for em dashes that appear identical to regular dashes). Essential for debugging YAML frontmatter, config files, and any context where encoding matters.
Use git diff --numstat for binary detection instead of file
The file command is unreliable for distinguishing binary from text files (marks shell scripts as "executable"). git diff --numstat shows - for binary files and is more reliable since git already has its own binary detection heuristics.