std.debug.assert is right for an internal invariant and wrong for a rule about data the function did not produce, and it is wrong in two different ways. Under the ReleaseSafe default it survives and PANICS: on the write path that is the trade we want, a crash over a durable bad frame, but on a peer-reachable path it is a remote denial of service. Under an explicitly chosen --release=fast it compiles to nothing and the input flows through unvalidated. One fix, a checked error, closes both.

Flags an assert only when all of: the fn is pub, returns an error union so a rejection was already available, the assert names one of its own parameters, and no earlier return in the body already rejects on that parameter. That last rule is what makes it signal -- delta.applyCopy returns MalformedDelta and then asserts to restate it, which is the CORRECT shape and must not be flagged.

The baseline is keyed on file, function and COUNT, never on line numbers: line numbers churn on every edit above them, while a count still catches a second bad assert added to a function that already has one. It fails in both directions, so a fixed finding must be removed from the list and the list can only shrink.

Existing findings are recorded, not fixed. Triage belongs in issue 19, where the ReleaseSafe default already reduces the write-path subset to crash-instead-of-corrupt and leaves the sync-side ones as the live exposure. check-in: 949e2b5542 user: dmestas tags: trunk