---
status: open
opened: 2026-08-22
located-in: [hal]
fixed-by:
amended-design:
---

# 005 — The end-to-end pipeline harness has not built since the workspace was removed

## Symptom

The repository's end-to-end pipeline test harness depends on a workspace that no longer
exists. It has not been buildable since 2026-06-04. Nothing runs it, and nothing reports that
nothing runs it.

## Why this matters

The delivery pipeline is the mesh's most consequential machinery — every module reaches every
node through it — and its only end-to-end coverage has been silently dead for over two and a
half months.

That interval is not incidental. Several of the pipeline's most expensive defects landed
inside it: packaging that was never actually split from build, migrations and provisioning
scripts reading a source layout that no longer ships, selection files never packaged at all.
Whether this harness would have caught any of them is unknown — which is itself the point. The
coverage was assumed, not checked.

## Evidence

- The workspace was removed by pull request #240 on 2026-06-04
  ([ADR 0007](../../adr/0007-no-npm-workspace.md)).
- The harness has not built since that date.
- Recorded in the knowledge base as a standing entry, not as a fixed incident.

## Relationship to the lab

[`02-DESIGN/01-to-be/01-end-to-end-testing.md`](../../02-DESIGN/01-to-be/01-end-to-end-testing.md)
designs end-to-end testing on a lab mesh, which would replace this harness rather than repair
it. That is a reason to decide its fate deliberately, not a reason to leave it broken and
unmentioned: until the lab exists, this is the coverage the pipeline is presumed to have.

## Open questions

- Repair, or retire in favour of the lab? Leaving it in the repository unbuilt is the one
  option that keeps the false impression of coverage.
- Was anything relying on it, or had it already stopped running before the workspace removal?