beads/LOST_ISSUES_RECOVERY.md

Lost Issues Recovery Report

Investigation Date: 2025-10-15 Related Issue: bd-229 Root Cause: Auto-import bug (bd-228) silently overwrote local changes

Summary

Recovered 3 valuable issues from 22 total lost issues (bd-200 through bd-223, excluding bd-211, bd-212) that were silently overwritten by the auto-import bug.

Note: 19 test fixtures (race_test_, verification_) were found but not documented here - they had no production value.

Recovered Issues (3 total)

bd-221: Transaction state corruption (P0, CLOSED)

• Title: P0: Transaction state corruption in first fix attempt
• Type: bug (closed)
• Priority: 0
• Description: First attempt at fixing bd-89 had a critical flaw: used 'ROLLBACK; BEGIN IMMEDIATE' which executed as two separate statements. After ROLLBACK, the Go tx object was invalid but continued to be used, causing undefined behavior. Root cause: database/sql connection pooling. Correct fix: Use conn := s.db.Conn(ctx).
• Status: Fixed during code review before merging
• Related: bd-89 (GH-6: Fix race condition in parallel issue creation)

bd-222: Batching API for bulk creation (P2, OPEN)

• Title: P2: Consider batching API for bulk issue creation
• Type: feature
• Priority: 2
• Description: Current CreateIssue acquires a dedicated connection for each call. For bulk imports or agent workflows creating many issues, a batched API could improve performance: CreateIssues(ctx, issues []*Issue, actor string) error. This would acquire one connection, use one IMMEDIATE transaction, insert all issues atomically, and reduce connection overhead.
• Status: Open enhancement, not urgent

bd-223: Early context check optimization (P3, OPEN)

• Title: P3: Consider early context check in CreateIssue
• Type: task
• Priority: 3
• Description: CreateIssue starts an IMMEDIATE transaction before checking if context is cancelled. Consider adding early context check between validation (line 318) and acquiring connection (line 331). Low priority - the busy_timeout and deferred cleanup handle this gracefully.
• Status: Open optimization, low priority

Recovery Actions

Completed

1. ✅ Extracted all 22 lost issues from git history
2. ✅ Identified which are test fixtures vs real issues
3. ✅ Verified no broken references (no code/docs reference these IDs)
4. ✅ Confirmed bd-89 (referenced by bd-221 and bd-228) still exists

Actions Taken

1. ✅ Re-filed bd-222 as bd-232 - Batching API feature request
2. ✅ Re-filed bd-223 as bd-233 - Early context check optimization
3. ✅ Documented bd-221 in bd-89 notes - Transaction fix historical context preserved

Data Integrity Notes

How Issues Were Lost

The auto-import bug (bd-228, now fixed) silently overwrote local changes when pulling from git. Issues bd-200 to bd-223 were likely:

1. Created locally by an agent or test run
2. Not exported to JSONL before git pull
3. Git pull triggered auto-import that didn't include these issues
4. Issues silently disappeared from database

Prevention

• ✅ Auto-import now has collision detection (bd-228 fix)
• ✅ Manual import has --dry-run and --resolve-collisions
• ✅ Auto-export debounce ensures JSONL stays in sync
• Consider: Add warning if database has issues not in JSONL

Git Archaeology Details

Search Method

# Found highest numbered issue
git log --all -p -- .beads/issues.jsonl | grep -o '"id":"bd-[0-9]*"' | sort -rn

# Extracted removed issues
git log --all -p -- .beads/issues.jsonl | grep '^-{"id":"bd-2[0-2][0-9]"'

# Verified current state
bd list --json | jq -r '.[] | select(.id | startswith("bd-")) | .id'

Current State

• Total issues in DB: 231 (bd-1 through bd-231, no gaps)
• Lost issue range: bd-200 through bd-223 (22 issues)
• Last recovered commit: dd613f4 (recovered bd-180, bd-181, bd-182)

Full Lost Issue Data

Complete JSON of recovered issues available at /tmp/real_lost_issues.jsonl.

Conclusion

Impact Assessment: LOW

• 2 open feature/task requests recovered (P2/P3) → bd-232, bd-233
• 1 closed bug context preserved in bd-89 notes
• 19 test fixtures discarded (no production value)

Data Loss: Minimal. All valuable issues successfully recovered. The auto-import bug has been fixed (bd-228) and proper collision detection is now in place.