Deferred coverage paths bypass canonical repository-relative validation

[sylvesterkaczmarek]

Summary

Canonical repository paths are constrained throughout the completed-scan contract, but coverage.deferred[].paths is currently only an array of non-empty strings.

A sealed coverage document can therefore describe deferred in-scope work using traversal, absolute, Windows-style, colon-bearing, standalone-dot, or NUL-bearing paths even though manifest scope paths, finding locations, artifact paths, and receipt references reject those forms.

Reproduction / evidence

Current upstream main at 37bf87a692fc72d41f7312cc48808d699d204fba documents each deferred unit as a stable id/reason with optional paths or surfaceIds.

The shared coverage.schema.json defines each deferred path as only:

{
  "type": "string",
  "minLength": 1
}

_validate_coverage() in finalize_scan_contract.py validates surface receipt paths, but does not run deferred paths through _require_safe_relative_path() before the shared schema validation.

A deterministic sealed-contract reproduction is:

1. copy the bundled examples/completed-scan fixture;
2. set coverage completeness to partial and add a deferred unit with paths: ["../../outside.ts"];
3. update the sealed coverage.json digest in scan-manifest.json;
4. call loadContract().

Current behavior: the traversal path passes the coverage schema and the sealed bundle loads.

Expected behavior: documented deferred source paths should obey the same repository-relative POSIX boundary as other canonical source paths.

Root cause

The deferred-path field was added to the coverage schema without the safe-path constraint already used for canonical source/path-bearing fields.

Suggested fix

Apply the canonical safe repository-relative pattern to deferred[].paths, rejecting:

• absolute paths;
• .. traversal segments;
• backslashes / Windows-style paths;
• colon-bearing paths;
• standalone .;
• NUL characters.

Because the coverage schema is consumed by both finalization and the TypeScript contract loader, one schema change can enforce the invariant on both producer and consumer surfaces.

Add a focused sealed-contract regression that reseals a partial coverage fixture after inserting invalid paths and verifies loadContract() rejects them, with a normal repository-relative path as the control.

Impact

This is contract-integrity correctness. Deferred paths do not cause an arbitrary file read by themselves, but a sealed canonical bundle can currently attribute unreviewed work to a path outside the repository path model enforced everywhere else, which can mislead downstream coverage/reporting consumers.