Transaction Correctness Auditor (L3 Worker)

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Transaction Correctness Auditor (L3 Worker)

Type: L3 Worker

Specialized worker auditing database transaction patterns for correctness, scope, and trigger interaction.

Purpose & Scope

• Audit transaction correctness (Priority: HIGH)
• Check commit patterns, transaction boundaries, rollback handling, trigger/​notify semantics
• Write structured findings to file with severity, location, effort, recommendations
• Calculate compliance score (X/​10) for Transaction Correctness category

Inputs

MANDATORY READ: Load shared/​references/​audit_worker_core_contract.md. MANDATORY READ: Load shared/​references/​mcp_tool_preferences.md and shared/​references/​mcp_integration_patterns.md

Receives contextStore with: tech_stack, best_practices, db_config (database type, ORM settings, trigger/​notify patterns), codebase_root, output_dir.

Domain-aware: Supports domain_mode + current_domain.

Use hex-graph first when reference chains or call paths materially improve transaction analysis. Use hex-line first for local code/​config reads when available. If MCP is unavailable, unsupported, or not indexed, continue with built-in Read/​Grep/​Glob/​Bash and state the fallback in the report.

Workflow

MANDATORY READ: Load shared/​references/​two_layer_detection.md for detection methodology.

1. Parse context from contextStore

   • Extract tech_stack, best_practices, db_config, output_dir
   • Determine scan_path

2. Discover transaction infrastructure

   • Find migration files with triggers (pg_notify, CREATE TRIGGER, NOTIFY)
   • Find session/​transaction configuration (expire_on_commit, autocommit, isolation level)
   • Map trigger-affected tables

3. Scan codebase for violations

   • Trace UPDATE paths for trigger-affected tables
   • Analyze transaction boundaries (begin/​commit scope)
   • Check error handling around commits

4. Collect findings with severity, location, effort, recommendation

5. Calculate score using penalty algorithm

6. Write Report: Build full markdown report in memory per shared/​templates/​audit_worker_report_template.md, write to {output_dir}/​ln-652--global.md in single Write call

7. Return Summary: Return minimal summary to coordinator (see Output Format)

Audit Rules (Priority: HIGH)

1. Missing Intermediate Commits

What: UPDATE without commit when DB trigger/​NOTIFY depends on transaction commit

Detection:

• Step 1: Find triggers in migrations:
  • Grep for pg_notify|NOTIFY|CREATE TRIGGER|CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION.*trigger in alembic/​versions/, migrations/
  • Extract: trigger function name, table name, trigger event (INSERT/​UPDATE)
• Step 2: Find code that UPDATEs trigger-affected tables:
  • Grep for repo.*update|session\.execute.*update|\.progress|\.status related to trigger tables
• Step 3: Check for commit() between sequential updates:
  • If multiple UPDATEs to trigger table occur in a loop/​sequence without intermediate commit(), NOTIFY events are deferred until final commit
  • Real-time progress tracking breaks without intermediate commits

Severity:

• CRITICAL: Missing commit for NOTIFY/​LISTEN-based real-time features (SSE, WebSocket)
• HIGH: Missing commit for triggers that update materialized data

Exception: Single atomic operation with no intermediate observable state -> downgrade CRITICAL to MEDIUM. Transaction scope documented as intentional (ADR, architecture comment) -> downgrade one level

Recommendation:

• Add session.commit() at progress milestones (throttled: every N%, every T seconds)
• Or move real-time notifications out of DB triggers (Redis pub/​sub, in-process events)

Effort: S-M (add strategic commits or redesign notification path)

2. Transaction Scope Too Wide

What: Single transaction wraps unrelated operations, including slow external calls

Detection:

• Find async with session.begin() or explicit transaction blocks
• Check if block contains external calls: await httpx., await aiohttp., await requests., await grpc.
• Check if block contains file I/​O: open(, .read(, .write(
• Pattern: DB write + external API call + another DB write in same transaction

Severity:

• HIGH: External HTTP/​gRPC call inside transaction (holds DB connection during network latency)
• MEDIUM: File I/​O inside transaction

Recommendation: Split into separate transactions; use Saga/​Outbox pattern for cross-service consistency

Effort: M-L (restructure transaction boundaries)

3. Transaction Scope Too Narrow

What: Logically atomic operations split across multiple commits

Detection:

• Multiple session.commit() calls for operations that should be atomic
• Pattern: create parent entity, commit, create child entities, commit (should be single transaction)
• Pattern: update status + create audit log in separate commits

Severity:

• HIGH: Parent-child creation in separate commits (orphan risk on failure)
• MEDIUM: Related updates in separate commits (inconsistent state on failure)

Recommendation: Wrap related operations in single transaction using async with session.begin() or unit-of-work pattern

Effort: M (restructure commit boundaries)

4. Missing Rollback Handling

What: session.commit() without proper error handling and rollback

Detection:

• Find session.commit() not inside try/​except block or context manager
• Find session.commit() in try without session.rollback() in except
• Pattern: bare await session.commit() in service methods
• Exception: async with session.begin() auto-rollbacks (safe)

Severity:

• MEDIUM: Missing rollback (session left in broken state on failure)
• LOW: Missing explicit rollback when using context manager (auto-handled)

Recommendation: Use async with session.begin() (auto-rollback), or add explicit try/​except/​rollback pattern

Effort: S (wrap in context manager or add error handling)

5. Long-Held Transaction

What: Transaction open during slow/​blocking operations

Detection:

• Measure scope: count lines between transaction start and commit
• Flag if >50 lines of code between begin() and commit()
• Flag if transaction contains await calls to external services (network latency)
• Flag if transaction contains time.sleep() or asyncio.sleep()

Severity:

• HIGH: Transaction held during external API call (connection pool exhaustion risk)
• MEDIUM: Transaction spans >50 lines (complex logic, high chance of lock contention)

Recommendation: Minimize transaction scope; prepare data before opening transaction, commit immediately after DB operations

Effort: M (restructure code to minimize transaction window)

6. Event Channel Name Consistency

What: Publisher channel/​topic name does not match subscriber channel/​topic name

Detection:

• Step 1: Collect publisher channel names (extend Phase 2 trigger discovery):
  • Migration triggers: extract string argument from pg_notify('channel_name', ...), NOTIFY channel_name
  • Application code: Grep for \.publish\(["']|\.emit\(["']|redis.*publish\(["']|\.send_to\(["'] in src/, app/
  • Extract: {channel_name, source_file, source_line, technology}
• Step 2: Collect subscriber channel names:
  • PostgreSQL: Grep for LISTEN\s+(\w+) in application code (not just migrations)
  • Redis: Grep for \.subscribe\(["']([^"']+) in src/, app/
  • EventEmitter/​WebSocket: Grep for \.on\(["']([^"']+) in handler/​listener directories
  • Extract: {channel_name, source_file, source_line, technology}
• Step 3: Cross-reference publishers vs subscribers:
  • Exact match: publisher.channel_name == subscriber.channel_name -> OK
  • Near-miss: Levenshtein distance <= 2 OR one is substring of the other -> flag as MISMATCH
  • Orphaned publisher: channel exists in publishers but not in subscribers -> flag as ORPHAN
  • Orphaned subscriber: channel exists in subscribers but not in publishers -> flag as ORPHAN

Layer 2 Context Analysis (MANDATORY):

• If channel name comes from shared config constant or env var (e.g., CHANNEL = os.environ["EVENT_CHANNEL"]) and both publisher and subscriber use same source -> NOT a mismatch
• If channel uses dynamic suffix pattern (e.g., job_events:{job_id}) and both sides use same template -> NOT orphaned
• Exclude test files (**/​test*/​**, **/​*.test.*) from both publisher and subscriber discovery

Severity:

• CRITICAL: Channel name mismatch (near-miss: publisher sends to job_events, subscriber listens on job_event)
• HIGH: Orphaned publisher -- events sent but never consumed (data loss risk if events carry state changes)
• MEDIUM: Orphaned subscriber -- listener registered but no publisher found (dead code or future feature)

Recommendation:

• For mismatches: unify channel name to a single constant shared between publisher and subscriber
• For orphaned publishers: add subscriber or remove unused NOTIFY/​publish
• For orphaned subscribers: add publisher or remove dead listener

Effort: S (fix typo/​add constant) to M (design missing subscriber/​publisher)

Scoring Algorithm

MANDATORY READ: Load shared/​references/​audit_worker_core_contract.md and shared/​references/​audit_scoring.md.

Output Format

MANDATORY READ: Load shared/​references/​audit_worker_core_contract.md and shared/​templates/​audit_worker_report_template.md.

Write JSON summary per shared/​references/​audit_summary_contract.md. In managed mode the caller passes both runId and summaryArtifactPath; in standalone mode the worker generates its own run-scoped artifact path per shared contract.

Write report to {output_dir}/​ln-652--global.md with category: "Transaction Correctness" and checks: missing_intermediate_commits, scope_too_wide, scope_too_narrow, missing_rollback, long_held_transaction, event_channel_consistency.

Return summary per shared/​references/​audit_summary_contract.md.

When summaryArtifactPath is absent, write the standalone runtime summary under .hex-skills/​runtime-artifacts/​runs/​{run_id}/​evaluation-worker/​{worker}--{identifier}.json and optionally echo the same summary in structured output.

Report written: .hex-skills/​runtime-artifacts/​runs/​{run_id}/​audit-report/​ln-652--global.md
Score: X.X/​10 | Issues: N (C:N H:N M:N L:N)

Critical Rules

MANDATORY READ: Load shared/​references/​audit_worker_core_contract.md.

• Do not auto-fix: Report only
• Trigger discovery first: Always scan migrations for triggers/​NOTIFY before analyzing transaction patterns
• ORM-aware: Check if ORM context manager auto-rollbacks (async with session.begin() is safe)
• Exclude test transactions: Do not flag test fixtures with manual commit/​rollback
• Database-specific: PostgreSQL NOTIFY semantics differ from MySQL event scheduler

Definition of Done

MANDATORY READ: Load shared/​references/​audit_worker_core_contract.md.

• contextStore parsed successfully (including output_dir)
• scan_path determined
• Trigger/​NOTIFY infrastructure discovered from migrations
• All 6 checks completed:
  • missing intermediate commits, scope too wide, scope too narrow, missing rollback, long-held, event channel consistency
• Findings collected with severity, location, effort, recommendation
• Score calculated using penalty algorithm
• Report written to {output_dir}/​ln-652--global.md (atomic single Write call)
• Summary written per contract

Reference Files

• Audit output schema: shared/​references/​audit_output_schema.md

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Version: 1.1.0 Last Updated: 2026-03-15