godot-cold-parse only ever sees scripts on the STARTUP path: autoloads and
the main scene chain. That is the correct scope for the job it was built for
(Sprint 36's `Could not find base class "MetaScreen"`, a registration-ORDER
bug), but it is far narrower than the name suggests, and most of the codebase
is invisible to it. Verified by deliberately breaking a non-startup UI script
and a test file in turn: cold-parse reported "clean", exit 0, for both.
That is the second half of today's false green. A parse error in
test_step_canvas_annotation_layer.gd survived cold-parse AND survived
gdUnit4, which reports the suites that DID load as a clean pass. Two gates,
one blind spot: neither verified that a file it never opened was openable.
godot-parse-sweep opens every .gd in the project (226 today, addons and
.godot excluded) and fails on any that will not parse.
The split between the two halves is forced, not stylistic. No Godot API
reports GDScript parse failure reliably:
- ResourceLoader.load(path, "GDScript", CACHE_MODE_IGNORE) SEGFAULTS the
engine on a script that fails to parse — it dies on exactly the input the
tool exists to find.
- GDScript.new() + source_code + reload() returns a clean error code but
detaches the script from its resource_path, so class_name, preload() and
relative extends stop resolving: it reported 150 of 226 healthy scripts
as broken.
- Plain ResourceLoader.load() neither crashes nor false-positives, but
returns a NON-null object for a broken script, so its return value is
useless.
The engine's own stderr is the only honest signal. So the GDScript half just
opens files and makes no verdict; the wrapper scrapes the diagnosis. The
wrapper also refuses to pass unless the sweep reported completion, so a
future break in the walk cannot itself become a false green.
Unlike cold-parse, "Cannot infer the type" is NOT filtered. That filter is
precisely why cold-parse stayed silent about the file below.
First run found a real one: client/tests/util/scene_helper.gd has not parsed
since 2026-02-25 — five months — because `func(a := null, ...)` cannot infer
a type from null. Fixed with explicit `: Variant` params. Blast radius is
zero (the helper has no importers, so nothing else was taken out with it),
but it went unseen by two gates for five months, which is the point.
Full suite green at 3660.
Pair session with Jeroen, 2026-07-27.
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
jpmschweitzerandClaude
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