Declare inherited and unset values, then bind field operations to declarations

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Work in progress for #32 and #46. The field-read contract, existing owners, complete consumer migration and saved-data cutover are in docs/declared-field-state.md. Source implementation and actual application acceptance follow. No compatibility aliases, fallback readers or second path registry.

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Unready producer prototype pushed. See docs/declared-field-state.md for the working #32 paired-source checkpoint and the current #46 API/probe. Current producer head is deliberately NOT compatible with the still-unported companion frontend branches. Declaration identity across schema replacement/undo and the overloaded topology owner index remain structural work; do not install or merge as complete.

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Checkpoint cc83a3e fixes an invalid inheritance claim: RootFields is a namespace, not a declared field. Before: RootFields(FieldProxy) inherited default/value metadata with no declaration, and a root field named value collided with whole-root value. After: FieldNamespace owns state/structure discovery, children, attribute binding and the single subscription-lifetime implementation; FieldProxy and RootFields consume it as siblings. Root datum/default/reset/write methods were deleted. Delegate admission synchronizes before checking the owner. Consumer search across ObjectState, FormBridge, PyQt, OpenHCS, Toad and Core found no root fields.write/reset/raw or external FieldProxy isinstance dependencies. Eleven focused tests pass, including value-named declaration and delegate replacement; 24 source-paired Toad checks and actual native-input/undo/unmount journey pass. NRA module_syntax_index drove the ownership move; prior full-corpus evidence and source relationships are in docs/declared-field-state.md. Dynamic field_type factory resolution is still open-ended, not a proof of external subtype behavior. Issues #32/#46 remain incomplete; no installation/completion claim.

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Qt progress belongs here, not in the repository API contract: PyQt ef7243c pairs with ObjectState cc83a3e production and FormBridge 881157d. Six source-paired Qt cases pass, including actual default/explicit form construction, native text/reset clicks with one mutation/publication, null/absence/inheritance, existing/nested views reacting to backend enablement, stale checkbox paint not becoming data, observer release and nested signal blocking. Details: PyQt #34 comment 6212298431. The API document now contains only lasting contract, without issue numbers, status, plan or evidence inventory, as requested in 11356. Both issues remain incomplete: Qt window/list/bridge callers, OpenHCS/Core consumers, optional/inline forms, saved-source migration, mutation omission/null admission and coherent installed acceptance remain. Pausing new UI/provider/build runs for the announced Codex migration; all production changes are pushed.

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Inspection/member correction delivered (not completion of the entire cutover)

Pair: ObjectState 9faba28, FormBridge 37a0556, PyQt 02db991.

• FieldInspection declares exactly one effective value: resolved: FieldValue. The parallel resolved_value, availability flag and broad exception fallback are deleted. Original resolver exception identity propagates.
• Five original inspection/projection consumer methods migrated: null classification, inherited classification, type projection, JSON projection and preview projection. Inheritance relation is owned by the member and shared with structural-owner projection. Thirty additional AST-selected flag uses now invoke member behavior across resolver, structural projection, construction and Qt services.
• FieldValue has no inherited, has_value or is_none class flags. project has no absence default: it passes the real directive or datum through existing polymorphic resolution to the view. Bridge absence is a visible Unset preview/member spelling, not fabricated null. Public DTO wire resolved_value and its wire null-description fields remain unchanged; their similarly named reads are not FieldInspection aliases.
• SpinBoxValueAdapter owns integer/double rendering, placeholder/range behavior and native admission. Leaves retain numeric type/range and floating formatting only. None renders as literal None; directives render their preview; real minima are data. No numeric value is None/value is not None branch or magic one-space remains in the AST-selected numeric class family (scoped rg: zero).
• Native signal declarations include their actual receiver. Qt emits textEdited before updating its number, so unchanged-number text admission is separate from valueChanged; no sender() guess or duplicated publication. Input tracking begins at control construction. Retiring special paint does not repeatedly repaint partial input and erase a minus sign.

Source evidence

NRA ModuleSyntaxIndex/class-family census covers eight production/dependency roots: 1,585 modules; 9,875 before/9,876 after class rows; zero parse errors. Conditional Qt declarations/runtime signal bindings are not claimed statically resolved. Actual C3 MRO and shared implementation identity were checked for base/no-scroll int/double controls. A new numeric leaf supplies its native Qt base, type/range and any real formatter; it does not copy data-state or subscription algorithms.

Requested raw rg is_none|has_value|\\.inherited\\b: 156 -> 115 across the same corpus. Remaining matches are wire DTO/null-description names, unrelated source fields and logging; FieldValue flag declarations/reads are gone. resolved_value_available production hits: 0. Five inspection consumers are not counted as thirty separate callers; the latter number is AST-selected expression sites.

Owned evidence: /home/ts/.cache/agent-scratch/objectstate-declared-fields/inspection-spinbox-{before,after}.json, meaning-flags-{before,after}.txt, meaning-member-migrations.json, inspection-spinbox-owners-after.json, spinbox-runtime-mro.txt and spinbox-members-after.txt. Transformations remain under the persistent producer checkout .scratch/. The first signal tuple selection also selected the outer tuple; that unsupported site was corrected before acceptance, not claimed as semantic proof from parsing.

Confirmed behavior

• 30 producer tests passed: existing handles plus inspection/scopeless resolution; literal null/absence/inheritance, exact read failure, dirty/provenance and source rules retained.
• 68 real Qt cases passed: localized float roundtrips, literal/wrapped null and directives, exact minima, one native zero admission, unchanged numeric minimum, range/signal-block restoration, default form, existing/nested refresh and reset.
• 5 bridge projection cases passed: absent member versus null and literal strings.
• Real source-paired Qt control journey and real bridge mutation/catalog/history journey passed, including original-handle undo.

Earlier import, signal-ordering, tuple-selection, constructor-tracking and negative-entry failures are retained separately; acceptance is the corrected run, not a silent retry. Test expectation that None means inherited display was replaced by explicit Inherit plus a distinct literal-null assertion; no skip/xfail, weakened count, timeout increase or provider replay.

This is source-paired acceptance, not shared installation or full OpenHCS/Core/Qt-window cutover. Existing drafts and saved-data migration remain unfinished.

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Typed field members across the bridge boundary

Paired source checkpoints: ObjectState 1479884, FormBridge b7c4ad5, PyQt f0acb19, OpenHCS 8d3bac264. Not shared-installed and not completion of the wider field cutover.

Owner and consumers

• FieldInspection retains raw and resolved as FieldValue members. The two null-presence properties are deleted.
• FieldValue is dataclass-declared. Unchanged python-introspect MemberFamily (main a9428c3) already owns tagged abstract-dataclass encoding/decoding. No new codec, wrapper, case roster or registry was added.
• Shared bridge semantic DTO fields carry members, not nullable values plus two booleans. The four compact-presence re-derivations and redundant action-field overrides are deleted. Compact serialization uses the declaration-aware codec before selecting keys, preserving Value(None), empty/false/zero, Inherit() and Unset() tags even with previews.
• Payload exclusion yields explicit absence for an excluded datum and retains directives; previews remain bounded display metadata. No exclusion fabricates literal null.
• Field-list compaction maps concrete data through the member. OpenHCS help/rendering consume member behavior; the obsolete null-as-inheritance summary counters are deleted.
• DataclassFieldAccess.is_config_type/is_container owns configuration classification: meaning members being dataclasses must not make them configuration containers. Extraction, reconstruction, structural leaves, history, context and form selection use that owner. Code-editor updates use it and canonical raw reads; duplicate nested recursion and three replaced/dead helper paths are deleted.

Source evidence

NRA SourceModule, module_syntax_index, build_class_family_index: 1,589 production/dependency modules, 9,923 class rows before/after, zero parse omissions. Evidence uses the producer, FormBridge, PyQt, OpenHCS, Toad, Core, current python-introspect and pycodify roots. Syntax/family evidence does not prove dynamic aliases, decorators, MRO or behavior.

Exact search after migration:

rg -n 'raw_value_is_none|resolved_value_is_none' across all five owned source and test roots: 0 hits, exit1, stderr empty. Original two inspection properties, two DTO fields and four re-derivations are gone.

Evidence root: /home/ts/.cache/agent-scratch/objectstate-declared-fields/; dto-members-{before,after}.json, dto-member-call-sites-before.json, dto-member-fixture-migrations.json, dto-null-flags-after.txt.

Confirmed behavior

Real Qt form/native typing, production Qt main-thread dispatcher, authenticated localhost ZMQ server/client, declaration-aware DTO decoding, mutation/catalog, reset, original-handle history undo, absence and view/server disposal pass. Explicit wire examples: {"Value":{"value":null}}, {"Value":{"value":""}}, {"Value":{"value":"None"}}, {"Inherit":{}}, {"Unset":{}}. Final journey also uses the existing metaclass-registry source required by OpenHCS. No provider or original saved input was used.

• 66 distinct producer cases pass: 64 in the first batch and two old source-generation assertions corrected and confirmed separately. Their former None-as-inheritance expectations contradicted the declared contract; strict literal-null and explicit-empty-config assertions replace them. Initial failure output retained.
• 43 focused FormBridge cases pass, including typed/compact member roundtrips, malformed-member rejection, code-editor updates and real ZMQ transport.
• 68 focused Qt cases pass.

Receipts: dto-member-bridge-{journey,paired-final}.txt, dto-producer-tests-v1.txt, dto-codegen-correction.txt, dto-bridge-tests-v1.txt, dto-qt-tests-v1.txt.

Remaining application blocker

OpenHCS tests do not reach collection. The old installed metaclass-registry lacks testing; using the unchanged required source clears that import and exposes TypeError: LazyNapariDisplayConfig.colormap must be str; got Inherit during configuration startup. This wider lazy-validation cutover remains doctrine-owned under the existing unfinished field work. No skip, timeout increase, alternate test harness or installation was used. Receipts: dto-openhcs-{tests-v1,paired-tests-v1}.txt. The OpenHCS consumer source is pushed, not claimed fully application-verified.

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Declaration-owned checkpoint (source-paired, not installed)

Pushed heads: ObjectState 93eae56; FormBridge b5d3af8; PyQt 8690060; OpenHCS f0c07c411. Dependency python-introspect ffcffaa (PR #25).

ValueDeclaration compiles annotations once. ParameterOwnerDeclaration owns parameters, field_types and init_field_names (one definition each); constructor and configuration owners share that implementation. FieldValue.of only preserves meaning members or boxes data; it does not classify runtime payloads. Named configuration access is absent on scalar leaves. Declared collection element types own traversal and serialization. DeclaredValue shares metadata/copy/serialization lifecycle between configuration and collection values.

InheritedDefault is the single frozen class-keyed default record; ValueDefault/FactoryDefault materialize it. own_default and inherited_default now index declared fields and raise KeyError for unknown names. Their direct resolver callers validate against the requested declaration; configuration_mro(field_name) filters ancestors by their declared fields before reading defaults. All touched production roots have zero _inherited_default, _resolve_type and __objectstate_rebuild__ references. UIParameterVisibilityPolicy owns field visibility metadata, keyed by the existing policy class. CompactFieldProjection is also its own metadata key; no string-key compatibility reader remains.

Text-line counts (published baseline -> checkpoint):

| production root | is_container | is_config_type | literal | None | getattr | get_base_type_for_lazy |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ObjectState 1479884 | 27 -> 0 | 2 -> 0 | 94 -> 91 | 37 -> 16 | 46 -> 2 |
| FormBridge bdafb52 | 3 -> 0 | 6 -> 0 | 480 -> 468 | 18 -> 16 | 8 -> 0 |

The two remaining lazy callback-name lines are its definition and register_type_resolver registration; zero callers, imports or exports remain in the touched production family. The normalization wrapper/cache and per-caller fallback expressions are removed. Archived dirty-before normalization count was 45, now 2.

FormBridge FieldValue.of: published 3 -> 2; archived dirty-before 15 -> 2. get_base_type_for_lazy: 8 -> 0. metadata.get: 4 -> 2. Combined requested regex: published 15 -> 4; archived dirty-before 27 -> 4. The remaining FieldValue.of sites preserve DTO meaning after mapping JSON data, not payload kind. The remaining metadata.get sites read canonical runtime code-document tokens, not declaration metadata.

widget_creation_type consumers: WidgetCreationPipeline.init selected an enum by the string; it now calls param_info.creation_type(WidgetCreationType). ParameterFormManager._create_parameter_widget only logged it; it now logs the actual info class. All four string ClassVars are deleted.

NRA syntax/family evidence: 1,590 production/dependency modules, 9,953 classes, no parse errors. AST calls: ObjectState getattr 28 -> 13, FormBridge 17 -> 15; is_container/is_config_type calls zero, is_dataclass exactly one annotation compiler call. Dynamic resolution is not established by these syntax counts; the actual source-paired journey below checks the affected behavior.

Exact deleted Python type-name DTO declarations remain: source_type (1), object_state_path_type (2), raw_value_type (2), resolved_value_type (2), object_type (3), help_target_type (1). Genuine mime_type is retained. Deletion gates cover the exact declarations, not all *_type fields.

Verification: python-introspect public resolver/analyzer 64 passed; producer declaration/handle/inspection/scopeless/codegen/deletion cases 51 passed; bridge DTO/deletion cases 29 passed; Qt declared/numeric cases 66 passed. Actual source-paired native Qt input, main-thread dispatch, authenticated localhost ZMQ, DTO decode, reset, undo and disposal passed with null, empty string, text None, inheritance and absence. No provider and no installation.

Still unfinished: OpenHCS config startup reaches SourceBindingsConfig.post_init but attempts to iterate Inherit in its source-binding normalization. Earlier removed has_value reads in the shared normalization owner are repaired; the whole remaining post-init normalizer needs a directive-aware owner pass. The old test_subfield_semantics.py still imports deleted MISSING/string APIs and fails collection; this failure is retained, not skipped or xfailed. Full OpenHCS/app acceptance and #32/#46 cutover are not complete. doctrine-segment remains the implementation owner.

Dependency: python-introspect ffcffaa, draft PR #25. No shared runtime publication/restart performed.

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Fresh direct-task checkpoint addressing the source-plan roster/C3 review; this does not resume the blocked P44 goal or claim final P44 acceptance.

Published source pairing:

• OpenHCS 81849573a02367c82e21624f16255cf73a9f8f83 (implementation 1c30debee, then deleted the replaced import).
• ObjectState 8642469024c8a1ff41652ac28281d1ffcc821b34 (Declare inherited and unset values, then bind field operations to declarations #62).
• python-introspect 2518631cb689a9ae3db553292f8f06a01e8fac0d (Keep publisher authentication on the publication boundary #25).

Ownership and deletions:

• _SourceBindingPlanBase iterates dataclasses.fields(self), indexes each resolved annotation, admits its raw member through ValueDeclaration, normalizes data through that declaration and validates the result. Inherit/Unset remain directives via member behavior, not flag tests.
• SequenceDeclaration owns declared list/tuple shape conversion; NullableDeclaration composes it without interpreting payload shape. Object-annotated sequence payloads remain opaque.
• Only actual extra behavior is field-declared under SourceFieldTransform: bindings uniqueness/coercion, grouping cleanup, metadata schema merge and stack components. Validated transforms consume validated input; coercing transforms validate their output. No string-name normalization roster remains.
• Both normalization and annotation-validation mixins call super().__post_init__(). DataclassPostInit is their shared cooperative endpoint. Deleted SourceBindingsConfig.__post_init__, CompiledSourceBindingPlan.__post_init__, _normalize_field, _tuple_values, _validate_field_value, and obsolete forwarding helpers/imports.

NRA source evidence: 54 relevant production modules across ObjectState, FormBridge, PyQt, python-introspect and OpenHCS parsed; zero parse errors. Before/after source-plan roster calls: source_bindings.py 5→0, config.py 5→0. Explicit named-parent post-init calls: 2→0. Declaration, inheritance, write/check/call and consumer sites are retained at /home/ts/.cache/agent-scratch/objectstate-declared-fields/declared-source-plan-nra.json. Syntax is not proof of dynamic alias resolution; actual C3 is separately exercised below.

Verification:

• 79 python-introspect focused tests passed, including getter-owned validation/error identity and a cooperative trailing preparation capability.
• 57 ObjectState focused tests passed, including declaration shape normalization and opaque scalar payloads.
• Seven direct source-paired application API checks passed: raw directives, both source-plan owners' normalization/rejection, compiled directive rejection, shared declarations and real PipelineConfig construction with inherited Napari colormap gray.
• Additional real application API checks passed: a new declared field normalizes/validates with no roster edit, a field-declared transform executes, an additional C3 capability executes once after normalization, and compiled annotation validation still rejects directives. Actual MRO: CooperativePlan → CompiledSourceBindingPlan → SourceBindingDeclarationsMixin → _SourceBindingPlanBase → AnnotatedDataclassValidationMixin → TrailingInit → DataclassPostInit → ABC → object.
• Added corresponding OpenHCS unit regressions; OpenHCS pytest itself remains gated by this checkout's previously reported unbuilt native extensions. No skip, gate bypass, installation, full-suite or full P44 claim. All three PRs remain drafts.

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P44 takeover checkpoint (not ready):

• ObjectState 9c7f05a, FormBridge ed74d9e, PyQt da2449a pushed. Preserved predecessor work and the automatic pre-compaction checkpoint.
• Deleted FieldValue.is_inherited and all 10 callers. Already-admitted members now own inheritance; FormBridge RawDisplayValue uses ConfigurationDeclaration.read_raw/own_default, including factory defaults. No compatibility API or flag reader added.
• Source search across the three production roots: zero FieldValue.is_inherited or .raw_value_is_none, .resolved_value_is_none, .resolved_value_available, .has_value, .is_none, .is_missing, .is_container reads. Before sites: .scratch/p44/flag-sites-before.txt. AST ownership inventory: .scratch/p44/ast-before.json (no parse errors). This is not a claim that remaining container classifiers were deleted.
• Six formerly failing subfield contracts now mutate through DottedFieldPath.bind(...).write(...); targeted subfields/declarations: 18 passed. Stale resolver and constructor-patcher tests now use resolve_declared_type and ValueDeclaration.construct; removed APIs were not restored.
• Actual source-paired generated PyQt form on isolated Xvfb: inherited 77 distinct from literal None, backend updates the open form, native key input commits, reset has exactly one hook/publication, then disposal. Screenshot: /home/ts/.cache/agent-scratch/rts-results/p44-form.png.
• Full ObjectState: 262 passed, 146 failed, 33 errors. FormBridge form/help/preview tests: 18 passed, 8 failed. Removed API consumers/test doubles and other failures remain; these are not accepted as baseline failures. Logs and exact per-repo SHAs: /home/ts/.cache/agent-scratch/rts-results/p44.json.
• Remaining production ownership work includes FormBridge container conversion and PyQt literal/table classifiers. All three PRs remain draft. No installed package was changed.