One matching prefix aborts all four writes in a Claude Code audit-memo sync

The scan is two prefixes wide. SECRET_RE is `(sk-[A-Za-z0-9_-]{16,}|ghp_[A-Za-z0-9]{20,})` ^[6]. Both branches of that alternation open on a literal, so a secret that does not begin `sk-` or `ghp_` is not a hit ^[17]. A Postgres URL with the password inline goes through. The accident the dev.to author describes is narrower than the general case: a fragment of an API key pasted during debugging and then quoted back into a memo the agent wrote ^[14].

grep runs over the candidate list, not over the directory ^[7]. The `case` statement admits `audit-*.md`, `*-plan-*.md` and `*-curation-*.md` ^[3], which on this machine selects 4 files out of 12 and leaves 8 that the scanner never opens and the sync never copies ^[16]. One loop builds both sets, so what gets inspected and what gets written cannot come apart. log.md is excluded by name, at 2,316 lines and roughly 228 KB of chronological log that does not fit the wiki's one-note-per-file granularity ^[12].

When any candidate matches, the script prints the offending paths to stderr and exits 2 before touching the destination ^[7]. "A single hit halts every candidate," the author wrote ^[8]. Partial syncs were rejected because the script would otherwise have to decide which file to skip, and "a mistake in that call is the scariest failure mode here", the author wrote ^[9]. I would take that trade at four candidates, where a false positive costs one read of the abort list and one re-run. It gets more expensive as the directory grows, because one stale `sk-` string in a months-old audit stops every other memo alongside it ^[7].

The write path never overwrites. A candidate is staged to a temp file, compared with `cmp -s` against any same-name file at the destination, then either deleted or moved into place under a timestamped name ^[11]. The recorded dry run reported `planned=4 total_candidates=4` ^[15].

The credential pattern is not what holds the rest of the memo back. The project inventory in the audit excerpt matches nothing in SECRET_RE ^[13], and `audit-*.md` is on the admit list ^[3]. The filename filter is the whole content policy, and the destination is the author's own human-facing wiki ^[2].