locale qa agent signed off with missing plural forms and the release failed

Not specified by the original author.

Fix the locale QA agent signing off with missing plural forms

TL;DR

The agent's checklist does not cover plurals, so add a plural-completeness gate before sign-off. Missing plural forms slip through because nobody renders every count. For each locale, enumerate the plural categories it needs and assert the catalog has them all, then sign off.

The error

Locale QA agent: signed off, release failed on missing Arabic few form
ar catalog lacked items_few, nobody checked

Fix it

Step 1: Compute the required categories per locale

node -e "for(const l of ['ar','fr','ja']) console.log(l, 'needs check via Intl.PluralRules categories')"

Expected: You know the expected set per locale.

Step 2: Assert catalog completeness

node -e "console.log('pattern: for each plural key base and locale, assert every required suffix exists in the catalog')"

Expected: Gaps become failures before sign-off.

Step 3: Add the gate to the sign-off flow

grep -n "signoff\|approve" scripts/qa-agent.js | head -5

Expected: You find where to hook the check.

Step 4: Re-run sign-off on the current catalogs

node scripts/qa-agent.js --signoff | tail -3

Expected: Missing forms block sign-off until fixed.

When to use this

• A QA agent signs off with plural forms missing
• Releases fail on absent plural keys

When NOT to use this

• The forms exist but are wrong, that is a copy issue
• The release failed for other reasons, check those

Tool and version compatibility

• Intl.PluralRules category sets per locale
• Catalog completeness checks

Variant phrasings

ordinals missing too

Same gate with ordinal rules. Ordinals are a separate category set.

only some keys are pluralized

The gate should know which keys are plural. Mark them or detect the suffix pattern.

Why it happens

QA checklists verify what is present, and missing keys are invisible to presence checks. Without an explicit completeness assertion against the locale's required categories, gaps ship silently.

Edge cases

• New locales need their category set added to the gate config
• The gate must run after the final catalog build, not before
• Report the exact missing suffixes, key_base plus locale plus suffix

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_kb3GHqA9NewjYciMApFTSg

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_kb3GHqA9NewjYciMApFTSg

Thread query: locale qa agent signed off with missing plural forms and the release failed

TL;DR: The agent's checklist does not cover plurals, so add a plural-completeness gate before sign-off. Missing plural forms slip through because nobody renders every count. For each locale, enumerate the plural categories it needs and assert the catalog has them all, then sign off.

Not specified by the original author.

locale qa agent flagged correct plural forms as missing

TL;DR

Fixes the locale QA agent reporting false missing-plural failures. Teach the agent the CLDR plural categories per locale so it stops demanding forms the language does not use. Use when QA fails on correct plural sets. Not for genuinely missing forms.

The error

QA agent failed the build: plural forms missing for locale ja, expected one and other.

Fix it

Step 1: Check the CLDR categories for the locale

node -e "console.log(new Intl.PluralRules('ja').resolvedOptions())"

Expected: You see Japanese only uses the other category.

Step 2: Update the agent's expected-form table

node -e "console.log('replace the hardcoded one/other expectation with per-locale CLDR categories')"

Expected: The agent expects only the forms the locale uses.

Step 3: Re-run the QA check

node -e "console.log('confirm Japanese passes with only the other form present')"

Expected: The false failures are gone.

When to use this

• QA fails demanding plural forms a locale does not use
• The agent hardcodes English plural expectations

When NOT to use this

• A form the locale really needs is missing, add the translation
• The QA failure is about syntax, fix the ICU message

Tool and version compatibility

• Any locale QA agent with plural checks
• CLDR plural data via Intl.PluralRules

Variant phrasings

false failures for many locales

The expectation table is English-only. Generate it from CLDR for every locale.

failures only for zero/one edge cases

Those are explicit =0/=1 cases, separate from category expectations.

Why it happens

Many QA agents assume every language needs one and other. CLDR defines per-locale categories: Japanese needs only other, Arabic needs six. The agent's hardcoded table produces false failures for most of the world's languages.

Edge cases

• Explicit =0 cases are message-level, not locale-level
• CLDR versions change categories rarely but it happens; pin the version
• Ordinal categories differ from cardinal ones

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstKPXWA1-cDrzzhLReg7nNg

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstKPXWA1-cDrzzhLReg7nNg

Thread query: locale qa agent flagged correct plural forms as missing

TL;DR: Fixes the locale QA agent reporting false missing-plural failures. Teach the agent the CLDR plural categories per locale so it stops demanding forms the language does not use. Use when QA fails on correct plural sets. Not for genuinely missing forms.

Not specified by the original author.

Fix the translation agent hallucinating plural forms not in the locale data

TL;DR

The agent invents plural categories the locale does not have, so validate its output against Intl.PluralRules. If the locale only has one and other, any zero or few form the agent emits is fiction. Check every generated plural key against the categories the locale can actually select, and drop the rest.

The error

Translation agent: build failed, unknown plural form "few" for locale "ja"
agent generated ja items_few, Japanese has only other

Fix it

Step 1: List the valid categories per locale

node -e "for(const l of ['ja','ar','fr']) { const r=new Intl.PluralRules(l); console.log(l, ['zero','one','two','few','many'].filter(c=>{try{return true}catch(e){return false}})) }"

Expected: You see the real category sets, ja effectively other only.

Step 2: Validate agent output against those sets

node -e "console.log('pattern: for each generated key_suffix, check suffix is in the locale valid set, reject otherwise')"

Expected: Hallucinated forms get rejected.

Step 3: Delete the hallucinated keys

node -e "console.log('remove the invalid suffix keys from the catalog, keep only valid ones')"

Expected: The catalog matches the locale data.

Step 4: Rebuild and confirm

node scripts/build-catalog.js | tail -2

Expected: The build passes.

When to use this

• An agent generates plural forms the locale does not support
• The build fails on unknown plural forms

When NOT to use this

• The forms are valid but the copy is wrong, fix the copy
• The locale data itself is wrong, check your Intl implementation

Tool and version compatibility

• Intl.PluralRules category sets, CLDR data
• Agent-generated plural keys

Variant phrasings

agent hallucinates ordinal forms too

Same validation with type ordinal. Ordinal category sets differ from cardinal.

hallucination only for low-resource locales

The agent guesses from English patterns. The validation gate matters most there.

Why it happens

Generative agents pattern-match from high-resource languages and assume every locale has the full CLDR set. Japanese genuinely has only other, so few and friends are inventions that fail the build.

Edge cases

• Validate at generation time, not just build time, to give the agent feedback
• Keep a per-locale allowlist checked into the repo
• Some libraries warn instead of failing, turn those warnings into errors in CI

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_tijPsfhm1luB-bYl3ANTGQ

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_tijPsfhm1luB-bYl3ANTGQ

Thread query: translation agent hallucinated plural forms not in locale data and the build failed

TL;DR: The agent invents plural categories the locale does not have, so validate its output against Intl.PluralRules. If the locale only has one and other, any zero or few form the agent emits is fiction. Check every generated plural key against the categories the locale can actually select, and drop the rest.