Follow-up question on the same task, reasoning only, no tests executed. Scenario: after install the developer hand-edits one owned rule and unrelated settings, then runs uninstall. Required behaviour is compare before remove. Uninstall must never execute a plan built earlier; it re-derives every effect from the journal against the freshly parsed current file. For each owned entry it searches the whole document for the exact value and for near matches before deciding. Exact value present in its recorded container at or above the recorded count means remove exactly the recorded count, since identical copies are interchangeable. Count below the recorded one, or only a near match such as an altered pattern or the same value moved to another container, means remove nothing and record a conflict; the edit transferred ownership to the developer. Absent with no near match means nothing to remove and the entry becomes terminal. Preexisting entries are skipped outright. Near matching runs before the absence test so an edited or moved value can never go terminal as absent. Unrelated edits survive because the writer patches the live document and never restores a snapshot: it removes only the planned occurrences, then re-parses its own output and asserts that every untouched key is unchanged and each touched collection equals its prior contents minus exactly the planned occurrences. Conflicts are reported per entry by kind and count without listing developer values, and only a per-entry override naming the exact value may remove a conflicted variant. Partial uninstall recovery follows from the write-ahead record. Crash before the pending record is durable changes nothing. Crash after the record but before the atomic rename is read as not landed from the unchanged base identity; the stale plan is discarded and the comparison is re-derived, because the developer may have edited again in the window. Crash after the rename but before the commit mark is read as landed only on an unforgeable witness; bookkeeping then finishes from the recorded effects, and any planned removal that is still present was re-created by the developer and is reported and left alone. Crash after commit but before journal deletion means every entry is terminal and only the deletion remains. An undecided verdict leaves settings untouched, marks the entries unverified, and exits with a status distinct from success so the developer knows the uninstall is incomplete. Because every effect is decided from current state through one shared procedure, a retry converges rather than compounding. This confirms the existing skill guidance in full and adds nothing new, so no skill change is proposed.

Resolution by reasoning only; no tests, crash injection or file inspection were executed. The two existing skills on this topic already cover the design, and the more recent one is strictly more complete, so no new skill is warranted. Independent reasoning reached the same core positions. Ownership is decided once at install time by observing the file and is recorded per rule as owned, preexisting or blocked by deny; it is never re-derived from content later because a developer can author an identical rule. The deny list is never written, edited or removed; a covering deny blocks an add and repair, while uninstall still removes the installer's own allow. Uninstall removes only owned rules by exact value at the recorded count, leaves near matches as developer-adopted, and removes nothing if the journal is missing. One compact argument worth stating explicitly: the two write orderings fail asymmetrically. Settings first then journal leaves, after a crash, grants with no record, which become unowned forever and leak. Journal first then settings leaves a claim that can be checked against the file. A false claim is verifiable; a lost claim is not. So the intent record must precede the settings write, and a commit mark follows. Recovery has three verdicts: not landed on positive evidence, landed on a witness other writers cannot forge, and undecided. The undecided case must become unverified rather than preexisting or owned, since preexisting leaks the grant permanently and owned risks deleting a developer entry. Rule presence alone is not a witness because the recovery window is unbounded. Nothing here contradicts the existing guidance; this thread adds only the ordering asymmetry framing and confirms the design from a fresh derivation.

Design question. A CLI installer adds a fixed set of six exact tool permission allow rules to a developer settings file that the developer also edits by hand. Repair and uninstall must remove or re-add only what the installer owns, keep any allow the developer already had, and never remove or weaken an explicit deny the developer added, even when the deny matches one of the installed allows. Known evidence: the settings file is a merged document with allow and deny lists, and setup writes an ownership journal before updating settings, so a crash can leave the journal claiming ownership of rules that were never written, or the reverse if the order is swapped. Unknowns: what the journal should record per rule, whether ownership is claimed only for rules the installer actually introduced versus rules that were already present, how to reconcile a stale journal on repair, and whether a two-phase intent then commit record is needed to make the journal and settings agree after a crash at any point.