@gurupanguji

Skip Live Verification Failures Implementation Plan

For agentic workers: REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Use superpowers:subagent-driven-development (recommended) or superpowers:executing-plans to implement this plan task-by-task. Steps use checkbox (- [ ]) syntax for tracking.

Goal: Keep the social publisher moving when a page is not ready, without marking skipped snippets as published.

Architecture: Change the verification helper to return a result instead of raising, then let the main loop decide whether to publish or skip. Add focused tests around the verification result and the queue behavior so the script never regresses back to aborting the whole run.

Tech Stack: Python 3, unittest, existing tests/test_publish_social.py harness, requests mocking.

Task 1: Add a failing test for verification failure skipping

Files:

Modify: tests/test_publish_social.py
Step 1: Add a test that a failed verification returns a skip result instead of raising

def test_wait_for_live_post_returns_skip_result_after_failed_attempts(self) -> None:
    snippet = types.SimpleNamespace(
        front_matter={
            "canonical_url": "https://example.com/post",
            "title": "Expected title",
        }
    )

    original_get = self.ps.requests.get
    self.addCleanup(setattr, self.ps.requests, "get", original_get)

    def fake_get(*args, **kwargs):
        return types.SimpleNamespace(status_code=404, text="not found")

    self.ps.requests.get = fake_get

    ok, message = self.ps.wait_for_live_post(
        snippet,
        attempts=2,
        interval_seconds=0,
        timeout_seconds=1,
    )

    self.assertFalse(ok)
    self.assertIn("HTTP 404", message)

Step 2: Add a test that the main loop skips publishing and does not mark the snippet published

def test_main_skips_unverified_snippet_without_marking_published(self) -> None:
    with mock.patch.object(self.ps, "wait_for_live_post", return_value=(False, "title mismatch")), \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_mastodon") as publish_mastodon, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_bluesky") as publish_bluesky, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_tumblr") as publish_tumblr, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_linkedin") as publish_linkedin, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_threads") as publish_threads, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_instagram") as publish_instagram, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_x") as publish_x, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "publish_nostr") as publish_nostr, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "mark_as_published") as mark_as_published, \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps, "SNIPPETS_DIR", Path("/tmp/social-snippets-test")), \
        mock.patch.object(self.ps.sys, "argv", ["publish_social.py", "--platform", "Mastodon"]):
        self.ps.SNIPPETS_DIR.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
        snippet_path = self.ps.SNIPPETS_DIR / "2026-04-20-skip-test.md"
        snippet_path.write_text(
            "\n".join(
                [
                    "---",
                    'title: "Skip Test"',
                    "date: 2026-04-20 12:00:00 +0000",
                    'canonical_url: "https://example.com/post"',
                    "---",
                    "",
                    "## Mastodon",
                    "Snippet: skip me",
                ]
            )
            + "\n",
            encoding="utf-8",
        )
        self.addCleanup(self._cleanup_temp_snippet_dir, snippet_path.parent)

        self.ps.main()

    publish_mastodon.assert_not_called()
    publish_bluesky.assert_not_called()
    publish_tumblr.assert_not_called()
    publish_linkedin.assert_not_called()
    publish_threads.assert_not_called()
    publish_instagram.assert_not_called()
    publish_x.assert_not_called()
    publish_nostr.assert_not_called()
    mark_as_published.assert_not_called()

Task 2: Change the verification helper to return a result

Files:

Modify: scripts/publish_social.py
Step 1: Replace the SystemExit raise in wait_for_live_post() with a returned failure result

def wait_for_live_post(
    snippet: SnippetData,
    attempts: int,
    interval_seconds: int,
    timeout_seconds: int,
) -> tuple[bool, str]:
    last_message = ""
    for attempt in range(1, attempts + 1):
        ok, message = verify_live_post(snippet, timeout_seconds)
        last_message = message
        print(f"[verify {attempt}/{attempts}] {message}", flush=True)
        if ok:
            return True, message
        if attempt < attempts:
            print(f"[verify {attempt}/{attempts}] Waiting {interval_seconds} seconds before next attempt...", flush=True)
            time.sleep(interval_seconds)

    return False, last_message or "Live post verification failed."

Step 2: Update the main publishing loop to skip on failed verification and continue

        verified, message = wait_for_live_post(
            snippet,
            attempts=max(args.verify_attempts, 1),
            interval_seconds=max(args.verify_interval_seconds, 0),
            timeout_seconds=max(args.verify_timeout_seconds, 1),
        )
        if not verified:
            print(f"Skipping {target_file.name}: {message}")
            continue

Step 3: Keep mark_as_published() behind the successful publish path only

        if not args.dry_run and target_platform is None:
            mark_as_published(target_file)
            print(f"Marked {target_file.name} as published.")

Task 3: Verify the new skip behavior

Files:

Modify: scripts/publish_social.py
Modify: tests/test_publish_social.py
Step 1: Run the publish-social tests and confirm the new skip tests fail before the code change

python3 -m unittest tests/test_publish_social.py -v

Step 2: Implement the helper and main-loop change

# Change only the verification return shape and the loop branch.

Step 3: Re-run the publish-social tests and confirm they pass

python3 -m unittest tests/test_publish_social.py -v

Step 4: Re-run the broader validation set

python3 -m unittest tests/test_publish_social.py tests/test_validate_posts.py

Step 5: Commit the bugfix

git add scripts/publish_social.py tests/test_publish_social.py docs/superpowers/specs/2026-04-20-skip-live-verification-failures-design.md docs/superpowers/plans/2026-04-20-skip-live-verification-failures-implementation-plan.md
git commit -m "fix: skip social publishing when live verification fails"