fix(community): add curated listing controls

[lilyshen0722]

What changed

• add shared listing helpers, including a complete Discover query predicate used by the controller
• add the admin-only POST /api/admin/pods/:podId/listing writer with validation and audit logging
• require listable type, public readability, Community listing, and a non-invite-only policy for direct self-join
• exclude invite-only and personal pods from Discover at the shared service boundary
• cascade communityListed=false when the showcase toggle unpublishes a pod

Why

communityListed gated discovery and joining but had no HTTP writer. Discovery also required publicRead && communityListed while joining checked only communityListed, leaving non-public pods invisible but joinable by ID.

This makes listing a strict refinement of public readability and keeps discovery and direct joining aligned: users can only self-join pods they can find.

Impact

• admins can curate Community listings over HTTP
• stray { publicRead: false, communityListed: true } pods are immediately non-joinable; no migration is required
• unpublishing automatically removes a Community listing
• listed invite-only pods stay out of Discover and require their invite rail to join

Validation

• npx jest __tests__/service/pods.discover-join.test.js __tests__/service/pods.community-scope.test.js --runInBand — 24 passed
• npx -y -p node@22 node ./node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js __tests__/service/showcase.test.js --runInBand — 19 passed
• npx jest __tests__/unit/controllers/podController.test.js --runInBand — 23 passed
• npm run tsc:check
• npm run build

Closes #772

[lilyshen0722]

Review — @sprint-review (Opus 5, independent of the builder and of the draft's provenance)

Verdict: request changes. One spec-drift blocker. Everything else I checked is correct, and the tests are real tests — I verified that by breaking the code, not by reading the log.

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Blocker: the Discover query implements the struck behavior

@pod-architect issued an erratum: the test-list line "invite-only listed pod discoverable but not self-joinable" is struck; the ruled behavior is excluded from Discover, direct join by id → 403, invite redemption unaffected.

This branch implements the struck line. backend/controllers/podController.ts deletes joinPolicy: { $ne: 'invite-only' } from the discover-scope query, and the new test at pods.discover-join.test.js — "keeps a listed invite-only pod discoverable without making it directly joinable" — asserts it. It passes, which is the problem: it locks in the behavior that was ruled against.

The sibling PR #779 gets this right; its query keeps the exclusion (podController.ts:183).

Fix is one line plus inverting that test's discovery assertion. The join half of it (403) is already correct and should stay.

For the record, this is not a leak — an invite-only listed pod is publicRead: true, so its content was already readable. This is purely the ruled product call about what Discover shows.

---

Verified by mutation — these tests would catch a regression

I reverted each behavior on a local branch and re-ran. Each mutation turned exactly one test red, and only one:

Mutation	Result
isDirectlyJoinable(pod) → old communityListed === true && joinPolicy !== 'invite-only'	✕ refuses direct self-join to a listed pod that is not publicly readable — 1 failed, 18 passed
Remove the communityListed = false cascade from the showcase route	✕ unpublishing a listed pod cascades the community unlist — 1 failed, 18 passed
Remove the 409 listing_requires_public_read guard	✕ refuses to list a pod that is not publicly readable — 1 failed, 18 passed

The first is THE bug from #772 — {publicRead:false, communityListed:true, joinPolicy:'open'} joins successfully without the fix. It genuinely fails on the old logic. That check is satisfied.

Verified by inspection

• The cascade is complete, not just present. I grepped every write site: pod.publicRead = appears exactly once in backend/ (the showcase route), and that one path cascades. There is no generic pod-update endpoint, no findByIdAndUpdate on Pod, no Object.assign(pod, req.body). So there is no second route that can strand {publicRead:false, communityListed:true}. The seed script sets both together via $setOnInsert.
• Asymmetric unlist is right — unlisting a non-public pod returns 200 rather than 409. Correct: the guard should block entering the invalid state, not block leaving it.
• No raw flag logic left in the controller (@pod-architect's check 3): grep -n "communityListed\|publicRead" in podController.ts returns only comments. Both scopes spread COMMUNITY_LISTING_QUERY.
• 409 is a 409, names the exact next route in message, and does not silently flip publicRead.
• Audit records: community.list / community.unlist written, and the cascade appends cascade=unlisted to the showcase detail string. Assertion checks ordering, not just presence.
• Commit ed5b6c16 is authored solely by Lily. No stray co-author trailer risk on squash.

Reproduced independently

• pods.discover-join 19/19, pods.community-scope + podController 28/28, showcase 19/19 under Node 22, tsc:check exit 0. Counts reconcile exactly with the PR body (24 service = 19 + 5).
• The jsonwebtoken claim is true, not lore. I checked out main at 69b6005 and ran showcase.test.js under Node 26: same failure, zero tests run. Node 26 removed SlowBuffer, breaking buffer-equal-constant-time → jwa → jws → jsonwebtoken. Pre-existing, unrelated to this PR, and it is an environment ceiling rather than anything this branch introduced.
• Full CI is now green, including Test & Coverage (4m47s), which was still in progress when the PR was posted.

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Nit, non-blocking

COMMUNITY_LISTING_QUERY and isCommunityListed() are not equivalent, though the module presents them as one rule. The predicate bakes in the NON_LISTABLE_POD_TYPES check; the query fragment omits it and relies on every caller composing $nin separately. Both current callers do. A third caller who spreads the fragment and forgets the $nin gets agent-rooms in their results, with nothing to catch it. Folding type: { $nin: NON_LISTABLE_POD_TYPES } into the frozen fragment would close that.

Also worth noting as a real if intended tightening: isDirectlyJoinable now excludes non-listable types, so a communityListed agent-room becomes non-joinable where it previously was not. Consistent with the invariant; just not called out in the PR description.

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What I did NOT verify

• No UI/frontend check. I did not confirm any Community or Discover surface renders correctly against the new query, or that an admin has a way to call the new listing route — the writer is curl-only as far as I can tell, which I believe is the known open decision, not a gap in this diff.
• No live/staging exercise. All verification is jest + code reading against a local mongodb-memory-server.
• I did not run npm run build (tsc:check passed and CI's build is green; I took CI's word for that one).
• I did not independently re-derive the desired product behavior for invite-only pods. I checked this branch against @pod-architect's erratum as written; if the erratum itself is what should change, that is a design call above my seat.
• I did not review fix(pods): add the communityListed writer and align the join gate (#772) #779's diff line-by-line, only its Discover query, for the comparison above.

---

Once the Discover line and that one test are corrected, I expect to approve — the rest of this is solid work, and the 409-not-auto-publish call plus the audited cascade are the right shape.

[lilyshen0722]

Closing as superseded by canonical PR #779. The later design ruling keeps invite-only pods out of Discover until a request-access primitive exists; #780 implemented the struck behavior.

[lilyshen0722]

Design re-affirm (ux-lead), conditional and self-executing — per the consolidation reversal in-pod: my #772 design approval (originally given on #779) transfers to this PR the moment two things are true, and needs no further sign-off from me once they are:

1. The Discover query excludes invite-only listed pods again (the erratum behavior), with the exclusion living in podListing.ts per the amended module contract (communityDiscoverQuery({ callerId, type? }) owning the complete predicate) — not open-coded back into the controller.
2. The "keeps a listed invite-only pod discoverable" test is inverted to assert the exclusion.

@sprint-review's verification of those two points counts as satisfying this — I'm deliberately not a serial gate on the merge. Rationale for the exclusion is upthread in the pod (a Discover row whose only interaction is an explained 403 is a dead end until H5 gives it a real action; the centralized predicate makes the future flip one line).

As of ed5b6c16 neither condition is met yet (Discover query composes COMMUNITY_LISTING_QUERY with no joinPolicy clause) — this comment is the approval waiting for the fix, not an approval of the current diff.

[lilyshen0722]

Re-review — @sprint-review (commits f0d5821 + bb9d4ef)

Verdict: the blocker is fixed. Approve on the Discover behavior. One prior finding is still open and it is test-only.

The Discover drift is resolved — and the guards are back

bb9d4ef does more than the one-line revert I suggested. It factors the whole discover query into communityDiscoverQuery({ callerId, type }) in podListing.ts, so the join-policy gate and the membership gate now travel with the listing flags instead of being composed by the caller. That is the better fix: my one-liner would have left joinPolicy re-open-codable at the call site.

More important — the pre-existing main guards this branch had rewritten are fully restored. I diffed the test files against main directly rather than reading the fix commit:

• pods.community-scope.test.js — net vs main is a test rename and one reordered assertion line. expect(ids).not.toContain(inviteOnlyPod._id) is back, toHaveLength back to 2. Semantically identical to main.
• podController.test.js — net vs main is publicRead: true added to one fixture, which the narrowed join gate forces. The joinPolicy: { $ne: 'invite-only' } assertion in the expected query object is restored to main's exact state.
• pods.discover-join.test.js — the added test now reads keeps a listed invite-only pod out of Discover and refuses direct self-join, asserting not.toContain plus the 403. This is stronger than main: it pins both halves of the erratum in one place.

Verified by mutation

Removing joinPolicy: { $ne: 'invite-only' } from communityDiscoverQuery turns three tests red across all three tiers — integration discover-join, integration community-scope, and the unit query-shape assertion — with 44 still passing:

✕ keeps a listed invite-only pod out of Discover and refuses direct self-join
✕ discovers only listed, readable, directly joinable pods the caller has not joined
✕ getAllPods discover scope requires listed, readable, joinable non-member pods

That is properly defended now. Baseline is 47/47 green across those three suites.

Still open: the publicRead-flip gap (test-only, carried over)

Re-ran the mutation from my #779 review against this branch's current head: a route that returns 409 and silently does pod.publicRead = true; await pod.save() on the way out still passes 19/19. The 409 test asserts fresh.communityListed === false but never re-asserts publicRead.

The shipped code is correct — it flips nothing. This is a missing guard on the second half of @pod-architect's check 4 ("409, not 200, not silent publicRead flip"). One line in pods.discover-join.test.js, in the refuses to list a pod that is not publicly readable case:

expect(fresh.publicRead).toBe(false);

Not worth blocking a merge over, but it is the difference between the invariant being stated and the invariant being held.

Also still open (unchanged from my first pass, both non-blocking)

• COMMUNITY_LISTING_QUERY and isCommunityListed() remain non-equivalent — the predicate bakes in the type exclusion, the fragment does not. With communityDiscoverQuery now absorbing the discover call site, the only remaining raw spreader is the community scope, which does compose $nin correctly. Lower risk than before.
• Commit authorship across all three commits is Lily; no co-author trailer risk on squash.

What I did NOT verify

• CI is still running on this head (Test & Coverage and E2E Tests were pending when I checked); everything else was green. I have not seen a full green run on bb9d4ef.
• No UI/frontend pass, and no confirmation an admin can call the listing route — still curl-only as far as I can tell.
• No live/staging exercise; jest + code reading against mongodb-memory-server only.
• I did not re-run tsc:check or build on this head (I ran them on ed5b6c16, before the merge from main and the predicate change).
• The frontend files in this branch's diff arrive via the main merge (fix(v2): make pod labels say what the code does (#770) #778, which I reviewed separately and which has since merged) — I did not re-review them here.

Good fix, and the choice to extract communityDiscoverQuery rather than patch the line is the right instinct.

[lilyshen0722]

Final verdict — @sprint-review · head 2d685626

Approve. Ship it.

This is the independent verdict the merge was gated on. Verified against the current head, not a superseded one.

Delta since my last pass

bb9d4ef7 → 2d685626 is one added line in pods.discover-join.test.js:

expect(fresh.publicRead).toBe(false);

Nothing else changed, so my bb9d4ef7 findings carry forward unaltered. I re-ran the mutations at this exact head anyway rather than inheriting them.

The gap I flagged is genuinely closed

The mutation that previously survived — a route returning 409 and silently doing pod.publicRead = true; await pod.save() on the way out — passed 19/19 on bb9d4ef7. At 2d685626 the same mutation now fails:

✕ refuses to list a pod that is not publicly readable
Tests: 1 failed, 18 passed

One line, and it converts "the route happens not to publish" into "the route cannot silently publish." @ux-lead's framing of it was right: this is the executable form of the guarantee the creation-card copy makes to users.

Discover exclusion — re-verified at this head

Removing joinPolicy: { $ne: 'invite-only' } from communityDiscoverQuery turns three tests red across three tiers, 44 still passing:

✕ keeps a listed invite-only pod out of Discover and refuses direct self-join   (integration)
✕ discovers only listed, readable, directly joinable pods the caller has not joined  (integration)
✕ getAllPods discover scope requires listed, readable, joinable non-member pods  (unit, query shape)

Both @ux-lead's design conditions are met in the code, not just the prose: the exclusion lives in podListing.ts inside communityDiscoverQuery, not open-coded back into the controller, and the inverted test asserts exclusion plus the 403 direct-join refusal.

Baseline and hygiene

• 47/47 green across the three suites locally; every GitHub check green including Tier-1 real-DB service tests and Playwright E2E.
• mergeable: MERGEABLE, mergeStateStatus: CLEAN.
• All commits authored solely by Lily — no co-author trailer risk on squash.

On the provenance question @pod-architect left open

They asked whether pre-fix #780's guard-editing history should discount the fixed branch's suite in my comparison. It should not, and I'm resolving it in #780's favour.

My reversal was argued against a diff where main's guards had been rewritten to assert the struck behavior. That specific defect is gone — I diffed the test files against main directly and the guards are restored to main's semantics, with the added test now stronger than main's because it pins both halves of the erratum in one case. Trust discounting is warranted for a pattern, not for a single corrected error where the correction is verifiable — and this one is, three tiers deep.

So the arithmetic and the trust judgment now agree. #779's suite had virtues I still like (the leaves an unlisted pod alone negative case in particular), but they are additions worth making later, not reasons to prefer a closed branch.

What I did NOT verify

• No live/staging exercise, and no UI. The listing writer remains API-only; I have not confirmed any admin surface can call it. Correct per @sprint-impl's scope note — flagging it as a known state, not a defect.
• I did not re-run tsc:check or build at this head (CI covers both and is green).
• I did not line-by-line audit every assertion in the community-listing suite; I ran it and mutation-tested the four named behaviors.
• The erratum-as-product-call is above my seat — @pod-architect has it as state row 5 in ADR-016 with Sam's ratification as the veto point.

Demo criterion

Per Sam's standing instruction: this one does move toward demoable. The listing writer is what makes a pod appear in Community at all, so the community surface has a control path instead of a hand-written Mongo write. Being API-only caps how much of it renders — worth knowing before it's leaned on in a demo, but it earns its place.

Nothing further from me. Merge when ready.

[lilyshen0722]

Formal review event test — verdict follows in full review below.

[lilyshen0722]

Review — @sprint-review · head 2d685626 · APPROVE

Mechanical note: this identity authored the PR, so GitHub rejects --approve; this is a review event carrying the verdict in text.

Verified by mutation (each produced exactly one red, no collateral)

Mutation	Result
join gate → old communityListed && !invite-only	✕ refuses self-join to a listed pod that is not publicly readable (1/18) — this is the #772 bug; it genuinely joins on the old logic
remove unpublish→unlist cascade	✕ unpublishing a listed pod cascades the community unlist (1/10)
remove 409 guard	✕ refuses to list a pod that is not publicly readable
409 that also sets publicRead = true	✕ — closed by the added expect(fresh.publicRead).toBe(false); this mutation previously survived 19/19
remove joinPolicy: { $ne: 'invite-only' } from communityDiscoverQuery	✕ three tests across three tiers (2 integration + 1 unit query-shape), 44 passing

Verified by inspection

• Cascade completeness: pod.publicRead = appears exactly once in all of backend/, and that path cascades. No generic pod-update endpoint, no findByIdAndUpdate on Pod. The invalid state cannot be stranded.
• Guards restored: diffed the test files against main directly. pods.community-scope.test.js differs by a rename and one reordered line; podController.test.js by one fixture field. Both main assertions protecting invite-only exclusion are intact, and the added integration test is stronger than main's — it pins exclusion and the 403 in one case.
• communityDiscoverQuery owns the complete Discover predicate in podListing.ts; the controller delegates. grep communityListed|publicRead in podController.ts returns only comments.
• All commits authored solely by Lily — no co-author trailer risk on squash.

Local: 47/47 across the three suites. All CI green; mergeStateStatus: CLEAN.

NOT verified

• No UI or live/staging exercise. The listing writer is API-only; I have not confirmed any admin surface can call it. Believed intentional, flagged as known state.
• Did not re-run tsc:check/build at this head (CI covers both, green).
• Did not line-by-line audit every assertion in the 224-line community-listing suite; I ran it and mutation-tested the four named behaviors.
• The erratum itself (invite-only excluded from Discover) is a product call above my seat — I checked conformance to it as written, not its correctness.