`convert_string_to_list` silently drops negative integers and non-digit entries

Start in backend/utils/str_utils.py, reading convert_list_to_string at line 12 and convert_string_to_list at lines 27-39. Verify the round-trip examples and malformed-entry behavior described in the issue. Done means negative and signed integers are preserved, malformed entries produce warnings instead of being silently indistinguishable, and the return shape remains a list of integers.

backend/utils/str_utils.py:27-39:

def convert_string_to_list(items_str: Optional[str]) -> List[int]:
    """Convert comma-separated string to list of integers for processing"""
    if not items_str or items_str.strip() == "":
        return []
    return [int(item.strip()) for item in items_str.split(",") if item.strip().isdigit()]

Two related bugs in one line:

1. str.isdigit() returns False for "-1", "+1", and " 3 " (after strip() only stripped outer whitespace — fine — but for any digit-with-sign it's False). The companion convert_list_to_string (line 12) happily emits a negative integer; round-tripping a list containing -1 therefore drops it silently.
2. Non-digit garbage like "a,1,b,2" is silently filtered to [1, 2]. There's no warning, no exception, and no log line — the caller has no way to distinguish "no values supplied" from "your input was malformed".

Repro

>>> convert_string_to_list(convert_list_to_string([1, -2, 3]))
[1, 3]
>>> convert_string_to_list("a, 1, b, 2")
[1, 2]   # silently dropped 'a' and 'b'

Suggested fix

def convert_string_to_list(items_str: Optional[str]) -> List[int]:
    if not items_str or not items_str.strip():
        return []
    out = []
    for raw in items_str.split(","):
        item = raw.strip()
        if not item:
            continue
        try:
            out.append(int(item))
        except ValueError:
            logger.warning("convert_string_to_list: dropping non-integer entry %r", item)
    return out

That preserves negatives, surfaces malformed input via logs, and keeps the same return shape.

Category: A (logic/correctness). Severity: Low–Medium depending on where the round-trip is used in the DB layer.