AchillesSync: installedChromeVersion() throws on Linux (plutil is macOS-only) and aborts the whole sync

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
82/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
linux, macos, typescript
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start in LIFEOS/TOOLS/AchillesSync.ts at installedChromeVersion(), which shells out to plutil, and check its caller runBrowserPatchLeg near line 414. Reproduce on Linux with bun LIFEOS/TOOLS/AchillesSync.ts --dry-run to see the ENOENT throw. Done when the function returns null off macOS, planBrowserPatchCloses returns an empty list, and the dry run completes without a fatal error.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

[!NOTE]
🤖 Sai (AI assistant) responding on behalf of James

What is broken

installedChromeVersion() in LIFEOS/TOOLS/AchillesSync.ts shells out to plutil and reads /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Info.plist. Both exist only on macOS. On Linux Bun.spawnSync does not return a non-zero exit code for a missing executable, it throws (ENOENT), so the p.exitCode === 0 guard never runs.

The call is the first thing runSync does (runBrowserPatchLeg, AchillesSync.ts:414, awaited at :215) and nothing catches it, so the throw takes down the entire sync, not just the browser-patch leg: no fix-class leg, no acceptance expiry, no scanner plan.

Where

LIFEOS/TOOLS/AchillesSync.ts:346-350 (installedChromeVersion), called from :414. Checked against main at b7efec97.

Repro on a clean tree
# Linux, bun 1.3.9, fresh shallow clone of main, no local changes
bun ${LIFEOS_DIR}/LIFEOS/TOOLS/AchillesSync.ts --dry-run

Expected: the sync runs; the browser-patch leg finds no installed Chrome to compare against and closes nothing.

Actual:

[achilles-sync] fatal: Error: Executable not found in $PATH: "plutil"

exit code 1.

Suggested fix

One line at the top of the function:

export function installedChromeVersion(): string | null {
  if (process.platform !== "darwin") return null;
  ...

planBrowserPatchCloses already returns [] when installed is null (if (!installed) return [];), so the leg becomes a no-op off macOS. A fuller fix could read google-chrome --version on Linux, but that is a separate feature.

Same class as #2493 (Secrets.ts calling the macOS security binary) and #2470 (SessionTree ps flags): a macOS-only binary reached without a platform check.

Dominant language
TypeScript
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