swaitsandClaude Opus 5.5
3f20df9700
check / check (push) Canceled after 0s
ledger-config: parse gets a sourced spec. A fiscal year starts on the first of a month (IRS Pub. 538); tax_classification is read by whole words (Treas. Reg. 301.7701-3, Schedule C instructions; "business corp" no longer reads as an S corp, "corporation or S corporation" is refused); duplicate or blank members and shared capital accounts are refused; a negative or non-grammatical receipt threshold is refused; codes trimmed. tests/spec_config.rs (65 spec-blind tests, 14 properties), fuzz target fuzz_config_parse (weekly). Mutation: 55 of 55 viable caught (from 25/38). The receipt policy moves to ledger-config, with one loader (effective_receipt_policy) and one decimal grammar, so the server and the viewer enforce and show the same rule (the viewer had its own: only expense-like debits, a silent $25 default, and no config.json). ledger-mcp: a module spec (MCP 2025-06-18 tools, JSON-RPC 2.0, the operating contract). Amounts in are exactly -?digits[.digits]; a number that is one account's code and another's id (vendors, classes alike) is refused, not guessed; the threshold is validated at startup. Fixed: add_line with a bad class journaled the line before refusing; profit_and_loss_by_class ignored `class`; aging buckets said "0". A wire in front of rmcp answers malformed JSON with -32700 and invalid requests with -32600 and their id (rmcp dropped the first, omitted the id). tests/spec_mcp.rs (26 spec-blind tests: every tool's result against its own outputSchema, a random-call state machine checking the journal is untouched by every refusal, amount grammar, previews, the receipt policy). ledger-gui: money, accounting, and dollars never round (they rounded to cents, banker's style); export file names avoid Windows device names, trailing dots and spaces, empty names, and 255-byte overflow; specs on attention, history, fuzzy search, and axis ticks. ledger-core: the lifetime profit_and_loss is renamed unclosed_earnings (docs/testing.md #3). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GWVo7x3UHw5kwCUaWxiejX
Specification sources
wanderbooks' rules come from documents, not from anyone's memory. This
directory holds the authorities the engine's specs cite (docs/spec/rules.md
is the rule catalog), and every spec block in the code carries a SOURCE:
line pointing into it.
The authority stack
There is no single "bible" of US bookkeeping. Authority is layered, and the layers differ in what they cover and in whether we may copy them:
| Layer | What it governs | Copyright | Here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pacioli (1494), Geijsbeek translation (1914) | The mechanics of double entry: debits equal credits, the trial balance, one money, writing only forward, correcting by opposite entry, closing into capital. No modern standard restates these; they predate every regulator. | Public domain | Vendored verbatim: sources/pacioli-1494.md |
| IRS: Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, publications, form instructions | Records and supporting documents, retention, accounting periods and methods, information returns (1099), capitalization (de minimis, 12-month rule), partners' capital, payroll taxes, rounding on returns, return line items for tax categories (sources/irs-tax-lines.md) |
Public domain (17 U.S.C. §105; IRS.gov's content policy) | Vendored verbatim: sources/irs-*.md, sources/us-public-domain-status.md |
| File formats: Intuit (QuickBooks Online bank CSV, QuickBooks Desktop IIF), ECMA-376 Office Open XML, Microsoft Excel limits | What ledger-import reads and writes: bank/card CSV layouts and signs, IIF journal entries, how XLSX stores numbers and Excel's 15-digit precision |
© Intuit Inc.; © Ecma International; © Microsoft | Cited with short quotes, URLs, and hashes: sources/intuit-bank-csv.md, sources/intuit-iif.md, sources/xlsx-numbers.md |
| FASB Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) | Authoritative US GAAP: cash flows (ASC 230), revenue and principal vs agent (ASC 606), foreign currency (ASC 830), credit losses and aging (ASC 326), property and depreciation (ASC 360) | © Financial Accounting Foundation | Cited by paragraph with short quotes only (in rules.md) |
| FASB Concepts Statement No. 8, Chapter 4 (2021) | Definitions of the five elements (it replaced Concepts Statement 6) | © Financial Accounting Foundation; non-authoritative | Cited with short quotes only |
| Textbooks (OpenStax Principles of Accounting, Vol. 1) | Conventions no standard states: normal balances, closing-entry mechanics, straight-line depreciation arithmetic | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (incompatible with this repo's license) | Cited with short quotes and attribution only |
| Convention or decision | Where no authority speaks: aging bucket edges, cent rounding among members, closed-period locks | — | Stated as CONVENTION or DECISION, with who decided and when |
How to read a SOURCE line
SOURCE: Pacioli ch. 36 (sources/pacioli-1494.md); IRS Pub. 583 (sources/irs-records.md)
SOURCE: ASC 830-20-30-1 (cited, rules.md B-3)
SOURCE: DECISION (Stephen, 2026-10-13)
SOURCE: CONVENTION (QuickBooks aging); nearest authority ASC 326-20-55-38 (illustrative)
A rule whose only source is CONVENTION or DECISION is a candidate for a human to confirm or overturn; nothing else is.
Rules added later never lock out older books
When a rule is tightened (a check added to a command), books written
before it must still open. Journal replay and the SQLite cross-check read
history through the engine's replay_* commands, which skip checks added
later; new commands go through the checked ones. Pinned by
books_written_under_older_rules_still_open (ledger-store).
Vendoring rules
- Public-domain texts are copied verbatim (whitespace normalized), each with its URL, retrieval date, and the SHA-256 of the retrieved file, so anyone can check the excerpt against the original.
- Copyrighted sources are cited by paragraph, quoted briefly, never copied.
- When an authority changes (the IRS revises a publication; a statute is amended), add the new text beside the old with its effective date. Rules that depend on dates (1099 thresholds) must say which text applies when.
- Rules that change with the law are registered in
crates/ledger-core/src/rules.rswith the years they are known for and a review date. Past what it knows, the engine refuses rather than guesses; from the review date, the MCP digest and the viewer flag the rule. Whoever updates one (human or agent) vendors the new official text here, extends the rule, and sends the change upstream: a pull request at https://github.com/swaits/wanderbooks (best), or an issue.
Open: sources we could not verify
Read on 2026-10-13 through Deloitte's free DART roadmaps, which reproduce ASC text: ASC 230-10-45-16 and -28, 326-20-55-37/38, 606-10-25-23, 45-2, 55-37/38, 830-20-30-1. Not yet verified (the ASC's free basic view needs a login): ASC 360-10-35-4 (depreciation), 340-10 (prepaids), 230-10-45-10, 606-10-55-37B, 210 (balance sheet). Until someone with a FASB basic-view account reads them, the rules that would cite them cite the textbook and say so.