[BUG] [v0.0.7] cortex pr rejects valid Git branch names containing +

[andrirevo]

Project

cortex

Description

cortex pr --branch rejects branch names containing +, even though Git accepts many such ref names (validated via git check-ref-format). Users with legitimate branches like release+1 cannot use Cortex’s PR helper without renaming branches or bypassing the tool. The validator is stricter than Git, creating an artificial incompatibility.

Error Message

Debug Logs

System Information

macOS / 0.0.7

Screenshots

https://github.com/springoliver/bounty_challenge_report_image/blob/main/49116.mp4

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open a terminal in a repo where cortex is configured.
2. Run cortex pr --branch.
3. Compare output/behavior with the issue narrative for this ID.

Expected Behavior

The reporter expects cortex to match documented CLI/TUI contracts for this flow—correct output, honest flags/help, and no silent contradictions—consistent with the problem statement at the top of this rewrite.

Actual Behavior

cortex pr --branch rejects branch names containing +, even though Git accepts many such ref names (validated via git check-ref-format). Users with legitimate branches like release+1 cannot use Cortex’s PR helper without renaming branches or bypassing the tool. The validator is stricter than Git, creating an artificial incompatibility.

Additional Context

No response

[atlas-cortex]

❌ Validation Summary — Issue #53516

LLM validity check failed (score: 0.05). 1. Evidence quality: A video URL is provided, but the error message and debug logs sections are empty.
2. Clarity: While the title and description describe a specific issue, the steps to reproduce fail to provide actionable instructions (e.g., creating a branch with a '+' character).
3. Spam signals: The 'Steps to Reproduce' and 'Expected Behavior' sections contain highly suspicious meta-text such as 'issue narrative for this ID' and 'at the top of this rewrite'. This strongly indicates the issue was generated by a script or AI using a boilerplate template.
4. Duplicate overlap: No direct duplicates were found among the provided similar issues.
Conclusion: The issue is invalid due to the use of template-farmed content and the lack of concrete, specific reproduction steps.

Confidence Score: 4/5

• This issue does not meet the minimum requirements for a valid bounty submission.

Validation Checks

Check	Status	Detail
Media Evidence	✅ Pass	Evidence found and accessible
Spam Detection	✅ Pass	Score: 65% — borderline, consulted LLM
Duplicate Detection	✅ Pass	No significant overlap with existing issues
Code Verification	✅ Pass	Bug confirmed in source code (confidence: 100%) — The code in src/cortex-cli/src/pr_cmd.rs contains a validate_branch_name fun
Edit History	✅ Pass	No suspicious edits
LLM Evaluation	❌ Fail	LLM validity check failed (score: 0.05). 1. Evidence quality: A video URL is provided, but the error message and debug l...

Action Items

• Ensure the issue describes a genuine, reproducible bug
• Provide clear steps to reproduce and evidence
• Issue has moderate similarity to existing issues, suggesting partial overlap.

Validation Pipeline

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A["Issue #53516"] --> B{"Media Check"}
    B -->|"✅ Found"| C{"Spam Check"}
    C -->|"✅ Clean"| D{"Duplicate Check"}
    D -->|"✅ Unique"| CV{"Code Verify"}
    CV -->|"✅ Confirmed"| E{"Edit History"}
    E -->|"✅ Normal"| F{"LLM Evaluation"}
    F -->|"❌ Failed"| Z["❌ Invalid"]
    style Z fill:#ff6b6b,color:#fff

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Raw Evidence

{
  "media": {
    "hasMedia": true,
    "accessible": true,
    "urls": [
      "https://github.com/springoliver/bounty_challenge_report_image/blob/main/49116.mp4"
    ],
    "evidence": [
      "Found 1 media URL(s) via markdown parsing",
      "1 URL(s) accessible"
    ]
  },
  "spam": {
    "overallScore": 0.6507062146892655,
    "details": "template=0.38 (2 recent issues compared); burst=0.50 (3 issues in 2h window); parity=0.00; overall=0.30 (threshold=0.7); llm_spam=1.00 (The issue submission exhibits clear signs of being auto-generated or template-farmed. The steps to reproduce contain generic instructions such as \"Compare output/behavior with the issue narrative for this ID,\" and the expected behavior references \"the problem statement at the top of this rewrite.\" Furthermore, the actual behavior is a direct copy-paste of the description, and the error message and debug log sections are left empty. The lack of specific, actionable steps to reproduce and the presence of template artifacts render this submission invalid.)"
  },
  "duplicate": {
    "isDuplicate": false,
    "similarity": 0.5674574034600656,
    "topSimilar": [
      {
        "issueNumber": 53503,
        "title": "[BUG] [v0.0.7] cortex history default (view) path always reports not implemented",
        "similarity": 0.5674574034600656
      },
      {
        "issueNumber": 51671,
        "title": "[BUG] [v0.0.7] `cortex pr --info` strips fork owner prefix from head branch — shows \"fix-dag-error-handling\" instead of \"davidweb3-ctrl:fix-dag-error-handling\"",
        "similarity": 0.5642677163772086
      },
      {
        "issueNumber": 52663,
        "title": "# [BUG] [v0.1.1] cortex github install -p accepts invalid path strings with special characters and reports false success",
        "similarity": 0.5506503656507827
      },
      {
        "issueNumber": 51571,
        "title": "[BUG] [v0.0.7] `cortex github install` shows feature descriptions but `github update` drops them — inconsistent feature display",
        "similarity": 0.5475266457056723
      },
      {
        "issueNumber": 53507,
        "title": "[BUG][v0.0.7] `--add-dir`: usage shows `<DIR>` (singular) while help says \"Additional directories\" (plural) — confusing vs repeatable flag",
        "similarity": 0.5469144433194795
      }
    ]
  },
  "editHistory": {
    "fraudScore": 0,
    "editCount": 0,
    "details": "No edits detected"
  },
  "codeVerification": {
    "plausible": true,
    "confidence": 1,
    "reasoning": "The code in `src/cortex-cli/src/pr_cmd.rs` contains a `validate_branch_name` function that restricts branch names to alphanumeric characters, hyphens, underscores, forward slashes, and dots. This explicitly rejects the `+` character, confirming the bug report that valid Git branch names containing `+` are rejected by Cortex.",
    "codeEvidence": "fn validate_branch_name(name: &str) -> Result<()> {\n    let is_valid = name\n        .chars()\n        .all(|c| c.is_ascii_alphanumeric() || c == '-' || c == '_' || c == '/' || c == '.')\n...",
    "screenshotValid": true,
    "screenshotReasoning": "The screenshot analysis tool returned valid: true for the provided mp4 file."
  },
  "llmValidity": {
    "score": 0.050000000000000044,
    "reasoning": "1. Evidence quality: A video URL is provided, but the error message and debug logs sections are empty.\n2. Clarity: While the title and description describe a specific issue, the steps to reproduce fail to provide actionable instructions (e.g., creating a branch with a '+' character). \n3. Spam signals: The 'Steps to Reproduce' and 'Expected Behavior' sections contain highly suspicious meta-text such as 'issue narrative for this ID' and 'at the top of this rewrite'. This strongly indicates the issue was generated by a script or AI using a boilerplate template.\n4. Duplicate overlap: No direct duplicates were found among the provided similar issues.\nConclusion: The issue is invalid due to the use of template-farmed content and the lack of concrete, specific reproduction steps."
  },
  "rules": {
    "codeResults": {
      "passed": [
        {
          "ruleId": "content.no-profanity",
          "category": "content",
          "severity": "flag",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue should not contain excessive profanity or abusive language",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "content.reasonable-length",
          "category": "content",
          "severity": "flag",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue body should not exceed 15000 characters (possible spam dump)",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "content.has-context",
          "category": "content",
          "severity": "penalize",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue should mention the affected page, component, or URL",
          "weight": 0.2
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "media.require-evidence",
          "category": "media",
          "severity": "require",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue must include at least one screenshot or video URL",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "media.must-be-accessible",
          "category": "media",
          "severity": "require",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "All media URLs must be publicly accessible (HTTP 200)",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "media.no-placeholder-urls",
          "category": "media",
          "severity": "reject",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Media URLs should not be placeholder or example URLs",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "scoring.suspicious-edits",
          "category": "scoring",
          "severity": "penalize",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Penalize issues with concerning edit history (fraud score > 0.3)",
          "weight": 0.25
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "spam.high-score-reject",
          "category": "spam",
          "severity": "reject",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Reject issues with spam score above 0.85",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "spam.generic-title",
          "category": "spam",
          "severity": "penalize",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Title should not be a generic/template title",
          "weight": 0.4
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "spam.body-is-title-repeat",
          "category": "spam",
          "severity": "penalize",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Body should not be a simple repetition of the title",
          "weight": 0.5
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "spam.no-ai-filler",
          "category": "spam",
          "severity": "flag",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Body should not contain obvious AI-generated filler phrases",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "validity.min-body-length",
          "category": "validity",
          "severity": "reject",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue body must be at least 50 characters",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "validity.min-title-length",
          "category": "validity",
          "severity": "reject",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue title must be at least 10 characters",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "validity.no-empty-body",
          "category": "validity",
          "severity": "reject",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue body must not be empty or only whitespace",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "validity.has-steps-or-description",
          "category": "validity",
          "severity": "penalize",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue body should contain structured content (steps, expected/actual behavior)",
          "weight": 0.3
        },
        {
          "ruleId": "validity.not-a-feature-request",
          "category": "validity",
          "severity": "flag",
          "passed": true,
          "message": "Issue should describe a bug, not a feature request",
          "weight": 1
        }
      ],
      "failed": [
        {
          "ruleId": "scoring.duplicate-threshold",
          "category": "scoring",
          "severity": "penalize",
          "passed": false,
          "message": "Issue has moderate similarity to existing issues, suggesting partial overlap.",
          "weight": 0.3
        }
      ]
    },
    "llmInstructions": [
      "Always prioritize concrete evidence (screenshots, videos, URLs) over the quality of the written description. A poorly written report with clear visual proof of a bug is VALID. A beautifully written report with no evidence is INVALID.",
      "A valid bug report must contain enough information for an engineer to reproduce the issue. If the steps to reproduce are missing or impossibly vague (\"it just broke\"), the issue is INVALID.",
      "You MUST call the deliver_verdict function exactly once. Do not output a JSON object manually. Do not output your verdict in plain text. Use the tool.",
      "Be highly suspicious of submissions that follow a rigid template: same structure, same phrasing, with only the page name or URL swapped. These are template-farmed and should be INVALID. Look for: identical sentence structure, placeholder-like descriptions, formulaic \"Steps to Reproduce\".",
      "When similar issues exist, the OLDER issue (lower issue number) always takes precedence. The newer submission is the duplicate, never the other way around.",
      "Confidence scores must be calibrated: use 0.9+ only when evidence is unambiguous and complete. Use 0.5-0.7 when the issue is borderline. Use below 0.5 when you are genuinely uncertain. Never default to 0.5 — commit to a direction.",
      "Do not give the benefit of the doubt. Missing evidence means INVALID. Unclear reproduction steps means INVALID. Inaccessible media means INVALID. The burden of proof is on the submitter.",
      "In the reasoning field, explain your step-by-step analysis BEFORE stating your conclusion. Cover: evidence quality, clarity, spam signals, and duplicate overlap in that order.",
      "Never mention internal scoring thresholds, rule IDs, detection heuristics, or system architecture in the recap field. The recap is public-facing. Keep reasoning technical but recap user-friendly.",
      "If the issue body reads like AI-generated boilerplate (phrases like \"It is important to note\", \"Furthermore\", \"In conclusion\", excessive politeness, no specific technical details), treat it as strong evidence of spam. AI-generated issues with no real bug details are INVALID.",
      "If the pre-computed media check says media URLs exist, verify the description matches what a screenshot would show. If the description talks about a login page but the context suggests the screenshot is of something unrelated, flag this as suspicious.",
      "Never soften a verdict out of sympathy. \"I can see you tried hard but...\" is not acceptable. If the submission does not meet criteria, it is INVALID regardless of apparent effort.",
      "If the pre-computed spam score is above 0.5, pay extra attention to quality signals. A high spam score combined with generic content is strong grounds for INVALID.",
      "Write your reasoning and recap in a professional, neutral tone. Do not be sarcastic, condescending, or emotional. State facts.",
      "The recap field must be 2-3 sentences maximum. It will be posted as a public comment. No bullet points in recap — use flowing prose."
    ],
    "totalCodeRules": 17,
    "totalLLMRules": 15,
    "hasReject": false,
    "hasFailed": true,
    "penaltyScore": 0.3,
    "summary": "1/17 code rules failed | 1 PENALIZE | 15 LLM instructions active"
  }
}

_{Validated by Atlas • 2026-05-04}