fix: reject a /v1/search 200 that is not a search response

[claudespice]

What

Search now returns an error when a 200 response is missing a field the runtime always sends. Before, it returned an empty result.

Why

Search decoded the body straight into SearchResponse, so every absent field became Go's zero value. A 200 carrying {}, or {"error": "upstream timeout"} from a proxy answering for the runtime, came back as &{Results:[] DurationMs:0} with a nil error. A caller can't tell that apart from a search that matched nothing, and neither can its telemetry.

The runtime always serializes these fields. results and duration_ms are in crates/runtime/src/http/v1/search.rs, and each match's dataset, _score and matches are in crates/runtime-search/src/types.rs (spiceai trunk 2c0c7b0723). primary_key, data and metadata are omitted when empty, so they stay optional. The error names the missing field, for example not a search response: result 0 is missing "_score".

Score also falls back to score, the name older runtimes used. The runtime's own search test client accepts the same alias. Before this change a score field decoded as 0, which is silently wrong.

spice-rs has the same fix in spiceai/spice-rs#105. spicepy gets it in a parallel PR.

Verification

The new tests fail on trunk ff450ab. go test -run TestSearch -v ., with the tests applied and the fix not applied:

    search_test.go:372: expected an error, got &{Results:[] DurationMs:0}
    search_test.go:372: expected an error, got &{Results:[{Dataset: Score:0.9 Matches:map[] PrimaryKey:map[] Data:map[] Metadata:map[]}] DurationMs:3}
    search_test.go:372: expected an error, got &{Results:[{Dataset:d Score:0 Matches:map[] PrimaryKey:map[] Data:map[] Metadata:map[]}] DurationMs:3}
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/empty_object
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/error_envelope
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/null_results
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/no_duration
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/match_without_dataset
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/match_without_score
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/match_without_matches
    --- FAIL: TestSearchRejectsResponseMissingRequiredFields/null_match
--- FAIL: TestSearchAcceptsLegacyScoreName
    search_test.go:406: Score = 0, want 0.5

With the fix: ok github.com/spiceai/gospice/v9 for -run TestSearch.

Gate on this branch:

• go build ./... ok
• go vet ./... ok
• golangci-lint run ./... printed 0 issues.
• go test -count=1 ./... had 5 failures: TestADBCLocalParameterizedQuery, TestADBCLocalBasicQuery, TestAsyncQueryLocal, TestLocalRuntimeDatasetRefresh, TestLocalRuntime. All 5 need a local runtime and fail on trunk here too.
• Integration tests against a live runtime: not run locally, no runtime available. CI installs one.

Review gate

Attests the review-fix commit 70f696e (fix-failing-prs), not the original change.

• Adversarial review: codex — job review-muyo83j6-skde52 on the first draft: needs-attention, one high finding (a cased duplicate key such as RESULTS beside results made the struct decoder and the exact-key check read different arrays → index-out-of-range panic). Reproduced (panic: runtime error: index out of range [0] with length 0), fixed by rejecting case variants plus a length guard, regression tests added. Re-run review-muyo9v4x-m8cpld: approve, no findings
• Security review: by hand on the 2-file fix (response decoding only) — no findings
• Reproduction: go test -run TestSearch ./... before the fix: 4 uppercase-key subtests expected an error, got &{Results:[] DurationMs:3}; after: ok. golangci-lint run ./...: 0 issues

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

Case-insensitive JSON matching still permits malformed responses without the exact required field names.

1 open finding

• Reject incorrectly cased JSON fields in runtime response validation · New

What changed in this PR

Adds strict validation for /v1/search responses and legacy score compatibility.

Changes:

• Rejects responses missing required search fields.
• Supports the legacy score field.
• Adds regression tests for malformed responses.

File	Description
search.go	Validates response fields and handles legacy scores.
search_test.go	Tests required fields, empty results, and legacy scores.

🧠 Review effort: Balanced

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[Copilot]

🟢 Approved

The validation matches the runtime response contract and includes focused regression coverage for the identified failure modes.

0 open findings

1 resolved since last review

• Reject incorrectly cased JSON fields in runtime response validation

🧠 Review effort: Balanced

[grokspice]

Ready to merge, blocked only on a maintainer approval.

Read back just now:

• mergeable/mergeStateStatus = MERGEABLE/CLEAN against the current base tip
• statusCheckRollup = SUCCESS — 7/7 checks green on 70f696e1fbea53f765d97c1b1e83e1b5da9ad290
• unresolved review threads: 0 (re-queried via GraphQL reviewThreads)
• reviewDecision = APPROVED, but the only approval is from copilot-pull-request-reviewer. There is no standing approval from a member of spiceai/spice-core-maintainers, so the automated merge gate refuses to enqueue it.

Nothing here is fixable by a bot: it needs a review from a maintainer. This PR is one of a set of sibling fixes landing the same validation across the SDKs.