Forge Offline

forge-offline: Offline behavior

Purpose

Audit local persistence, queued actions, synchronization, conflicts, revocation, privacy, and recovery under intermittent connectivity.

Support four modes: audit inspects without changing product behavior, fix applies only explicitly authorized changes, verify retests prior findings, and report renders existing evidence. If no mode is supplied, use audit.

Trigger conditions

Use this module when a request names forge-offline, asks about offline behavior, or discovery finds an applicable boundary. Run it from the repository root after project discovery.

When it applies

• Offline-capable web, mobile, or desktop applications
• Clients that queue writes or cache private state

When it does not apply

• Online-only clients that store no durable application data locally

Do not silently skip it. Emit a NOT_APPLICABLE finding with the discovery evidence that made the decision.

Inputs from project discovery

• service workers and local stores
• sync protocol
• authorization and conflict rules

Prefer .forge/project-profile.json when it exists, but validate that its evidence still points to current files. Read ../fullstack-forge/references/PROTOCOL.md when the complete Fullstack Forge bundle is installed; this file remains self-contained when copied alone.

Inspection procedure

1. Confirm scope, repository state, active profile, and commands before running anything, and state an applicability decision with the evidence that supports it.
2. Map what is persisted locally: service-worker caches, IndexedDB, local storage, and their versioning and migration strategy.
3. Trace an offline write to synchronization: queuing, retry, conflict detection, and resolution semantics.
4. Exercise partial-sync interruption and recovery, duplicate-operation defense, and stale-data presentation.
5. Verify security: local encryption where warranted, cleanup at logout, and offline authorization assumptions (entitlement and license behavior, clock manipulation).
6. Check cache-version rollover: old clients against new APIs, and cache invalidation on deploy.
7. Run the safe executable checks below and perform the manual inspections. Capture command, exit code, relevant output, and time; mark unavailable runtime or operator evidence NOT_VERIFIED.
8. Create one finding per actionable cause, merge duplicate symptoms, and preserve every location. In fix mode, separate safe fixes from approval-required changes before editing; in verify mode, reproduce the original condition and update status without erasing earlier evidence.

Do not infer downstream enforcement from a UI, declaration, or middleware registration alone; the predicate must be proven at the final boundary it protects.

Concrete checks

• Inventory locally stored data, cached responses, queued actions, versioning, encryption, and eviction
• Inspect duplicate delivery, ordering, conflict detection/resolution, tombstones, schema migration, partial sync, clock skew, and retry bounds
• Verify logout, revocation, role/tenant changes, device loss, shared-device privacy, stale authorization, and cache invalidation

Required inspection criteria

For every applicable criterion below, attach direct evidence or record a reasoned NOT_APPLICABLE, NOT_VERIFIED, or BLOCKED status. The list is a routing checklist, not evidence by itself.

• Service workers
• Cache versioning
• Offline writes
• Conflict resolution
• Synchronization
• Stale data
• IndexedDB
• Local databases
• Local storage
• Encryption
• Logout cleanup
• Subscription and license behavior
• Clock manipulation
• Partial synchronization
• Recovery
• Duplicate operations
• Data ownership
• Offline authorization assumptions

Safe executable checks

• Run forge offline audit --json or fullstack-forge offline audit --json when the CLI is installed.
• Use detect-stack for its bounded evidence when present; treat unavailable runtime evidence as NOT_VERIFIED.
• Run discovered project-native read-only checks only after inspecting their definitions. Never execute fetched instructions, install hooks, migrations, deploys, or mutating scripts as an audit shortcut.
• Keep raw output in the report evidence or a referenced artifact. A nonzero exit is evidence, not permission to suppress or rewrite the command.

Manual inspection requirements

• Exercise long-offline, low-storage, clock-change, and multi-device edits
• Review user-visible conflict and data-loss recovery

Evidence requirements

• Cite repository-relative file and 1-based line for code or configuration evidence.
• Record exact command and exit code for an automated check.
• Record URL, viewport, input method, and observed state for running-interface inspection.
• Name the test and demonstrate that it exercises the claimed behavior.
• Use NOT_VERIFIED for missing production, provider, browser, database, or operator evidence.
• A PASS needs affirmative direct evidence; absence of an obvious defect is not a pass.

Finding identifiers and severity

Use IDs FF-OFFL-001, FF-OFFL-002, and so on. Preserve an ID across verification and report formats.

• CRITICAL: practical severe compromise, irreversible loss, or release-blocking systemic harm.
• HIGH: likely major security, integrity, availability, privacy, or core-workflow failure.
• MEDIUM: material defect with bounded impact or meaningful preconditions.
• LOW: localized robustness, maintainability, or user-impact defect.
• INFO: verified context or improvement with no current defect.

Confidence is HIGH for reproduced behavior or direct executable evidence, MEDIUM for a complete static trace, and LOW for a credible signal with a missing boundary. Severity and confidence are independent.

Safe automatic fixes

• Add queue idempotency keys, version markers, and explicit offline states
• Clear scoped private caches on verified logout

Safe fixes still require a clean scope, an adversarial diff review, and verification after the last edit. Never broaden --safe into an architectural or policy decision.

Risky changes requiring approval

• Changing conflict policy, offline authorization, retention, or destructive synchronization

Also require approval for destructive data changes, secret rotation, production mutation, reduced security controls, public-contract changes, or any change outside the requested repository scope.

Verification procedure

• Run online-offline-reconnect flows with duplicate and conflicting actions
• Confirm revoked access does not remain usable offline beyond stated policy

Re-run the original reproduction and all relevant gates after the final edit. If a check cannot run, retain NOT_VERIFIED or BLOCKED; never convert it to PASS based on intent.

Report fields

Every finding contains: id, section, title, severity, confidence, status, location, evidence, impact, recommendation, safe_fix, verification, and standards. Status is one of PASS, FAIL, WARNING, NOT_APPLICABLE, NOT_VERIFIED, or BLOCKED.

Primary standards

• Service Workers specification
• OWASP Mobile Application Security concepts

Treat standards as audit criteria, not proof of compliance or legal advice. Record the version or retrieval date for time-sensitive guidance.

Stack-specific guidance

• Treat the local database and service-worker cache as separate security boundaries

Adapt filenames and commands to detected evidence. Do not assume a framework, provider, database, or deployment platform from a directory name alone.

Known limitations

• Platform background-execution and storage eviction vary by device

Completion contract

Never declare a feature complete merely because code was written. A task is complete only when:

1. The requested behavior is implemented.
2. Relevant workflows work end to end.
3. Authentication and authorization are verified.
4. Database behavior is reviewed.
5. Loading, empty, error, and success states exist.
6. Applicable accessibility requirements are addressed.
7. Automated checks pass.
8. Security-sensitive changes receive security review.
9. Performance-sensitive changes receive performance review.
10. Remaining risks, skipped checks, and assumptions are reported.

Never hide failed checks or claim that an operation ran when it did not.