[anusbutt]

Summary

Fixes a freshness inconsistency where successful incremental updates with zero structural graph changes could leave the stored Git SHA at the previous commit.

This created a contradiction where the update path reported the graph as up to date while get_minimal_context() still returned stale_graph.

What changed

• Advance VCS freshness metadata after successful authoritative Git synchronization, even when zero graph mutations occur.
• Keep explicit changed_files, watch batches, and non-authoritative bases conservative.
• Do not advance freshness when discovery or parsing fails.
• Return an error instead of "Graph is up to date" for incomplete incremental updates.
• Add regression coverage for empty commits, zero-structural-change updates, explicit file lists, parse failures, and strict Git discovery.

Validation

• 140 passed for incremental + Git integration tests
• Full CI pytest: 2,990 passed, 9 skipped, 2 xpassed
• Coverage: 85.02%
• Ruff: passed
• mypy: passed
• Bandit: passed
• git diff --check: passed

[github-actions]

code-review-graph review

Overall risk: 0.65 (MEDIUM) — 13 changed function(s)/class(es), 2 affected flow(s), 3 test gap(s)

Risk-scored changes

Risk	Level	Symbol	Location	Tested
0.65	medium	code_review_graph/incremental.py::_store_vcs_metadata	code_review_graph/incremental.py:772	no
0.55	medium	code_review_graph/incremental.py::get_changed_files	code_review_graph/incremental.py:841	yes
0.55	medium	code_review_graph/incremental.py::full_build	code_review_graph/incremental.py:1273	yes
0.55	medium	code_review_graph/incremental.py::incremental_update	code_review_graph/incremental.py:1383	yes
0.30	low	code_review_graph/tools/build.py::build_or_update_graph	code_review_graph/tools/build.py:465	yes
0.30	low	tests/test_integration_git.py::fail_parse	tests/test_integration_git.py:588	no
0.15	low	tests/test_integration_git.py::_graph_structure_snapshot	tests/test_integration_git.py:448	yes
0.05	low	tests/test_incremental.py::TestGitOperations	tests/test_incremental.py:550	no
0.05	low	tests/test_incremental.py::TestGitOperations.test_get_changed_files_strict_failure_does_not_fallback	tests/test_incremental.py:579	(test)
0.05	low	tests/test_integration_git.py::test_automatic_update_after_empty_commit_refreshes_freshness	tests/test_integration_git.py:474	(test)

Affected execution flows

• _run — criticality 0.36, 68 node(s) across 1 file(s)
• process — criticality 0.35, 41 node(s) across 1 file(s)

Test gaps

• code_review_graph/incremental.py::_store_vcs_metadata (code_review_graph/incremental.py:772)
• tests/test_incremental.py::TestGitOperations (tests/test_incremental.py:550)
• tests/test_integration_git.py::fail_parse (tests/test_integration_git.py:588)

Token savings: this graph-backed report used ~47,636 fewer tokens (~80%) than reading every changed file in full (estimated, chars/4 approximation).

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[tirth8205]

Integrated on integration/token-efficiency-hardening as 66309ec. Authoritative no-op synchronisation now advances the stored Git anchor after empty or unsupported-file commits, avoiding repeated stale-graph reports. Explicit batches and parse or discovery failures preserve the previous anchor, and the corresponding incremental and Git regressions passed.

[tirth8205]

Merged into staging through the integration PR #988 (merge commit 3030ca8). Your change is carried by commit 66309ec, which keeps you as the author (anusbutt). It will be promoted staging → testing → main and released from there. Thank you for the contribution! Closing this PR since its content is now on staging.