T11: live attribution and the redaction grep

Executed at the verification node, 2026-10-15, on PR #489.

Live attribution

The question. Does GitHub's GraphQL edit history (IssueComment.userContentEdits) name the user who ticked a box in a comment the-loop posted? quiz-attested relies on it, and a fake cannot prove it.

The procedure.

1. the-loop posted a sandbox quiz comment on PR #489 with the-loop ask. It carried an unticked attestation line and the marker <!-- the-loop:quiz spec-quiz round=99 digest=- -->. Round 99 matches no real round, so no gate could read it. The comment.

2. @MadaraUchiha-314 ticked the box.

3. @MadaraUchiha-314 replied that this session may run one read-only query with the session token (reply). The token is the THE_LOOP_GH_TOKEN flagged in the security finding. It was used for this one call only, and was never printed.

4. The query was the shipped client method. Only the login, the timestamps and a boolean were printed:

   cd cli && env -u GH_TOKEN -u GITHUB_TOKEN uv run python -c "
   from the_loop.ghapi import GitHubClient, GitHubApiConfig
   c = GitHubClient(GitHubApiConfig(token_envs=('THE_LOOP_GH_TOKEN',)))
   r = c.comment_edits('IC_kwDOTGeGic8AAAABcYED9g')
   ..."

Output (complete):

author: MadaraUchiha-314
ticked-line-present: True
edit: MadaraUchiha-314 2026-10-15T20:04:55Z
edit: MadaraUchiha-314 2026-10-15T18:23:18Z

Outcome: pass.

• The newest edit, at 20:04:55Z (the tick), names MadaraUchiha-314 as its editor.
• The older entry is the comment's creation, at 18:23:18Z.
• The body now carries the ticked line.

So comment_edits returns the ticking user as edits[0], which quiz-attested reads as the editor.

What this does not prove. the-loop posts under the operator's own account, so here the comment's author and its editor are the same login. The edit history tells a person apart from another GitHub account. It cannot tell the operator apart from a session holding the operator's token. That is the open security finding, carried into the security review.

Departure from the plan. The plan named a sandbox issue. A comment on PR #489 was used instead. Both are IssueComment nodes on the same API, and no extra issue was opened or left to tear down.

Redaction grep

Scope: every committed explainer HTML file. This work item's own explainer is published as a Claude artifact, not committed, so it is outside the grep.

grep -nEi 'gh[pousr]_[A-Za-z0-9]{20,}|token|cookie|@[a-z0-9.-]+\.(internal|corp|local)' \
  docs/specs/issue-488/design/explainer.html skills/the-loop/templates/explainer.html

File	Matches	Verdict
skills/the-loop/templates/explainer.html	none	clean
docs/specs/issue-488/design/explainer.html	1. Line 173, in a quiz option: "Four declared skips under the token explainer…"	false positive. The match is the word "token", meaning the phase-selection token. It is not a credential

Outcome: pass. The match was reviewed by hand. The credential-shaped part of the pattern (gh[pousr]_…), cookies and internal hostnames match nothing.