Report a catch that only discards its error

[EdbertChan]

Summary

A catch that only discards its error is the same silence as an empty catch.

The failure hook now reports that shape.

A catch that logs the error stays quiet.

Review Claim

The failure hook reports a catch that only discards its error, and stays quiet when the catch logs the error.

Review Lane

behavior

Review Unit

engine-runtime

Safety Invariant

The hook stays advisory. A catch that logs the exception is not reported.

Slice Rationale

This slice is only the hook. The skill text is the next pull request.

Non-goals

No change to the principle skill text.

Test Plan

Test Plan

• python3 -m unittest discover -s engine/hooks/explicit-failures/tests -q
• python3 scripts/ci/check_hook_test_coverage.py engine/hooks/explicit-failures

Revert Plan

Revert Plan

• Safe to revert? Yes
• Revert command: git revert 45754a29
• Post-revert steps: Re-run python3 -m unittest discover -s engine/hooks/explicit-failures/tests -q.
• Data migration? No

---

Note

Low Risk
Advisory-only hook behavior change with targeted regex and tests; no auth, data, or runtime execution impact.

Overview
Extends the explicit-failures PreToolUse scanner so JS/TS catch bodies made only of void <err> are reported as silent failures, alongside empty or bare-exit catches.

console.error is now treated like other explicit-handling tokens (log, raise, etc.), so catches that log (including void console.error(...)) stay suppressed. README and detect.py docs match the new rules.

Unit tests cover the new hit message and the no-report paths for console.error and void console.error.

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[mergify]

Queued — the merge queue status continues in this comment ↓.

[EdbertChan]

Mergify repair stopped: PR #1210 is ready to land, but upper stack PR(s) #1209 are open without admin-bypass; a human must decide whether to include them in the admin-bypass landing stack or land them separately.

[EdbertChan]

@Mergifyio queue

[mergify]

Merge Queue Status

• ✅ Entered queue — 2026-09-28 11:29 UTC · Rule: admin-bypass · triggered by @EdbertChan with the @mergifyio queue command
• ✅ Checks passed · on draft merge queue: checking #1210 on main (691e4b3) #1213
• ✅ Merged — 2026-09-28 12:13 UTC · at ff035b8b37979e186bed139286aaca4d6c20df2a · squash

This pull request spent 44 minutes 43 seconds in the queue, including 44 minutes 20 seconds running CI.

Required conditions to merge

• check-success = lint
• check-success = test
• check-success = validate