Lesson Learned: Trade Files Not Committed to Repo (Dec 12, 2025)

ID: LL-020 Date: December 12, 2025 Severity: HIGH Category: Workflow, Data Loss Impact: Confusion about whether trades were executing; data not persisted

Prevention Rules

Always commit all trading data files (trades_*.json, system_state.json, performance_log.json)
Add explicit git add commands for all data files in workflows
Verify commits contain expected files before marking workflow as successful

What Happened

Trade files (data/trades_YYYY-MM-DD.json) were being created during workflow execution but NOT committed to the repository. This caused confusion about whether trades were actually executing.

Timeline:

Dec 10: Last trade file in repo: trades_2025-12-10.json
Dec 12 14:37: Daily trading workflow ran successfully (all steps passed)
Dec 12 14:55: Artifacts contain trade data, but no trades_2025-12-12.json in repo

Evidence:

Workflow artifacts show trading-logs-20170130041 (17,883 bytes)
Execute daily trading step: SUCCESS
Update performance log step: SUCCESS
Verify Positions step: SUCCESS
P/L Sanity Check step: SUCCESS
BUT: No trades_2025-12-12.json committed to repo

Root Cause

The “Commit system state updates” step only staged system_state.json:

# WRONG - Only commits system_state.json
git add data/system_state.json

Trade files (trades_*.json) and performance log updates were NOT staged or committed.

Prevention Fix

Updated the step to commit ALL trading data:

- name: Commit trading data updates
  run: |
    # Stage ALL trading data files
    git add data/system_state.json data/performance_log.json data/trades_*.json 2>/dev/null || true

    # Check if there are changes to commit
    if git diff --cached --quiet; then
      echo "No trading data changes to commit"
      exit 0
    fi

    # Commit with descriptive message
    TODAY=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
    git commit -m "chore: Update trading data ($TODAY)"
    git push origin main

Verification

After this fix, every successful trading run should:

Have data/trades_{today}.json committed to repo
Have data/performance_log.json updated with today’s entry
Have data/system_state.json updated

LL-019: Trading system dead for 2 days (detected because no trade files)
Trade files were being created but not committed, masking the issue