Adds the interfaces knowledge domain covering AL interfaces and enum-with-implementation: three atomic articles with good/bad AL samples, a new al-interfaces-review leaf skill, and additive wiring into al-code-review and the README. Purely additive; no contract change.
Part of #34.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
A closed range like [23..28] wrongly implies guidance stops applying after
BC28, so a reviewer targeting BC29+ would not match the file. Introduce an
open-ended shorthand [N..] meaning ''version N and every later version''.
- validate_frontmatter.py: RANGE_SHORTHAND allows an optional upper bound;
expand_bc_version returns the normalized string ''N..'' for open-ended.
- read.md: document the fourth bc-version form and its matching rule
(matches target >= N; not enumerable).
- write.md: prefer [N..] over a closed range for a feature introduced in N
and not expected to be removed.
- Apply [23..] to the actionable-errors article (actionable errors shipped
in BC23 and are not version-bounded above).
- README: mention [N..] in the frontmatter example.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Adds the contract field, skill instructions, and two knowledge articles
that BCAppsBCQuality's PR-review agent needs to match (and exceed) the
coverage of the embedded review agent in BCAppsCampAIRHack:
skills/do.md
- New optional findings[].suggested-code field. Documents what it MUST
contain (a literal line-replacement payload) and when to emit it.
microsoft/skills/review/al-code-review.md
- Instructs both the agent self-review pass and rolled-up sub-skill
findings to populate suggested-code when the fix is mechanical.
- Lists examples (dead code removal, Count > 0 -> IsEmpty, object-scope
Label) that map to issues observed in the parity comparison.
microsoft/knowledge/style/telemetry-event-id-stable-unique.{md,bad.al,good.al}
- New knowledge article: telemetry event IDs must be stable, unique,
and non-placeholder. Closes a gap surfaced by the parity comparison.
microsoft/knowledge/style/labels-declared-at-object-scope.{md,bad.al,good.al}
- New knowledge article: Labels must live in the object-level var
block, not in procedure-local var blocks. Closes the second gap.
microsoft/knowledge/privacy/no-pii-in-telemetry-message-string.md
- Adds an explicit note that changing DataClassification alone does not
make embedding PII into the message string acceptable, plus links to
the two adjacent privacy articles. Resolves the privacy advice the
parity comparison flagged as ambiguous.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
The previous LLM-generated knowledge files contained factual
hallucinations. The most visible was the claim that `FindFirst` /
`FindLast` "forces a full-table scan" on an unfiltered record - it does
not; those APIs return a single row via the current key.
Other inaccuracies the audit found and fixed:
* `FindSet(true)` was described as "taking a LockTable". The correct
upstream phrasing is that `FindSet(true)` sets
`ReadIsolation::UpdLock` on the read. UpdLock and LockTable are
related but distinct mechanisms.
* The list of production-scale tables had been invented beyond the
upstream source (e.g. "Detailed Cust. Ledg. Entry") without a
citation. The regenerated list matches the ten tables upstream lists
with their P95 row counts.
* `SetLoadFields` guidance had been augmented with an extra mechanism
claim ("the database resolves the filter using the index without
hydrating the value") not present in upstream.
Approach: full regeneration of `microsoft/knowledge/` from the six
upstream BCApps Code Review instruction files, with Microsoft Learn /
the AL language reference as a secondary source. Every claim in every
regenerated file is anchored to a verbatim upstream quote (or a Learn
URL); the audit trail lives in artifacts/trace-<domain>.json on the
session workspace.
The PR #11 transaction/error-handling cluster is preserved verbatim:
* performance/understand-implicit-transaction-boundary.md
* performance/codeunit-run-as-atomic-sub-operation.{md,good.al,bad.al}
* performance/codeunit-run-requires-prior-commit-inside-transaction.{md,good.al,bad.al}
* performance/use-tryfunction-for-error-catching-not-rollback.{md,good.al,bad.al}
* performance/avoid-commit-inside-loops.{md,good.al,bad.al}
* security/commitbehavior-attribute-scopes-explicit-commits.{md,good.al,bad.al}
* testing/transactionmodel-attribute-governs-test-transactions.{md,good.al,bad.al}
These articles already cite Microsoft Learn and were carefully
cross-referenced; the regeneration skips their topics rather than
duplicating them.
File counts after regeneration:
performance 35 .md (5 preserved + 30 new)
privacy 17 .md
security 18 .md (1 preserved + 17 new)
style 33 .md
testing 1 .md (preserved)
ui 19 .md
upgrade 18 .md
Total 141 atomic knowledge files, each strictly one rule. All pass
.github/scripts/validate_frontmatter.py with 0 errors and 0 warnings.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Cover non-obvious platform behaviors a capable LLM reliably gets wrong:
hidden FlowFields still calculate, LockTable scopes to the whole table,
query objects bypass the primary-key cache, table-event subscribers
disable bulk ModifyAll/DeleteAll, Blob fields are uncached, OnCompanyOpen
subscribers block every session creation, and the test framework
disables bulk insert mode.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- performance/use-setloadfields-for-partial-records: Clarify that
filter-only fields (SetRange/SetFilter) do not need to be listed in
SetLoadFields — the DB resolves them via the index without hydrating
the value into AL memory.
- performance/avoid-calcfields-in-loops: Add explicit exception for
OnAfterGetRecord and OnValidate triggers, which are platform-managed
and not developer-authored loops.
- performance/split-read-only-and-write-paths-to-avoid-locktable: Add
ReadIsolation as the primary recommendation for read-only paths;
LockTable reserved for confirmed write paths only.
- performance/prefer-direct-record-over-recordref: Scope the finding to
hot unbounded loops (10k+ rows) over ledger-entry-scale tables;
RecordRef in bounded/admin/setup contexts is not a concern.
- upgrade/enum-changes-must-be-additive-at-the-end: Replace direct
ObsoleteState = Removed guidance with the two-stage workflow (Pending
first, Removed later); reference use-obsolete-pending-before-removed.
- upgrade/use-datatransfer-for-large-dataset-initialization: Add the
>300,000 records threshold as the concrete trigger for requiring
DataTransfer.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
The 35 articles still in their seed form previously carried a banner
reading "Seed article. ... Domain stewards should expand, restructure,
and refine as needed." For a community preview, that phrasing reads as
"TODO left in production" to first-time visitors.
Replace all three banner variants (performance-seeded, security-seeded,
community-ported) with a single positive invitation:
> Contributions welcome — open a PR to refine or extend this article.
Content and structure of the articles are unchanged; only the leading
quote block differs. Articles that had their banner fully stripped in
the earlier triage pass (the showcase-grade ten) are unaffected.
Adds 55 articles (plus 76 code samples) spanning four new domains and
two existing domains, extracted from the internal Business Central
review-agent prompt. Content was filtered against BCQuality's
remedial-knowledge premise: each article encodes BC-specific behaviour,
a CodeCop rule, a platform API semantic, or an anti-false-positive
guideline that a capable LLM would otherwise get wrong.
New domains:
- privacy (11 articles): DataClassification inheritance semantics, the
StrSubstNo-defeats-Error-telemetry-classification pitfall, Privacy
Notice consent for outgoing requests, anti-false-positives for pages
and in-memory data.
- upgrade (11 articles): upgrade-codeunit structure, upgrade-tag
lifecycle and registration, protected DB reads, DataTransfer for
large datasets, InitValue semantics, enum-ordinal preservation,
obsolete-workflow, first-install detection.
- ui (9 articles): caption capitalization by phrase type, tooltip voice,
teaching-tip vs tooltip, tour-tip conventions, character limits,
banned terms, ampersand handling, title punctuation.
- style (11 articles): label-suffix convention, API page naming,
temporary-variable prefix, label properties (Comment/Locked), named
invocations, FieldCaption in user messages, OptionCaption pairing,
Error-parameter passing, `this` keyword, required parentheses, file
naming.
Gaps in existing domains:
- performance (11 articles): production-scale table catalog (no row
counts, per internal-data concern), anti-false-positive for bounded
tables, guard-before-Get ordering, redundant-Get-in-OnAfterGetRecord,
LockTable in read-only helpers, combined ModifyAll passes, writes in
OnAfterGetRecord, SetLoadFields heuristics, temporary-table
regressions, FlowField source-table widening, MaintainSQLIndex
disabling SIFT.
- security (2 articles): environment-specific hardcoded GUIDs,
ValidateTableRelation=false on user input.
Intentionally excluded: specific production P95 row-count numbers
(aggregated internal telemetry); rewritten as categorical guidance on
which tables to treat as production-scale without publishing sizes.
All articles use `bc-version: [all]` (applies to every BC version, per
the new schema sentinel). Validator passes with 0 errors / 0 warnings.
Most of the corpus — FindSet/SetLoadFields/CalcFields patterns, permission
sets, SingleInstance codeunits, DataClassification, IsolatedStorage,
transaction scope, SecretText — describes BC platform behaviour that is
identical across supported versions. The seed [26..28] range on every
file implied a version-specificity the content does not actually have,
and there was no way to express "applies to every version" in the
schema the way [w1] and [all] already do for countries and
application-area.
Extend the v1 schema with a universal sentinel for bc-version, parallel
to the sentinels already defined for the other dimensions:
bc-version: [all] # applies to every BC version
[all] is mutually exclusive with explicit versions. Range shorthand
([26..28]) and explicit lists ([26, 27, 28]) continue to work for files
genuinely tied to a version-gated API or deprecation.
Update read.md (field definition, matching semantics, partial-context
rule), write.md (default to [all], use ranges only with a concrete
reason), README.md (frontmatter example), and the CI validator. All
forty existing knowledge files and the three action skills convert to
[all]; none of the current content is version-gated. Validator passes.
Remove seven knowledge files whose content is generic software-engineering
guidance that a capable LLM already applies without BCQuality present
(HTTPS-only, secret-leakage-in-errors, no-credentials-in-URLs, silent
security-error swallowing, short transaction scope, HTTP timeouts,
StrSubstNo-vs-concatenation). These fail the remedial-knowledge premise
and dilute the signal of the preview corpus.
Strip the "Seed article — domain stewards should expand" banner from ten
files that are ready to showcase (AA0232/AA0233 rules, FindSet read-only
semantics, SetLoadFields ordering and usage, CalcFields-in-loops,
SecretText end-to-end, DataClassification). The banner remains on files
that still need domain-steward refinement.
Add a "What belongs here" section to the README stating the admission
test: a file exists only if a modern LLM would get something wrong or
miss something without it. Gives contributors a concrete yes/no filter
before they open a PR.
- Introduced unit tests for the bc-domain-context implementation, covering various scenarios including filtering by application area, technology mismatches, layer precedence, and conditional applicability.
- Added knowledge files related to finance, including topics such as Chart of Accounts, Codeunit 12, Dimension Management, and VAT on prepayment chains, among others.
- Each knowledge file includes structured metadata and best practices to enhance the domain knowledge available for Business Central tasks.
The /samples/ top-level tree is replaced with sibling files in each
knowledge-layer folder. An article and its demonstrations now live
side-by-side:
microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.md
microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.good.al
microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.bad.al
Rationale:
- Proximity. An article and its paired samples are one unit; the
filesystem now reflects that.
- Layer ownership. Samples inherit layer precedence for free -- a
/custom/ fork can override an article and its samples atomically,
which the shared /samples/ tree previously made awkward.
- Trivial migration path. Action-skill source globs
(*/knowledge/<domain>/**/*.md) are unchanged; sample discovery is a
sibling-filename lookup.
Changes:
- git mv of all 65 sample files from samples/<domain>/<slug>/{bad,good}.al
to microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.{bad,good}.al (history preserved).
- Update See-sample references in all 37 articles that ship samples.
- skills/read.md: replace the no-code-blocks bullet with a pointer to a
new Sample files section that fully specifies the sibling convention,
the kinds (good/bad + forward-compatible), multi-technology rules,
demonstration-only status, and layer-precedence behaviour.
- skills/write.md: update the samples pointer to match.
- README.md: annotate the knowledge tree with the sample sibling shape.
- samples/README.md deleted; content lifted into skills/read.md.
- Both generators (C:\temp\gen_performance_knowledge.py,
C:\temp\gen_security_knowledge.py) updated to emit at the new paths
and to stop writing samples/README.md. Re-running them is idempotent
against the committed layout.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Converts Jesper's existing AL security-review prompt into BCQuality seed
knowledge articles so the al-security-review leaf has a real corpus to
match against. Mirrors the performance seed phase.
Articles under microsoft/knowledge/security/ (16):
- Permission model: follow-least-privilege-in-permission-sets,
use-indirect-permissions-for-elevated-access,
use-inherent-permissions-to-grant-minimal-access
- Secrets: never-hardcode-secrets-in-al,
use-isolated-storage-for-module-and-company-secrets,
prefer-azure-key-vault-for-production-secrets,
use-secrettext-for-credentials, use-secrettext-with-httpclient,
compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno,
use-nondebuggable-when-parsing-secrets
- External calls: require-https-for-external-calls,
set-timeouts-for-external-calls, do-not-put-credentials-in-urls
- Error handling: avoid-sensitive-data-in-error-messages,
do-not-swallow-security-errors-silently
- Extensibility: do-not-expose-sensitive-data-in-event-publishers
Paired AL samples under samples/security/<slug>/{bad,good}.al, object
IDs 50200-50231 (no overlap with performance 50100-50140).
Rubber-duck findings addressed:
- HttpClient secret-URI: SetSecretRequestUri is on HttpRequestMessage
(not HttpClient). Rewrote use-secrettext-with-httpclient and its
good sample to use HttpRequestMessage + HttpClient.Send.
- InherentPermissions only grants access to same-extension objects;
the sample now defines its own table 50230 "Sec Sample Lookup" and
grants 'r' on that, not on Database::Customer.
- Reworked compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno bad.al away from
Format(SecretText) (unreliable) to a plain Text+StrSubstNo anti-
pattern.
- Moved normative guidance out of Description in three articles
(compose-secrets-..., prefer-azure-key-vault-..., use-inherent-...)
so it sits in Best Practice / Anti Pattern per READ contract.
- Added a companion helper codeunit (50231) to the indirect-permissions
good sample so it actually demonstrates the controlled write path.
- Rebuilt the event-publisher good/bad pair on the same ExportCustomer
scenario so the contrast is the shape of the event signature, not a
different event.
Also: broaden samples/README.md object-ID range note to 50100-50299.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Converts an existing performance-review prompt into 22 atomic
knowledge articles under microsoft/knowledge/performance/, each
paired with AL samples under samples/performance/<slug>/ demonstrating
the anti-pattern and/or the best practice. The full set seeds the
corpus the microsoft/skills/al-performance-review leaf skill matches
against and validates the READ knowledge-file format end-to-end.
Every article conforms to the READ contract: six required frontmatter
fields, Description always present, no fenced code blocks, sample
code referenced by repo-relative path. Each article is marked with a
blockquote 'Seed article' note so domain stewards can extend or
restructure them freely.
Articles (ordered by concern area):
Database query efficiency
- use-findset-with-next (AA0181)
- avoid-findfirst-with-next (AA0233)
- only-fetch-records-you-use (AA0175)
- use-findset-readonly-by-default
- use-setloadfields-for-partial-records
- use-addloadfields-in-report-layouts
- use-calcsums-to-aggregate-filtered-sets (file: use-calcsums-for-flowfield-totals.md)
- avoid-calcfields-in-loops
- add-sift-keys-for-flowfields (AA0232)
- use-isempty-for-existence-checks
Filter and key optimization
- filter-before-find
- set-current-key-to-match-filters
Temporary tables and transactions
- use-temporary-tables-for-intermediate-data
- keep-transaction-scope-short
- avoid-user-interaction-in-transactions
- avoid-commit-inside-loops
Record operations
- prefer-get-for-primary-key-lookups
- use-insert-false-when-skipping-triggers
- prefer-direct-record-over-recordref
Strings, codeunits, events
- use-strsubstno-for-message-formatting
- use-single-instance-codeunits-for-caching
- keep-event-subscribers-lightweight
samples/README.md documents the sample-folder convention and makes
clear the samples are demonstration-only, not derived from BC base
application source, with unique object IDs in the 50100-50199 range.
Rubber-duck pass caught: a misleading good.al in avoid-calcfields-in-loops
(fixed by switching to a hoistable CalcFields scenario), an invalid
event subscriber signature in keep-event-subscribers-lightweight
(fixed by adding var xRec), normative guidance leaked into the
Description of use-findset-readonly-by-default (moved to Anti Pattern),
a missing sample pair for keep-transaction-scope-short (added), and
muddy FlowField/CalcSums framing (retitled and clarified).
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
