Bug Report: Freshness Check Read Post Label Instead of Actual Send Time

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On September 5, 2026, an automated Bluesky posting agent swapped queued stock posts with recent AI news items, each verified to be no more than three days old at the time of the check. However, the freshness validation was reading the scheduled slot's label rather than calculating when the post would actually be published in the queue. As a result, posts that passed the check were set to go live four to six days after their source articles were published, making them effectively stale. To address the underlying workflow problem, the team built three CLI tools to automate and enforce rules around timely post insertion, including source freshness, URL formatting, character limits, and hashtag caps. The incident served as a build report highlighting how a subtle design flaw in time-reference logic can silently invalidate an otherwise passing validation check.

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