Developer finds linter repeatedly flagged careful coders, ignored careless ones

A developer maintaining a linter for AI agent config files discovered three separate bugs where the tool consistently warned users who had correctly documented their code while silently ignoring those who had not. In one case, the linter failed to parse YAML list syntax for declared dependencies, meaning properly written multi-dependency declarations were invisible to the rule. A second bug caused the tool to flag safety warnings like 'never run git push --force' as undeclared external writes, penalizing authors for documenting precautions. A third variation showed that policy statements restricting commands — such as requiring approval before publishing — were also incorrectly triggering the same alert. The developer concluded that text-matching rules are structurally biased against conscientious authors, since cautious developers mention risky operations far more often in their files than careless ones who never document them at all.