Keep saved meeting dates when the app rewrites them

[r3dbars]

Requested by Justin · project thread

Why

Before: a user reported 39 of 90 old meetings suddenly showing "Created" as today in Finder and his notes app, with their text intact. Every app path that edits a saved meeting after the fact (speaker rename, merge, discard, deferred naming, meeting rename, quick summary, restyle, summary sidecar rename) used a plain atomic write. That swaps in a brand-new file, so the creation date resets. A rewrite with identical bytes still bumped Modified too. Daily dictation files had the same problem: every new dictation, delete, edit and undo rewrote the whole day file.

After: those paths skip the write when nothing changed, and when something did change they keep the file's original creation date. Modified still moves on a real edit, on purpose, since the MCP index, Home's capture cache and the dictionary-fix scan all use it to spot changes.

The user thinks he merged a couple of speakers around then, which fits: a merge rewrites every meeting that speaker was in.

Product Impact

• Affects: meetings / dictation / agent artifacts
• Lane: meeting reliability
• Why this matters: people sort their meetings folder (or Obsidian vault) by date. Editing a speaker shouldn't reshuffle their history.

What changed

• New TranscriptFileRewrite in Sources/TranscriptedCore/Storage/: skip identical bytes, else atomic write + restore creation date.
• Meeting rewrite sites switched to it: RetroactiveSpeakerUpdater, SpeakerIdentityMutationService, SpeakerNamingCoordinator (rollback), HomeMeetingRename, MeetingTranscriptStyler, MeetingQuickSummaryWriter, MeetingArtifactRenamer (summary sidecar).
• Dictation: DictationTranscriptWriter append and DictationTranscriptStore delete/edit/undo switched to it.
• DictionaryPastMeetingFix.writePreservingCreationDate now calls the helper instead of its own copy.
• Permission tightening after each write is unchanged.
• Added the new file to SHARED_TEST_STORAGE_SOURCES (fast tests + E2E smoke) and the home-captures benchmark script.
• Tests: TranscriptFileRewriteTests (StorageTests) and a merge+rename creation-date test in RetroactiveSpeakerUpdaterTests. The existing dictionary-fix fast test already checks creation date is kept.

How I checked it

• bash scripts/dev/linux-checks.sh (48 passed)
• check-source-pins.py --changed-only passes
• bash build.sh --no-open, bash run-tests.sh, swift test, bash run-integration-smoke.sh, bash run-e2e-smoke.sh: CI

Checks I could not run, and why:

• Anything Swift. Cloud session on Linux, no toolchain. CI is the build.

Mac or hardware test still needed?

• Not required. Optional: rename a speaker who appears in an old meeting, then check that meeting's Created date in Finder stays put (on main it jumps to now).

Risk Review

• Privacy / local-first behavior reviewed (no telemetry changes)
• Checked the text-pin tests for every file I edited
• Storage path or migration impact reviewed (no path changes)
• Agent PRs got an independent deep review of the full diff (READY at 356a2cf; its M1 dictation and M2 reuse notes are in b946495)

Notes

Finder's "Date Added", Finder tags and other xattrs still don't survive a real atomic rewrite (pre-existing). Creation date is what sorting and most note apps use. Skipping no-op writes means those files aren't touched at all.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_011A6EG6MJcFSNvDLMx3YEH9