# Bank package — product notes

Framing, rationale, and design-direction calls behind **Phase Ε — bank export and
import as a single-file package**. The tickable spec lives in `docs/PLAN.md`
(§Phase Ε); the architecture detail will live in `src/core/package/CLAUDE.md` and
`src/shell/package/CLAUDE.md` once those directories exist. This doc holds the
*why* — the user problem, the container choice, the version-compatibility policy
and the reasoning that produced it, the failure-mode table, and what a package
deliberately does not carry.

Status: framed by product-designer (2026-08-02); **all three [Daniel]-class forks
RULED the same day** — Ε-F1 **proprietary container** (`RSBK`), Ε-F2 **import always
lands as a new bank**, with an automatic suffix on a name collision, Ε-F3 **refuse an
import while the tracking ledger is degraded**. See §"Rulings" for the index and the
recorded rationale; each is specified in place in the section that owns it. Nothing in
this doc is open. Everything else below is a product-designer call with its reasoning
stated; contradict it in review with an argument, not a preference.

---

## What it is (and what it is not)

**A bank package is one file that carries one bank — its audio and its index —
out of a project and into another.** Today a bank is per-project by construction:
the audio sits in `<projectDir>/reasampler_bank/` (`core/capture/capture_paths.h`'s
`kBankSubfolder`) and the index that gives that audio meaning lives in the `.rpp`'s
project ext state under the `"reasampler"` namespace (`src/ext_keys.h`'s
`kProjExtBanksKey`). The two travel together with the project and nowhere else.
Export writes both halves into a single `.rsbank` file; import lands them into
another project's bank folder and index.

**It is not a project-transfer feature.** REAPER already moves projects — *Save
project as… with copy of media*, track templates, subprojects. None of them can
carry a ReaSampler bank, because none of them knows the ext-state index exists;
copy the `reasampler_bank/` folder by hand into another project and you get a pile
of `.wav` files with no names, no loop points, no root notes, no tempo stamps, no
tiers, and no lineage. The package exists precisely because **the metadata is the
part that cannot be moved by hand.**

**It is not a preset.** A package carries audio plus bank metadata. It does not
carry ReaSampler 9000's dialed sound — filter, envelopes, splines, loop crossfade,
rate, pitch. That is the instrument's `ComponentState`, and a user who wants the
dialed sound in another project bakes it first (Phase Ξ's resample) and exports the
resulting capture. The package is a *bank*, and the bank has always been the audio,
not the instrument. See "What a package deliberately does not carry" below — this
is the most likely user expectation mismatch in the whole feature, so it is headed
off here rather than discovered in a support thread.

**It is not a re-encode.** Sample bytes leave the source project and arrive at the
destination byte-identical. Frame count, sample rate, bit depth, channel count are
untouched; no trim, no normalize, no mono collapse, no format conversion, no
compression of the audio payload. The package payload is **opaque bytes** to
everything in the export/import path except a hash function. This is the phase's
trust anchor, and it is the direct analogue of the capture pillar's null test.

---

## Why a single file, not a folder copy

The obvious cheap alternative is "copy the bank folder, and write the index into a
sidecar JSON beside it." Rejected, for four reasons, in descending order of weight:

1. **A folder has no place to put its own manifest that a user cannot lose.** The
   index is the part that makes the audio a bank. In a folder, the manifest is just
   one more file among two hundred `.wav`s — droppable, renamable, editable into
   inconsistency, and silently absent after a partial copy. In a single file it is
   the header, and the file either has one or is not a package.
2. **Integrity and version tagging need one identity.** "Is this package complete,
   and can this build read it?" is answerable in one read of one file's first few
   kilobytes. A folder answers it only after enumerating and stat-ing every entry,
   and answers "was anything edited since export?" not at all.
3. **The move gesture is one object.** Email it, drop it in shared storage, drop it
   on the docked panel. The panel already accepts `WM_DROPFILES` for ingest
   (`src/shell/panel/panel_window.cpp` header comment: "WM_DROPFILES -> ingest"), so
   a package can ride an affordance that exists.
4. **Atomicity is buyable.** A single file can be written to a temp path and
   atomically renamed on success — the precedent the mono collapse already set
   (Ψ-W2-T2 landed the collapse "via temp file plus atomic rename"). A half-written
   folder looks exactly like a complete one.

The counter-argument for the folder is real and should be recorded: a folder is
inspectable with no tooling. The container ruling below does **not** buy that back —
`RSBK` is opaque without our tool — so the inspectability loss is an accepted cost,
paid deliberately, not an oversight to be corrected later by reaching for ZIP.

---

## The container — a proprietary `RSBK` (Ε-F1, RULED)

**Ruled by Daniel, 2026-08-02: *"proprietary container."*** The package is a
hand-rolled `RSBK` file. ZIP — whether via the vendored MiniZip64 in
`vendor/WDL/WDL/zlib/` or as a hand-written stored-only ZIP *shape* — is rejected and
is not to be revisited inside this phase.

**The shape.** Magic `RSBK`, a fixed little-endian header carrying the two version
fields (§"Version tagging" below), a length-prefixed JSON manifest, then each entry's
payload concatenated in manifest order. Framing overhead is tens of bytes, not
kilobytes.

**What it reuses, rather than invents.** The little-endian byte codec
(`core/wire/bytes.h` — `putLE` / `ByteReader`, called out in `src/core/wire/CLAUDE.md`
as the earned template case) and the hand-rolled JSON layer (`core/json`). Both are
already owned and already tested here.

**Why the ruling went this way.** The load-bearing reason is not effort — it is that
the pure/shell split is this project's central discipline, and `RSBK` is the only
candidate where the **whole codec lands pure** and the shell is a bytes-in/bytes-out
skin. MiniZip's API is path-and-file-handle shaped (`ioapi.h`), so a ZIP codec drags
the filesystem into the layer that discipline keeps free of hosts; a buffer-backed
`zlib_filefunc_def` is possible but fiddly and defeats the "standard format" argument
inside the code even while preserving it on disk. Compression buys almost nothing on
float32 PCM. Writing a correct ZIP central directory by hand was the worst of both —
more code than `RSBK`, the same hardening burden, plus Zip64 and name-encoding edge
cases, and still no compression.

**The two costs, accepted with the ruling.** (1) The package is **opaque without our
tool** — no unzip-and-look support path. (2) We own the hostile-input hardening of our
own parser, to the discipline `bank_model::deserialize` and `parseLedger` already
carry — *error signaled, never UB* (`bank_model.h`'s `BankModel::deserialize`). Both are priced in; a
later "let's make it inspectable" impulse is a new phase's argument, not this one's.

**This was a one-way door and it is now shut** — packages are in users' hands the day
it ships, and a later container change means either a second reader forever or
stranded packages. The version ladder below, not a format swap, is how the format
moves from here.

---

## Version tagging: two questions, and why one number cannot answer both

### The precedent this extends (read from source, 2026-08-02)

The repo already carries **two** versioning mechanisms, and they answer different
questions:

1. **A blob-schema ladder.** `src/core/tracking/origin_ledger.cpp`'s version-ladder
   header comment states the
   ladder for the `owned_files` blob (v1 legacy path-only, v2
   current), pins `constexpr int kLedgerVersion = 2`, and — the load-bearing part —
   **reads and validates `"v"`, not merely writes it**: "A version above
   `kLedgerVersion` is therefore its own degraded status, never a Loaded ledger"
   (the same comment). The parse outcome is a three-way `Ok` / `Malformed` / `FutureVersion`
   (`origin_ledger.cpp`'s `ParseOutcome` enum and `parseStored`), deliberately distinguished so the operator gets the right
   recovery advice. A *field-vocabulary* gap behaves oppositely: an unrecognized
   `OriginKind` integer degrades to `Unknown` rather than failing the parse
   (`origin_ledger.cpp`'s `kindFromInt`), because "a vocabulary gap must not halt the prune"
   (`src/core/tracking/CLAUDE.md` §"Gotchas").
2. **An app writing-version stamp.** `src/core/version/app_version.h`'s
   `WritingVersion` with `PreVersioning` / `Unknown` / `Stamped`, classified by
   `classifyWritingVersion`, stamped into project ext state by
   `ReaSamplerSession::saveToActiveProject` (`src/shell/persist/ext_state_io.cpp`) using `stampVersion()` (the numeric
   triple only, no channel suffix). It is informational: an absent stamp is "not an
   error and not a warning" (`app_version.h`'s `WritingVersion` comment, the `PreVersioning` case).

**An observation worth recording, not a defect to fix here:** `BankBook` writes
`"version": 1` into the banks blob (`src/core/model/bank_book_json.cpp`'s `BankBook::serialize`) but its
parser skips the key along with every other unknown one
(`bank_book_json.cpp`'s `parseBook` — `if (!r.skipValue()) return false;  // version, or unknown`).
The book's version field is therefore **decorative today** — written, never read,
never gating. The ledger's is the precedent to extend; the book's is the precedent
not to repeat.

### The two questions a package must answer

- **"Can I parse this shape at all?"** — a hard gate. Monotonic integer. This is
  `origin_ledger`'s `"v"`.
- **"Who wrote this, so I can tell the user what to open it with?"** — informational,
  never a gate. Semver string. This is `app_version`'s stamp.

A package carries **both**, and conflating them is the mistake to avoid. The stamp
alone cannot gate (semver ordering does not track schema shape; a patch release can
change a blob and a minor release can leave it alone). The ladder alone cannot
advise (an integer tells a user nothing about which build to install).

### The refinement: `formatVersion` **and** `minReaderVersion`

A single ladder has one bad property: **every change strands every older reader,
even a purely additive one.** That is not hypothetical here — look at what `Sample`
has actually accumulated: `rootNote` and `loop` (`bank_model.h`'s `Sample::rootNote` / `Sample::loop`,
"additive like `provenance`. Both default cleanly empty"), `captureTimeSigNum` /
`captureTimeSigDenom` (`Sample::captureTimeSigNum` / `Sample::captureTimeSigDenom`, "0/0 means UNSTAMPED"), `channelCount`
(`Sample::channelCount`, "0 = unknown — a pre-field entry"). Every one of those was additive with
a defined absent-value. Under a single ladder, each would have blocked older readers
for no reason.

So the package header carries two integers:

- **`formatVersion`** — what this writer emitted. Monotonic, bumped on any change.
- **`minReaderVersion`** — the oldest reader that can read this package *safely*.
  Bumped only when a change is **structural** (a field's meaning changes, a section
  is removed, framing changes); left alone when a change is **additive** (a new
  optional manifest key, a new `Sample` field with a defined absent-value — exactly
  the four listed above).

The reader's rule is one line: **read it iff
`minReaderVersion <= kPackageFormatVersion`.** `formatVersion` is then only for the
message text and the log.

**One change class that looks additive and is not: a new enum value.**
`BankModel::deserialize` *rejects* an out-of-range `SourceMode` or `Tier` rather than
degrading it (`bank_model.cpp`'s `parseSample` — the `sourceMode` and `tier` branches), and every enum a package carries
rides inside the nested `BankModel` blob. So growing either vocabulary is
**structural** and bumps `minReaderVersion` too. This is wider than packages and
predates them: `BankModel::deserialize` is also the live project ext-state parser
(`bank_book_json.cpp`'s `parseBank`), so appending a `SourceMode` value already strands an older
build opening a newer project's `.rpp`. Phase Ε inherits that property; it did not
cause it, and changing it — degrade-to-`Unknown` at those two sites, the way
`BakeStatus` already does — is a change to the model layer, not a package concern. It
leaves the argument above untouched: the four fields that motivated the two-integer
design are *fields*, and `parseSample`'s `skipValue()` fallback
(`bank_model.cpp`), plus the manifest parsers' equivalent at each level, still
carries them forward.

This is a borrowed pattern, not an invention: Matroska's `EBMLVersion` /
`EBMLReadVersion` pair, PDF's catalog `/Version` over the header version, and OOXML's
`mc:Ignorable` markup-compatibility mechanism all separate "what I am" from "what you
must understand to read me." It costs one extra integer and one writer discipline —
*decide honestly whether your change is additive* — and that discipline is exactly
the one `origin_ledger` already enforces on `OriginKind`
(`src/core/tracking/CLAUDE.md` §"Gotchas": "PERSISTED INTEGERS — never renumber, only
append").

### Both directions, concretely

**Direction 1 — newer ReaSampler, older package. Always imports. Never refuses.**
Every reader reads every `minReaderVersion <= kPackageFormatVersion`. Absent manifest
keys take their defined defaults, exactly as `Sample`'s additive fields already do,
and exactly as `origin_ledger` lifts a v1 path-only blob into v2 records with kind
`Unknown` and empty ids (`origin_ledger.cpp`'s version-ladder header comment). Unrecognized manifest keys are
skipped, which is already how every parser in this repo behaves
(`bank_book_json.cpp`'s `parseBook`). Unrecognized enum integers (the manifest's own —
`BankModel`'s nested ones reject) degrade to their defined `Unknown`-equivalent,
never to the numeric default and never to a parse failure —
`bake_wire`'s rule verbatim (`src/core/wire/CLAUDE.md` §"Modules", the `bake_wire` bullet: "an unrecognized value
decodes as `Failed` rather than as the numeric default `Ok`").
**The user sees:** a normal import summary. Optionally a single console line naming
the older writer version. No dialog, no warning, no ceremony — a supported case is
not an incident.

**Direction 2 — older ReaSampler, newer package. Refuses. Whole-package, nothing
written.** `minReaderVersion > kPackageFormatVersion` is a hard stop, before a single
byte is written to the bank folder and before the index is touched. This is exactly
`LedgerStatus::FutureVersion`'s treatment, and for the same reason stated at
`origin_ledger.cpp`'s version-ladder header comment: parsing an unknown shape by old rules "would yield a
plausible-but-partial" result, and a partial bank is worse than no bank.
**The user sees** a message box (`ShowMessageBox`, verified —
`vendor/reaper-sdk/sdk/reaper_plugin_functions.h:6546`,
`int (*ShowMessageBox)(const char* msg, const char* title, int type)`) naming three
things, because any two of them leave the user stuck:

> **Cannot import this bank package.**
> It was written by ReaSampler 1.7.0 and needs package format 3 or newer.
> This build (1.5.2) reads package format 2.
> Nothing was imported. Install ReaSampler 1.7.0 or newer and try again.

The writer's semver is what makes the message *actionable* — "format 3" alone tells a
user nothing they can act on. That is the whole reason both fields exist.

**Refusing is the correct direction to refuse in**, and it is worth saying why
rather than leaving it as taste: the destination project is the user's existing work.
A refusal costs a transfer the user can retry after updating. A best-effort partial
import costs silent data absence inside a project they will keep working in, and they
will not find out which twelve of forty samples were dropped until they need one.

---

## What a package carries

- **The two version fields and the writer's semver**, in the fixed header.
- **An export timestamp** and the **source bank's display name** — informational, and
  the default the import prompt pre-fills.
- **One manifest entry per sample**, carrying that `Sample` record in
  **`bank_model`'s own serialization, nested verbatim**. This is the
  `bank_book_json` precedent applied outward: the book writer "emits the bank
  envelope … plus a raw `index` member whose value is the `BankModel` blob verbatim,
  so per-bank sample serialization stays owned by `bank_model` and is not duplicated
  here" (`bank_book_json.cpp`'s file-header comment). The package does the same, so a future `Sample`
  field reaches packages for free and the shape has exactly one owner.
- **Per entry, additionally:** the payload's **bare file name** inside the package,
  its byte length, and a whole-file `hashBytes` digest
  (`core/capture/wav_codec.h`'s `hashBytes` — FNV-1a 64-bit over raw bytes, 16-char lowercase
  hex). Note carefully: `hashBytes`, **not** `hashWavContent`. The latter deliberately
  skips non-`fmt `/`data` chunks (`wav_codec.h`'s `hashWavContent`), which is right for dedup
  identity and wrong for "did these bytes survive the trip." Both hashes are already
  in the codebase; the package needs the raw one for integrity and carries the
  `Sample`'s existing `contentHash` for dedup, and they are different fields
  answering different questions.
- **The bank's slot map** — display positions (`core/model/slot_map`), already JSON
  round-trippable. A bank's arrangement is part of what the user built.
- **The payloads**, byte-exact, in manifest order.

`hashBytes` is FNV-1a — a corruption detector, not a cryptographic checksum. Say so
plainly in the code and in any user-facing wording: it catches truncation, bit rot,
and a mangled transfer. It does not certify provenance, and it is not a defense
against a package deliberately crafted to collide. That is the right level of
guarantee for this feature; overselling it would be the error.

## What a package deliberately does NOT carry

- **Any absolute path. Any path at all.** Entries are **bare file names** — no
  directory component, no `..`, no drive letter, no leading separator — validated on
  encode *and* on decode. The importer spells the destination path itself, through
  the same `capture_paths` arithmetic every capture already uses. This makes the
  relative-paths-only precision invariant **structural rather than remembered**:
  there is no field in the format capable of expressing an absolute path. It also
  closes the archive-traversal ("zip slip") bug class by construction, which is the
  one genuinely security-shaped surface this feature has.
- **The origin ledger.** The ledger is *this project's* record of files *it*
  created, and it is the authority prune's protected set is computed from
  (`src/core/tracking/CLAUDE.md` §"Scope"). Importing foreign ownership records would
  assert this project's authority over another project's history. Instead the
  importer writes **its own** birth records for the files it lands, at the moment it
  lands them, through the one writer (`ReaSamplerSession::recordCreated`,
  `src/shell/persist/session.h` — it already takes an `OriginKind`). Without that,
  every imported file would be "foreign, therefore never reclaimed"
  (`core/tracking/CLAUDE.md` §"Invariants", the "No silent gaps" bullet) and a user's bank folder would grow forever.
- **Live-instance usage records** (`rsusage_*`, `src/ext_keys.h`'s `kProjExtUsageKeyPrefix`). Per-instance
  runtime state of a specific project's specific FX instances. Meaningless elsewhere.
- **Project state that is not bank state:** which bank was active, the Design View
  mode model (`view_state`), the tail setting, the project GUID, the bank-generation
  counter. A package is a bank, not a project.
- **ReaSampler 9000's `ComponentState`.** Stated above; restated here because it is
  the expectation most likely to be wrong. The seam is left open, not closed: the
  manifest skips unknown keys, so a future `instrumentState` section is a purely
  additive change that does not bump `minReaderVersion`. Designing that seam now and
  spending it later is the point.

---

## Identity and collision on import

**The import target is settled first, because it frames all four collisions.
Ε-F2, RULED by Daniel, 2026-08-02: *"always lands as a new bank, with an auto suffix
if name collision."*** Every import creates a **new bank** in the destination book.
It never merges into an existing bank, never lands into the pool, never offers a
target picker, and never overwrites. **Merge-into-existing is out of scope for Phase
Ε** — not deferred behind a flag, not a second action shipped later in this phase, not
a checkbox. A user who wants imported samples in an existing bank imports and then
uses the existing move/copy verbs, which already do exactly that and already carry
their own undo.

Four distinct collisions hide under the word "collision," and they need four
different answers.

1. **Sample id.** Ids are minted as `"cap-" + uniqueTag + "-" + fileName`
   (`src/shell/capture/capture.cpp`'s `OfflineRenderBackend::capture`) and `"imp-" + …`
   (`src/shell/actions/ingest.cpp`'s `importFileIntoActiveBank`) — unique within a project, **not** globally.
   Re-importing a package into the project it came from would collide.
   **Answer: remint every sample id on import**, under its own prefix, and remap
   `Provenance::parentSampleId` (`bank_model.h`'s `Provenance` struct) through the same map — to the
   reminted parent if that parent came in the same package, cleared otherwise. A
   foreign id never enters the destination index. This also makes "import the same
   package twice" a clean, duplicative, correct operation rather than an undefined
   one.
2. **File name in the destination bank folder.** **Never overwrite.** Overwriting
   would destroy an existing capture, and only prune touches existing bank bytes.
   Mint a fresh unique name through the existing `deriveBankPaths` +
   unique-tag machinery (`core/capture/capture_paths.h`'s `deriveBankPaths`), automatically, no
   prompt, and report the count in the summary.
3. **Content hash.** `BankModel::add` collapses an equal-`contentHash` add onto the
   existing entry (`bank_model.h`'s `AddResult::Collapsed`). Desirable — but
   if the file was already written to disk before the collapse, it becomes an
   instant orphan. **Answer: check the destination bank's `findByHash` BEFORE writing
   the payload**; on a hit, skip the write entirely and report "N already present."
   This is the one place the import must consult the model before touching the
   filesystem, and it is a concrete acceptance criterion rather than an optimization.
4. **Bank display name.** `bank_book` enforces unique display names, trimmed and
   case-insensitive ASCII (`src/core/model/CLAUDE.md` §"Invariants", the "Bank identity, movement, dedup" bullet; `createBank`'s own
   contract at `bank_book.h` — *"Drums"/"drums"/" Drums " collide, including
   against the pool's "Pool"*), so `createBank("Drums")` into a project that already
   has "Drums" returns `false` with no mutation. **Answer: an automatic numeric
   suffix, specified below.** No prompt, no overwrite, no refusal.

### The auto-suffix rule (Ε-F2, implementation-binding)

The importer picks the destination bank's display name itself. The user is told what
it picked; the user is never asked.

**The seed.** The seed is the package's recorded source bank display name, taken
**verbatim**. If that name is absent, empty, or whitespace-only after the model's own
trim, the seed is the literal `Imported bank`.

**The probe.** Let `seed` be that string and `fold(x)` be `BankBook`'s own uniqueness
key — strip leading/trailing ASCII whitespace, lower-case ASCII letters
(`bank_book.h`'s `BankBook::nameKey`). Take the **first** name in this sequence whose fold is not
already carried by a bank in the destination book:

    seed,  seed + " 2",  seed + " 3",  seed + " 4",  …

ascending from 2, unbounded. So `"Drums"` into a project already holding `"drums"`
lands as `"Drums 2"`; a third copy lands as `"Drums 3"`.

**Four properties that make this unambiguous, each stated because omitting it lets two
implementations diverge:**

1. **The seed is never re-parsed.** A package named `"Drums 2"` colliding in the
   destination lands as `"Drums 2 2"`, **not** `"Drums 3"`. This is deliberate and is
   not a defect to fix: a trailing integer cannot be distinguished from a user's own
   name (`"Kit 808"` would become `"Kit 2"` under a stripping rule, silently losing
   user-authored text). `resample_name::nextIterationName` may increment its tail only
   because ` r<N>` carries a marker; a bare integer carries none. Appending is the
   safe direction — it never mutates text the user wrote.
2. **The probe fills gaps.** With `"Drums"` and `"Drums 3"` present and `"Drums 2"`
   free, the import lands as `"Drums 2"`. First-free-ascending, not
   highest-plus-one — the rule is a pure function of the destination's current name
   set, so the same package into the same project always produces the same name.
3. **The suffix is derived from the destination, never from the package.** The package
   records only its source name. Nothing about a collision is stored in the package,
   and re-importing the same package into a different project can produce a different
   name. The probe terminates: with `B` banks in the destination, one of the first
   `B + 1` candidates is free by pigeonhole, so no cap is needed and none should be
   added.
4. **The fold has exactly one home.** `import_plan` must **not** re-implement
   `nameKey` — `bank_book.h`'s `BankBook::nameKey` says in as many words that a drifted second copy
   would let the uniqueness invariant be violated. The probe therefore runs behind
   `BankBook`'s own folding, which means Ε-W2-T2 adds **one additive public `const`
   member** to `BankBook` (recommended: `std::string uniqueDisplayName(const
   std::string& seed) const`, returning the first free candidate) and calls it. That
   one member is the only edit any Ε track makes to `core/model/`.

**What the suffix does NOT touch.** It renames nothing but the new bank's display
name. Sample ids are reminted by collision rule 1 regardless of whether a name
collision occurred, and the two mechanisms are independent. **`Sample` display names
are never suffixed** — two banks may legitimately hold a sample called `"Kick"`, and
`resample_name`'s own contract already states that sample display names are not unique
(`resample_name.h`'s `nextIterationName`). Bank-folder file names are handled by collision rule 2 and
are unaffected by the bank's name. `slot_map` positions ride along unchanged.

**The pool case is guaranteed, not hypothetical.** Exporting the pool is in scope (the
pool is structurally a bank), and the destination's pool always exists and always
carries the protected name `"Pool"`. So a pool export imported anywhere lands as a
**named** bank called `"Pool 2"`. That is correct under the Ε-F2 ruling — import never
lands into the pool — and it should read as intended behaviour in the summary, not as
a glitch.

**What the user sees, and their recovery.** The import summary names the bank it
created, and says so plainly when the name was adjusted:

> Imported 42 samples into a new bank: **Drums 2** (a bank named "Drums" already
> exists in this project).

The recovery path is the existing rename verb — one Ctrl-Z undoes the whole import
including the bank creation, and a rename is one gesture if the user wants a different
name. Neither needs a new affordance.

---

## Failure modes and what the user sees

Whole-package, all-or-nothing on both sides. The reasoning is the same one prune
settled on: report before acting, and never leave a half-state that looks whole.

| Failure | Side | Behaviour | What the user sees |
|---|---|---|---|
| An indexed file is missing on disk | export | Refuse by default; offer "export the N present entries" only behind an explicit confirm that lists what is missing | Message box naming the missing entries; nothing written unless confirmed |
| An indexed file is unreadable (locked/permission) | export | Same as missing | Same, distinguishing unreadable from absent |
| Destination package file exists | export | Platform save dialog's own overwrite confirm | Native dialog |
| Write fails partway | export | Temp file in the destination directory, atomic rename only on complete success | Console error; no `.rsbank` left behind. A truncated package must never exist |
| `minReaderVersion` above this build | import | Refuse whole. Nothing written, index untouched | The three-part message box above (package needs / this build reads / what to install) |
| Malformed or truncated container | import | Refuse whole. Reported **distinctly from** the version case | "This file is not a readable bank package (corrupt or truncated)." The distinction matters: the two have opposite recoveries — one is "install a newer build," the other is "get an intact copy." `origin_ledger.cpp`'s `parseStored` makes exactly this distinction for exactly this reason |
| Entry name contains a path separator, `..`, or is absolute | import | Refuse whole, before any write | "This package is not well-formed." Hostile input, not user error — no need to elaborate |
| Payload hash mismatch on any entry | import | Refuse whole, before landing anything | "This bank package is damaged (entry `<name>` failed its integrity check). Nothing was imported." |
| A write fails mid-import (disk full, permission) | import | Roll back: delete the files **this import wrote** and abandon the index mutation | "Import failed and was rolled back. Nothing was added." |
| Bank name collides in the destination | import | Auto-suffix, no prompt, no overwrite — first free of `seed`, `seed 2`, `seed 3`, … | Summary names the bank it created and says the name was adjusted |
| File name collides in the bank folder | import | Auto-rename, no prompt | Counted in the summary line only |
| Sample already present by content hash | import | Skip the write, collapse onto the existing entry | Counted in the summary line ("N already present") |
| Tracking ledger degraded at import time | import | **Refuse whole**, before the picker's bytes are read and before any write — the guard runs first | The two-case message below, mirroring prune's abort |

**On the rollback, and why it is not an invariant breach.** Prune is the single
exclusive file-deletion authority, with exactly one carve-out, stated in one place —
`src/shell/persist/prune_fs.cpp`'s file-header comment: "a shell removing a file it wrote itself
moments earlier and that no index ever referenced is self-cleanup, not authority
over user data … the discriminator is 'did this call create it, and did anything ever
reference it', not where it sits." An import rollback fits that discriminator
exactly: the files were written by this call, and the index mutation is abandoned, so
nothing ever referenced them. The spec must **cite** the carve-out rather than
restate it, or a reviewer will correctly read the rollback as a breach.

**On undo.** The index side of an import is one Ctrl-Z, through the same
`persistBankOp` undo batching every bank verb already uses
(`src/shell/bank_ops/CLAUDE.md` §"Invariants", the "One bank operation is one Ctrl-Z" bullet; `Undo_BeginBlock2` / `Undo_EndBlock2` verified
at `reaper_plugin_functions.h:7758` and `:7806`). **Undo does not un-write the
files** — they remain on disk, referenced by no index, until a prune reclaims them.
That is the same designed orphaned-until-prune window a non-empty bank delete already
produces (`src/core/model/CLAUDE.md` §"Invariants", the "Bank identity, movement, dedup" bullet). Say it out loud in the spec; do not let
a user infer that Ctrl-Z cleans the folder.

### Import under a degraded tracking ledger (Ε-F3, RULED: refuse)

**Ruled by Daniel, 2026-08-02: *"refuse mismatched import."*** An import that cannot be
cleanly reconciled against the tracking ledger is **refused outright**. There is no
confirm-and-proceed path, no "I understand the risk" checkbox, and no preference to
turn the guard off. This ruling went against the framing recommendation, and the
reasoning that carried it is recorded below rather than re-argued.

**The trigger, exactly.** The guard fires when `tracking::ledgerDegraded(status)` holds
for the project's loaded ledger status — that is, `LedgerStatus::Unreadable` or
`LedgerStatus::FutureVersion` (`src/core/tracking/origin_ledger.h`'s `LedgerStatus` and `ledgerDegraded`).
`Fresh` (absent key — a legitimate new project) and `Loaded` both proceed normally.

**Two things the guard is deliberately NOT keyed on:**

- **Not `PruneReport::blockedByTracking`.** That flag also fires on unreadable
  `rsusage_*` keys, which are about live-instance protection during a *deletion*.
  Import deletes nothing and computes no protected set; it *writes* birth records. An
  undecodable usage key must not block an import, and reusing prune's composite flag
  would silently make it do so.
- **Not the package.** Nothing in the `.rsbank` participates in this check. The package
  is untouched by a refusal and remains importable later, elsewhere, or after the
  project is repaired.

**When it runs.** First — **before the file picker opens**, before a byte of the
package is read, before any allocation. Making the user find and pick a file we have
already decided to refuse is the wrong order.

**What the user sees.** A console block through `ShowConsoleMsg`, mirroring prune's
abort (`src/shell/actions/prune_action.cpp`'s `doBankPruneFolder` — the `blockedByTracking` console block) in structure and in tone, because a
user who has hit prune's block should recognise this one. Every recovery line names
**this build's** ext-state namespace via `version::extStateNamespace()` — the
beta/stable trap prune already documents, where a beta user handed the stable spelling
clears the wrong key and is still blocked. Two cases, exactly one of which fires:

*Malformed ledger:*

> ReaSampler import: ABORTED — the file-tracking ledger could not be read. Nothing was
> imported.
> The stored file-tracking ledger is malformed. It has been left intact rather than
> overwritten, so it can be repaired or cleared:
>   `reaper.SetProjExtState(0, "reasampler", "owned_files", "")`
> Clearing it makes every existing bank file un-reclaimable (they stop being
> attributable to ReaSampler); no file is lost. Reopen the project afterwards — the
> block is held for the rest of this session.
> An import can land hundreds of files in one gesture. With no readable ledger, none of
> them could be given a birth record, and every one would be permanently unreclaimable.

*Ledger from a newer build:*

> ReaSampler import: ABORTED — the file-tracking ledger could not be read. Nothing was
> imported.
> The stored file-tracking ledger was written by a NEWER version of ReaSampler than
> this one, so its records cannot be read safely. It has been left intact and will NOT
> be overwritten. Reopen the project with that newer version — do NOT clear this key
> from here, that would discard tracking records this build cannot see. The block is
> held for the rest of this session.
> An import can land hundreds of files in one gesture. With no readable ledger, none of
> them could be given a birth record, and every one would be permanently unreclaimable.

**The recovery path.** The status is written only by `loadFromProject`, so it is sticky
for the session (`src/shell/persist/CLAUDE.md` §"Invariants", the "A ledger this build cannot read is degraded" bullet): repair or clear the key
(malformed case only), or install the newer build (future-version case), **reopen the
project**, then import again. The package needs no re-export, and nothing about the
destination project was changed by the refusal.

**Export is NOT gated on the ledger, and that asymmetry is intentional.** Export writes
no birth records, mutates nothing, and touches no ext state. A user whose ledger is
degraded can still get their bank *out* — which is exactly the moment they are most
likely to want to. Only the landing side refuses.

**Why the ruling went this way.** The rejected option — allow the import behind an
up-front confirm — matched the accepted residual already stated at
`core/tracking/CLAUDE.md` §"Invariants" (the "No silent gaps" bullet), where a capture made during a degraded session is
recorded in memory but not persisted and degrades to foreign. The argument that carried
is **scale**: that residual contemplates *one* untracked capture, and a bulk import can
strand two hundred files in a single gesture. Same mechanism, different animal. A
confirm would also push a data-lifecycle consequence onto the user at the one moment
they are least equipped to evaluate it — mid-transfer, wanting the samples. The refusal
costs a retry after a project reload; the confirm costs a bank folder that can never be
reclaimed.

---

## Memory: the streaming seam that keeps the codec pure

A bank is not small. Float32 stereo at 48 kHz is ~23 MB per minute; a two-hundred-
sample bank is plausibly gigabytes. **The naive shape — a pure
`encodePackage(vector<uint8_t>) -> vector<uint8_t>` — holds the whole bank twice in
RAM and is unshippable.** The temptation is then to move the codec into the shell so
it can stream. That is the wrong correction, and the right one is a better seam:

- **Pure owns framing and arithmetic.** `encodeHeader(manifest) -> bytes` and
  `entryLayout(manifest) -> [{ name, offset, length }]` on the write side;
  `decodeHeader(prefix bytes) -> manifest + entry layout` on the read side. Offsets
  and lengths are arithmetic — perfectly pure, perfectly testable, and the exact
  place an off-by-one becomes a corrupt package.
- **Shell owns the stream.** It writes the header, then appends payloads one at a
  time, reading each source file into a buffer, hashing it, writing it, and releasing
  it. On decode it reads the prefix, gets the layout, then seeks and streams each
  payload independently.

**Constraint, stated as an acceptance criterion:** the export and import paths hold
**at most one entry's payload** in memory at a time. This is what keeps the codec
pure without making the feature fail on real banks, and it is the kind of thing that
is cheap to design in and expensive to retrofit.

**One honest cost.** Export and import are synchronous, on the UI thread, like every
other action in the tool, and prune sets that precedent (a scan-then-confirm gesture
that blocks). A multi-gigabyte bank will therefore freeze REAPER for seconds. The
recommendation is to ship synchronous with a console progress/summary line and treat
async as a later move if it bites — but this is a real `[propose]`-class call the
implementation review should make deliberately rather than by default.

---

## Where it lives (pure / shell)

Two new directories, following the split the whole repo turns on.

**`src/core/package/` — pure, REAPER-free, unit-tested without a DAW.**

- `package_format` — the container framing and the version ladder in one place:
  the magic, the header layout, `kPackageFormatVersion`, `kPackageMinReaderVersion`,
  and `classifyPackageVersion(formatVersion, minReader) -> Readable | TooNew |
  Malformed`. The ladder lives with the framing because the ladder *is* the framing's
  contract, and it gets a header-comment ladder written the way
  `origin_ledger.cpp`'s version-ladder header comment writes one.
- `package_manifest` — the manifest model and its JSON codec, nesting `BankModel`'s
  own blob verbatim.
- `bank_package` — header encode / prefix decode / entry layout, composing the two
  above. Never holds a payload.
- `export_plan` — the pure export decision: which entries, what names, what is
  missing, and therefore whether the export may proceed.
- `import_plan` — the pure import decision: the id remap table, the parent remap, the
  per-entry write / skip-already-present / rename-to-avoid-collision disposition, and
  the destination bank name after uniqueness folding. **This module is why the whole
  feature is testable without a DAW** — every collision rule above is a pure function
  over strings and hashes.

`export_plan` and `import_plan` are separate TUs deliberately, not one `package_plan`:
they share only the manifest type, and separating them is what lets the two Phase Ε
build tracks run in parallel without fighting over a file. The seam is a
responsibility seam, which is what the structural heuristic asks for.

**`src/shell/package/` — filesystem and REAPER-facing.**

- `package_io` — read a package file to bytes, write bytes through temp + atomic
  rename, read a bank file's bytes, write a landed file, enumerate existing bank-folder
  names, and execute the rollback delete (citing the `prune_fs` carve-out).
- The file picker, which is REAPER's own on every platform — no `#ifdef _WIN32` /
  `#else swell/swell.h` split, no Win32 `GetSaveFileNameW`, no wide-char round trip.
  **Verified:** `GetUserFileName(int mode, const char* caption, const char*
  initial_file_or_path, const char* extension_list, char* fnOutNeedBig, int
  fnOutNeedBig_sz)` — `reaper_plugin_functions.h:3790`, documented at `:3788` — serves
  both verbs symmetrically: `mode=0` chooses a new file (export's destination),
  `mode=1` an existing one (import's source). `extension_list` takes the
  `'ReaSampler banks|*.rsbank|All files|*.*'` form. `GetUserFileNameForRead` is
  explicitly "Superseded, see GetUserFileName" (`:3796`) and is not used. No fallback
  is needed: `src/app/main.cpp`'s `#define REAPERAPI_IMPLEMENT` appears without
  `REAPERAPI_MINIMAL`, so the resolver walks the full table (`GetUserFileName` at
  `:9084`), and `REAPER_PLUGIN_ENTRYPOINT`'s `REAPERAPI_LoadAPI` check refuses to load the extension if any one function
  fails to resolve — so no REAPER build that loads us can lack it.
- `export_bank` / `import_bank` — the promptless verbs, mirroring
  `src/shell/bank_ops/`'s pattern exactly: take a `ReaSamplerSession&`, do the work,
  return an outcome, **no prompts and no message boxes**. The bindable action and the
  panel menu item are then thin skins over one verb apiece, so the logic has one home
  (`src/shell/bank_ops/CLAUDE.md` §"Scope").

**The dependency-shape criterion, stated because the brief demands it.** The pure
planners take **explicit value inputs** — the decoded manifest, the destination
`BankBook`, the set of file names present in the bank folder — never a session handle,
never a service container, never a "pass me the thing that has everything." The shell
*gathers*; the core *decides*. That is the same shape `src/shell/persist/CLAUDE.md` §"Scope"
already states ("it gathers rather than decides"). If a circular dependency shows up
during the build, the fix is a service split or a thin interface at the seam — never
threading an extra parameter through a chain of constructors, and never handing a
container down. A base class that grows a dependency must not grow its subclasses'
constructors.

---

## Invariant reconciliation

- **Relative paths only.** Strengthened, not merely preserved: the package format has
  no field capable of expressing a path, only a bare file name, validated at both
  ends. The destination path is spelled by `capture_paths` on the importing side.
- **Capture and placement are separate acts.** Import writes files and index entries.
  It places **no** timeline item, ever — the same rule capture has always carried
  (root `CLAUDE.md`, "The load-bearing principle"). A user who wants the imported
  audio in the arrange uses the existing insert action.
- **Prune is the single exclusive file-deletion authority.** Unchanged. The one
  rollback path is the documented self-cleanup carve-out, cited not restated.
- **No lossy transforms.** The payload is opaque bytes on both sides. `wav_codec` is
  invoked on it only to hash and to read metadata already recorded — never to rebuild,
  trim, normalize, or collapse. The mono collapse in particular is a **capture-path**
  behaviour and must not reach the import path, for the same reason ingest is already
  excluded from it (root `CLAUDE.md`, exact-bounds invariant: "ingest is excluded,
  because an imported file is the user's bytes, not our capture"). A package's bytes
  are someone else's capture; the same exclusion applies with the same reasoning.
- **Bit-identical round-trip.** Export → import → export yields byte-identical
  payloads. This is the phase's trust anchor and belongs in the acceptance criteria of
  the round-trip track, tested against frozen fixture bytes rather than against a
  freshly-generated pair.
- **Bank generation.** Import mutates bank content that live ReaSampler 9000
  instances may play, so it must `bumpBankGeneration()`
  (`src/shell/persist/session.h`'s `ReaSamplerSession::bumpBankGeneration`, whose own comment says call sites "err toward
  bumping"). Export mutates nothing and must bump nothing, write no ext state, and
  open no undo point.
- **Beta/stable channel isolation.** Packages are channel-**agnostic** and this is
  deliberate. Channel isolation exists so a beta cannot rewrite a stable project's
  ext state (`app_version.h`'s `extStateNamespace` — the ISOLATION comment); a package is a file the user moves by hand, not
  ambient project state, so there is no isolation property to preserve. A beta build
  and a stable build at the same package format read each other's packages, and that
  is the useful behaviour. The version ladder — not the channel — is what gates.

---

## Rulings — Daniel's, 2026-08-02

All three [Daniel]-class forks this doc opened were ruled the same day it was framed.
Nothing here is open. This section is an index; each ruling is **specified** in the
section that owns it, and that section is the implementation-binding text.

| Fork | Ruling | Specified in |
|---|---|---|
| **Ε-F1** | **Proprietary container.** Hand-rolled `RSBK`. ZIP via the vendored MiniZip64, and a hand-written stored-only ZIP shape, are both rejected | §"The container" |
| **Ε-F2** | **Import always lands as a new bank**, with an automatic numeric suffix on a display-name collision. Merge-into-existing is out of scope for this phase | §"Identity and collision on import" — the frame, plus the auto-suffix rule |
| **Ε-F3** | **Refuse** an import while the tracking ledger is degraded. No confirm-and-proceed path | §"Import under a degraded tracking ledger" |

**Two of the three went to a different answer than the framing recommended, and the
reasons are worth keeping.** Ε-F2's recommendation was a *prompt* pre-filled with a
uniqueness-folded suggestion; the ruling removed the prompt entirely, which is the
better shape — the name is derived deterministically from the destination, the user is
told rather than asked, and the existing rename verb is the recovery. Ε-F3's
recommendation was allow-with-confirm; the ruling refused, and the counter-argument
raised alongside that recommendation is what carried it (scale — the accepted residual
contemplates one untracked capture, an import strands hundreds).

---

## Implementation decisions — Ε-W2-T1

Not [Daniel]-class forks — both were `[propose at review]` calls in `docs/PLAN.md`'s
Ε-W2-T1 track, answered at implementation review rather than by Daniel, and recorded
here per this phase's own convention for keeping such answers where the design lives
rather than only in the track's own now-stale open-questions line.

- **Affordance: both the bindable action and the panel row.** The action targets the
  **active** bank and is the only spelling that can reach the **pool** (the panel's
  `showTabMenu` returns early on `isPool()` — a named-bank-tab context menu has no tab
  to right-click for the pool), while the exported unit's own definition above includes
  the pool. The panel row is the direct gesture on a specific named bank. Neither
  subsumes the other.
- **Default file name: the bank's display name**, sanitized through
  `capture_paths::sanitizeStem`, seeded into `<projectDir>/<stem>.rsbank`. A
  project-derived name was the rejected alternative: three banks exported from one
  project must produce three distinguishable files, and a project-derived name
  collides on the second export. Known wart, worth recording rather than hiding:
  `sanitizeStem` collapses an all-non-ASCII display name to the literal `capture`, so
  two such banks still collide — the existing rename verb is the recovery, same as the
  import-side auto-suffix collisions above.

---

## Non-goals and guardrails

- **No auto-insertion of imported audio into the arrange.** Same rule as capture.
- **No overwrite of an existing bank-folder file, ever.** Auto-rename instead.
- **No partial import.** All-or-nothing, with rollback. A partially-imported bank is
  the failure mode this whole design is shaped to avoid.
- **No re-encode, no trim, no normalize, no mono collapse on either side.**
- **No compression of the audio payload.** `RSBK` concatenates payload bytes; there is
  no compressor in the path and none is to be added.
- **No merge-into-existing import.** Every import creates a new bank (Ε-F2). There is
  no target picker, no "import into the active bank" variant, and no second action.
  Move/copy already move samples between banks after the fact.
- **No instrument state in the package** — the seam is left additive, deliberately
  unspent.
- **No whole-book export in this phase.** One package carries one bank, because that
  is the unit users think in. A future multi-bank package is an additive manifest
  change that does **not** bump `minReaderVersion`, so the option is preserved by
  construction rather than by promise. Do not build it now.
- **Do not make the package a sync mechanism.** No "re-import to update," no
  reconciliation against a previously-imported package, no package identity tracked
  in project state. Import is a one-way copy-in. Anything else is a different product.
