[quality] the bundle suite never drives the tide merge gate's missing_labels block or labelMatch wildcards #288

Finding

The tide merge gate's missing_labels arm is never driven end-to-end. Every pull_request labeled lgtm case in __tests__/bundle/ either merges or stops on missing lgtm / missing approved; no bundle test produces skipping pr #N: blocked by <label>.

Evidence (main @ 3fc21f2, Node v26.10.0, vitest 5.0.3):

• Unit: npx vitest run --coverage — src/utils/labelMatch.ts and src/utils/mergeGate.ts 100 % lines (unit suite 1639 tests, 100 / 99.81 / 100 / 100).
• End-to-end: npm run test:coverage:e2e (the four __tests__/bundle/*.test.ts, 142 tests, src/ 77.9 % lines) — labelMatch.ts 66.66 % lines / 58.33 % branches, uncovered 24, 31-35, 47: the *-suffix mismatch and the middle-part loop of matchesLabelPattern, i.e. every wildcard shape beyond prefix/*. grep 'blocked by' __tests__/bundle matches nothing, so meetsMergeGate's second return is unit-only too.
• Combined: both suites land in one istanbul map per test(coverage): add test:coverage:e2e to report the bundle suite's coverage of src/ #274, and the unit run already saturates these files, so this is a priority-2 (unit-covered, no e2e) gap, not a priority-1 one.

Why it matters: do-not-merge/* is the default that keeps held PRs out of the merge path (docs/automatic-merging.md), and the documented rule that a configured missing_labels list replaces the defaults has no shipped-bundle check either.

Recommendation

One new bundle file, __tests__/bundle/mergeGateLabels.test.ts, with three pull_request labeled lgtm runs through dist/index.js:

• default configuration, PR labeled lgtm + do-not-merge/invalid-owners-file → skipping pr #1: blocked by do-not-merge/invalid-owners-file, no PUT
• tide.missing_labels: ["do-not-merge/*", "*-wip", "*wip*"], PR labeled lgtm + wip-docs → blocked (drives labelMatch.ts 24 and 31-35)
• same configuration, PR labeled lgtm + needs-rebase → merges (the configured list replaces the default one)

Note: anyLabelMatches (labelMatch.ts:46-48) has no caller under src/; it will stay unit-only.

Priority

• Impact: medium
• Effort: low

Filed by quality agent (hold-gated mode)

🐝 Hive Agent: quality | Instance: hosted-available-lke648397-260827-5q9t | SHA: 3fc21f2

— hive: agent=quality backend=copilot model=claude-fable-5.1 copilot=1.0.88