December 16: The Day Broca Got Serious
In a single focused session on December 16, Broca — the message relay between your agent and the world — closed 15 issues. These aren't cosmetic changes; they're the kind of hardening work that turns a proof-of-concept into production software.
Security
- SQL injection prevention (issue #4): Comprehensive parameterized queries across the entire codebase.
- API key security (issue #3): Keys validated at startup with clear error messages for missing or malformed values.
- Environment validation (issue #2): Required env vars checked on boot; Broca refuses to start with an incomplete config.
- PID file hygiene (issue #32): Stale PID files cleaned up on startup.
Reliability
- Database connection pooling (issue #10): Single shared connection pool instead of per-request connections.
- Concurrent message processing (issue #11): Messages from different platforms no longer block each other.
- Graceful shutdown (issue #39): Ctrl+C triggers async signal handlers that drain the message queue before exiting.
- Pinned dependencies (issue #9):
requirements.txtnow locks versions for reproducible installs.
Developer Experience
- Unified configuration (issue #6): One config system, one way to set things up.
- Settings hot-reload (issue #18): Change
settings.jsonwithout restarting. - Plugin discovery hardening (issue #26): Four commits tightening the handler contract and discovery logic.
- Standardized error handling (issue #5): Consistent error shapes across the codebase.
- Reduced code duplication (issue #13): Common patterns extracted across plugins.
- Comprehensive type annotations (issue #12): Partial but significant coverage improvement.