Parcel file watcher passes root paths to isPathIgnored, causing recurring batch errors #2316

Summary

A vault created by the desktop app logs TypeError: path must not be empty from the file-watcher every ~4 seconds, starting 4 seconds after the project server starts and continuing unbroken. It is non-fatal — the watcher recovers each cycle — but it is level: 50 (error) and grows unbounded, so a brand-new vault's log is nothing but errors.

Environment

• OpenKnowledge 0.88.2 (stable channel), desktop app bundle at /Applications/OpenKnowledge.app
• macOS 27.0.1, arm64 (M4 Mac mini)
• Vault created through the desktop UI, scaffold only — 0 admitted documents (open-knowledge preview → Found 0 markdown files in ./)
• Server: app-spawned, .ok/local/server.lock reports kind: "interactive", capabilities: ["http","ws","ui"], runtimeVersion: "0.88.2", channel: "stable"

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a new vault in the desktop app (empty — no starter pack seeded).
2. The project server starts (open-knowledge-server, interactive kind).
3. tail -f <vault>/.ok/local/logs/server-current.jsonl

Actual behavior

207 events in 15 minutes (15:50:46 → 16:05:46 local, one per 4.4 s), the first 4 s after server start:

{"level":50,"time":1792871446697,"pid":45292,"hostname":"minimac.local","name":"file-watcher","msg":"parcel batch error"}

err.type:    TypeError
err.message: path must not be empty
err.stack:
  TypeError: path must not be empty
    at w (file:///Applications/OpenKnowledge.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@inkeep/open-knowledge/dist/dist-9KnnG8oW.mjs:125:22094)
    at T (.../dist-9KnnG8oW.mjs:125:22220)
    at D._test (.../dist-9KnnG8oW.mjs:125:23136)
    at D.ignores (.../dist-9KnnG8oW.mjs:125:23395)
    at x (.../dist-9KnnG8oW.mjs:891:33124)
    at Object.isPathIgnored (.../dist-9KnnG8oW.mjs:891:34638)
    at hZ (.../dist-9KnnG8oW.mjs:1056:56261)

The cycle repeats exactly: parcel batch error → parcel watcher recovery finished → freshness re-check pass finished → parcel batch error. Across the 207 events, the next non-error line was parcel watcher recovery finished in 117 cases.

Expected behavior

No error, or at most one per genuine condition. An empty path should not reach the ignore matcher / isPathIgnored; if it can, a guard there would keep the watcher quiet.

What I ruled out

Both controls on the same 0.88.2 CLI binary taken from the app bundle, with ok start --only server --no-open-browser:

So the empty corpus alone does not trigger it, and it did not reproduce through the CLI-started server at all — it appears specific to the app-spawned interactive server.

No .okignore or config edits preceded the first event; it fires on a freshly created, untouched vault.

Unconfirmed hypotheses

• The vault lives under ~/Documents, a TCC-protected location on macOS. If the watcher resolves a path it cannot fully qualify, an empty string could reach the ignore matcher.
• Or the empty corpus is the trigger only in the app runtime (UI/ws bridge present), which the CLI controls above would not exercise.

Impact

Log spam rather than breakage: search, audit, links and the MCP tools all work correctly against this vault. But at one event per 4.4 s that is ~19,800 error-level lines per day, and it means the first thing a new vault's diagnostics contain is a repeating TypeError.

Happy to run further instrumentation, or test a build with a guard on the empty path.