i18n audit is blind to conditional literals — Text(if x "a" else "b") reports clean #540

The problem

Tools/i18n_audit.py reports "OK no hardcoded literals" on main today — while at least seven user-facing English strings ship untranslated to German, Spanish and French.

The Android scan matches a literal only when it sits directly after the composable's opening paren:

ANDROID_PATTERN = re.compile(
    r"\b(?:Text|Snackbar|AlertDialog|TopAppBar)\s*\(\s*\"((?:[^\"\\]|\\.)*)\""
    r"|"
    r"\b(?:title|label|text|contentDescription|placeholder)\s*=\s*\"((?:[^\"\\]|\\.)*)\""
)

So Text("Save") is caught, but Text(if (saved) "Saved" else "Save") is not — Text( is followed by if, not ". The regex slides straight past, and the gate reports clean.

Evidence

grep -rnE "\b(Text|Snackbar|AlertDialog|TopAppBar)\s*\(\s*(if|when)\b" android/app/src/main/java/com/noop/ui/

JournalLog.kt:411          Text(if (item.kind.isNumeric) "Change to Yes/No" else "Change to Number")
SkinTempCardsScreen.kt:280 Text(if (plan == null) "Plan a trip or shift" else "View the full plan")
HrvSnapshotScreen.kt:290   Text(if (saved) "Saved" else "Save")
WorkoutsScreen.kt:1621     Text(if (editing == null) "Add Workout" else "Edit Workout")
WorkoutsScreen.kt:1667     Text(if (editing == null) "Add" else "Save")
BreatheScreen.kt:491       Text(if (running) "Stop session" else "Start session")
JournalLog.kt:300          Text(if (collapsed) "▸" else "▾")            <- glyphs, not translatable

Every one of these is a button or label a German/Spanish/French user reads in English.

The eighth was the "Keep NOOP alive overnight" row — a whole multi-sentence battery warning, hidden the same way. Fixed in #539, which is what surfaced this.

Why it matters more than the count suggests

This is a gate that reports false confidence. #514 (a release shipping an unlocalised changelog title) and #535 (auditing main pushes) both leaned on this audit as the thing that catches drift. It does — but only for literals in the one shape it can see. Anything behind a conditional is invisible, and every future Text(if …) slips the same way, silently.

For these sites, a gate that says "clean" is arguably worse than no gate: it stops anyone looking.

Possible directions

• Extend the regex to allow if/when between the paren and the literal. Cheapest, but regex-over-Kotlin stays fragile — the next shape (Text(buildString { … }), a ?:, a let) slips again.
• Scan the argument span: find literals anywhere inside a Text(...)/Button(...) call, using balanced-paren matching rather than a flat regex. Catches conditionals and most other shapes.
• Invert it: flag every string literal in ui//widget/ that passes the existing is_probably_ui_text heuristic and is not already a resource reference, with an explicit allowlist for the genuine non-UI cases (log lines, pref keys, test ids). Strictest, and it fails closed — but needs an allowlist seeded once.

The third is the only one that fails closed. The second is probably the best effort/robustness trade.

No urgency on the seven sites themselves — they are short labels. The gate is the point.