Every persisted 8.0 store logged "📁 New installation: using depth 1 sharding"
on every open — even brains holding thousands of entities — which is alarming to
read during a restart or incident. 8.0 stores nouns in the canonical
`entities/nouns/<shard>/<id>/vectors.json` layout (the path `saveNoun`/`getNouns`
use), but the legacy sharding probe `detectExistingShardingDepth()` inspects
`entities/nouns/hnsw` — a 7.x directory the 8.0 write path never populates (its
only writer, `saveNode`, is dead code with zero callers). So the probe returned
null for every 8.0 store and concluded "new".
Drive the new-vs-existing log from the layout the database actually reads and
writes: a new `hasCanonicalEntities()` checks for a real 2-hex shard directory
under `entities/nouns/`, and the known noun count short-circuits it. An
established store now logs "Using depth 1 sharding (N entities)"; only a genuinely
empty store reports a new installation. Behavior is otherwise unchanged — the
probe only ever set a log line, never triggered a rebuild or migration.
David Snelling
308691603f