obto-deploy

OBTO Deploys and Large Files

Choose the write path FIRST

Before deploying, decide which path fits — picking wrong is the most common deploy failure. The deciding question is whether the bytes already live in OBTO (an edit) or are entering fresh (a new artifact):

1. Editing or deleting part of an existing artifact → obto_patch_artifact. Line-addressed, surgical, and it NEVER reproduces the whole file. This sidesteps byte-exactness entirely, so it is the right tool for almost all changes to existing code — including large files (a 305KB platform module change is still just a few changed lines). On a large file, use obto_grep_artifact to find the exact lines without pulling the whole file (it returns N| text blocks); for a small file fetch(id) is fine. Then patch with an anchorText guard. A deletion is just newContent: "". The chunked / base64 / from_url paths below are ONLY for bytes entering the platform fresh — never reach for them to make an edit.
2. A new artifact small enough for one call → obto_upsert_record({script}) directly.
3. A new artifact too large for one call, that you can reproduce as text → the chunked path (below). Reliable up to ~9KB per emitted chunk — see the emission ceiling.
4. A new artifact too large to reproduce as chunks at all (≈300KB+), or already reachable at an https URL → obto_stage_chunk({action:'from_url'}) (deploy-by-reference, below). The server fetches the bytes; the agent never emits them.

Reproducing a whole large file just to change a few lines is the trap. If the change is an edit, patch it.

pltf_script_server is transpiled — patch the right layer. Server scripts are authored as ESM/TypeScript and the engine compiles on save: the record's script holds the COMPILED output, ts_source holds the original source (standard platform design — see the build-loop skill's artifact rules). grep/patch address script, which is workable for small tweaks, but: (1) every save recompiles and renumbers the whole file — re-grep before the next patch and never reuse pre-save line numbers (insert mode has no anchor check and lands blind); (2) a line patch lands in the compiled text, so the change is invisible to anyone working from the source. For module-scale changes, edit the SOURCE (local mirror, or read ts_source via obto_db_query) and re-deploy the full file via from_url + expectedSha256 — the save recompiles and re-syncs both fields. (Some records/stores still hold plain source in script — there, line patches ARE source edits; check what you fetched before assuming.) Note the full-file path runs the export-shape gate: before server 3.5.26 the bare-export scan false-fires if the source merely mentions module.exports = X inside a string (3.5.26 line-anchors it).