Reject or warn on a start date older than the reachable rate history #5

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opened 2026-08-31 21:22:12 +00:00 by padreug · 0 comments

padreug commented

2026-08-31 21:22:12 +00:00

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Problem

A contract with backfill on, payday pricing, and a start date beyond what the rate providers can answer is a guaranteed failure, and nothing catches it until ~25 minutes later.

Measured reach (rates.py, verified against both live APIs):

payday age	major pair (EUR, GBP, USD…)	currency Kraken doesn't quote
under 1 year	Kraken	CoinGecko
1–2 years	Kraken	unavailable
over 2 years	unavailable	unavailable

CoinGecko's free tier returns 401 Unauthorized past 365 days; Kraken's OHLC series is ~721 daily candles.

So a contract starting three years ago fails period 0 on every tick, writes five failed ledger rows, and auto-pauses. That is correct behaviour — it refuses rather than guessing — but the operator only finds out after five ticks, and the fix (switch to manual or current) was knowable at creation time.

Proposal

Validate in _validate_terms, where the currency is already checked:

if pricing_mode == payday, backfill is on, and start_date is outside the reachable window for that currency → reject with a message naming the window, or warn in the dialog and let the operator proceed
ideally surface the window in the contract dialog itself, next to the date picker

rates.py already knows the answer — _kraken_series returns the parsed series, whose min()/max() bound it exactly, and it is cached, so the check is nearly free.

Note

The window is a property of the providers, not of payroll, so it moves. Better to probe than to hard-code "2 years".

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_018jy52j9GRZ6XKa1Zt21LLj

## Problem A contract with `backfill` on, `payday` pricing, and a start date beyond what the rate providers can answer is a **guaranteed failure**, and nothing catches it until ~25 minutes later. Measured reach (`rates.py`, verified against both live APIs): | payday age | major pair (EUR, GBP, USD…) | currency Kraken doesn't quote | |---|---|---| | under 1 year | Kraken | CoinGecko | | 1–2 years | Kraken | **unavailable** | | over 2 years | **unavailable** | **unavailable** | CoinGecko's free tier returns `401 Unauthorized` past 365 days; Kraken's OHLC series is ~721 daily candles. So a contract starting three years ago fails period 0 on every tick, writes five failed ledger rows, and auto-pauses. That is correct behaviour — it refuses rather than guessing — but the operator only finds out after five ticks, and the fix (switch to `manual` or `current`) was knowable at creation time. ## Proposal Validate in `_validate_terms`, where the currency is already checked: - if `pricing_mode == payday`, `backfill` is on, and `start_date` is outside the reachable window for that currency → **reject** with a message naming the window, or **warn** in the dialog and let the operator proceed - ideally surface the window in the contract dialog itself, next to the date picker `rates.py` already knows the answer — `_kraken_series` returns the parsed series, whose `min()`/`max()` bound it exactly, and it is cached, so the check is nearly free. ## Note The window is a property of the *providers*, not of payroll, so it moves. Better to probe than to hard-code "2 years". 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) https://claude.ai/code/session_018jy52j9GRZ6XKa1Zt21LLj

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Reference

aiolabs/payroll#5

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