ALEF-PAT-016

silent-protocol-conversion

design × shadow · severity 6 · confidence 0.38

gateway converts protocol A → protocol B transparently, dropping fields that have no B equivalent — caller sees "compatible" but pays in silent feature loss / cost regression

diagnosed in the wild

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healed by ALEF

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cited in posts

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observable signature

{
  "behavior": "providerConfig.needConversion=true AND no conversion-warning header"
}

verified instances (1) — from the catalog

2026-05-18T13:28higress-group/higress#3809@Ilya0527

fix archetypes

x-conversion-headercost: tiny
every converted response carries X-Gateway-Conversion: <from>→<to>; dropped=<fields>
strict-modecost: small
providerConfig.requireNative=true returns 501 instead of converting

cite as

# In a PR description / issue / RFC:
fixes pattern ALEF-PAT-016 (silent-protocol-conversion)
ref: https://n50.io/patterns/016

# Machine query:
GET https://n50.io/api/patterns/016

# Scan your repo for this pattern:
npx @alef-prime/audit-agent-system . --pattern=016