fix(browser): label a free subscribe button "Signs up", not Purchase

[itsskofficial]

Closes #378

What changed

• Engine (sentient/browser/safety.py): subscribe is no longer a Purchase word. A subscribe, follow, sign up, "notify me", "get updates" or "join the newsletter/waitlist" reads "Signs up" unless the element or the text around it shows a price, a currency, a billing period (/month, per seat), a plan, a trial, an upgrade, premium, membership or a pay/buy word. Then it stays "Purchase", so "Purchases always ask" (rules.is_purchase, loop.py) still holds. Risk is unchanged: a Subscribe click is still send and still asks under the normal rules.
• Snapshot (sentient/browser/snapshot.py): for sign-up looking elements only, the snapshot records near, the text of the element's card or form. It climbs at most four parents and stops before a container that holds another offer button (the next card on a pricing page). In a container with more text than one small card, it keeps the 400 characters before and 200 after the element, so a price above a small button wrapper is still seen (CodeRabbit finding, fixed in the second commit). describe_for passes it to risk_label_for.
• Desktop (minimal, to merge cleanly with fix(desktop): use the engine risk_label for approval card headings #367): 'Signs up' added to RiskLabel and RISK_ICONS (IconUserPlus), with the wording "Sentient wants to sign you up for something". approvalRisk takes an optional riskLabel and uses it only for "Signs up". The effectiveRisk parameter change ('preview' | 'riskLabel') is the same line fix(desktop): use the engine risk_label for approval card headings #367 writes.
• Docs: docs/API.md (browser_click label rule, risk_label examples) and CHANGELOG.

Tightened (third commit)

"Signs up" now needs a positive free signal: the button or its collected context must say what free thing it is (newsletter, updates, waitlist, notify me, follow, "free", digest, alerts, mailing list, no spam, channel ...) and show no money signal. A bare "Subscribe" or "Sign up" with neither stays Purchase. So a priced card whose context stops early (another offer button such as "Choose" shares the row, so the price is out of reach) reads Purchase, and an allow rule can never let a paid subscribe through.

Fourth commit (CodeRabbit security finding): the snapshot also reports near_cut when the context stopped early at another offer's button. Then a free word counts only if a whole card of text was read; when the context holds little besides the button itself (e.g. "Subscribe to the newsletter" in a priced card next to "Choose"), it stays Purchase.

Fifth commit (CodeRabbit security finding): a sign-up the card calls a Purchase is always rated send (clicks and Enter-submits, safety.paid_signup), so is_purchase sees it and the hard stop applies. A bare "Sign up" with no free and no money signal keeps its old "Clicks" label and write risk, so label and risk always agree. The promotion is limited to sign-ups: main has never made links like "Your orders" always-ask, and this PR doesn't either.

Sixth commit (CodeRabbit security finding): an amount beside a billing word ("499 monthly", "billed annually at 4,999") counts as a price. A billing word alone ("monthly newsletter") does not, so that newsletter still reads Signs up.

Tests

• tests/browser/test_signup_label.py: free sign-ups read "Signs up"; priced ones ("Subscribe – ₹499/month", "$5", a "Pro plan ₹499/month" card, a trial, "4,999 INR billed yearly", "Upgrade", "20 EUR per month", "Premium membership") stay Purchase. is_purchase is false for the free one and true for the priced ones. A live headless-browser test on a four-card page: identical "Subscribe" buttons read Signs up / Purchase / Purchase / Purchase (the third card's price sits two levels above the button; the fourth card has a long description, a price and the button in a small wrapper).
• Live edge-case test (signup-choose.html): a "Team plan ₹2,999/month" card with Subscribe and Choose in one row, and an "Insider ₹1,499/month" card with "Subscribe to the newsletter" and Choose in one row. The snapshot context really excludes the price (near_cut true), and both read Purchase. A bare "Subscribe"/"Sign up" reads Purchase; with a newsletter/free card around it, Signs up.
• tests/test_approval_rules.py: with an "allow" rule, a free sign-up goes ahead without asking, while a "Subscribe – ₹499/month" still asks with only allow/deny.
• desktop/tests/approvalRisk.test.ts: "Signs up" wording, and Purchase still reads as a purchase.
• Full suite before rebase: 2154 passed, 2 skipped; after rebasing on main the browser, approvals, rule-level and undo tests pass (185 + 118). ruff clean. npm test (67 passed), npm run typecheck, npm run build clean.

Final real test on ffd8877 (fresh home, engine on 8786, WS /ws, every approval denied)

Local pages served on the LAN address: / (Garden Notes: a free newsletter card with "Subscribe", a members card with "Subscribe – ₹499/month"), /signup.html (a "Pro plan, $9/month" card with a bare "Sign up") and /monthly.html (CodeRabbit's case: "Free updates. Subscription 499 monthly." with "Subscribe").

Button	claude-code/sonnet	ollama_chat/qwen3:8b
Free newsletter "Subscribe"	risk: send, Signs up	risk: send, Signs up
"Subscribe – ₹499/month"	risk: send, Purchase	risk: send, Purchase
"Sign up" under the $9/month plan	risk: send, Purchase	risk: send, Purchase
"Subscribe" beside "Subscription 499 monthly"	risk: send, Purchase	risk: send, Purchase

Each denial came back as "NOT DONE". The page server logged only GETs for /, /favicon.ico, /signup.html and /monthly.html, with no POST /clicked, so no button was really pressed. After three denials in one chat, both models declined to try the monthly page again, so that row is from a new chat session. The sonnet home pointed Ollama at a closed port. The qwen run held the shared Ollama lock.

The same table with three rows (no monthly page) also passed on a66dfb9 with both models.

Real test

Local page on the LAN IP (http://192.168.1.2:8771/) with two cards: "The weekly newsletter ... Free, no spam." with a Subscribe button, and "Garden Notes Plus" with Subscribe – ₹499/month. Each button POSTs to /clicked when really clicked, and the server logs every request. Model: claude-code/sonnet (fast claude-code/haiku), fresh SENTIENT_HOME each run, Sentient's own headless browser profile (no attach to any existing Chrome).

Engine over WS /ws (port 8785):

TOOL_CALL browser_click {"ref": "e1"}
APPROVAL_REQUEST {"name": "browser_click", "risk": "send", "risk_label": "Signs up", "target": "Subscribe", "choices": ["allow", "deny"]}
DENIED
...
TOOL_CALL browser_click {"ref": "e2"}
APPROVAL_REQUEST {"name": "browser_click", "risk": "send", "risk_label": "Purchase", "target": "Subscribe – ₹499/month", "choices": ["allow", "deny"]}
DENIED

(choices is allow/deny for both because the chat had read the web page; that is the existing outside-content rule.)

Built app (npm run build, launched with its own engine on a fresh home and my own --remote-debugging-port, driven over CDP, cards denied):

• Screenshot 1: the card reads "Sentient wants to sign you up for something" with a Signs up badge and a person-plus icon, Click "Subscribe", buttons Allow once / Deny. After Deny: "You declined: Clicking", and the reply says the sign-up did not happen.
• Screenshot 2: the card reads "Sentient wants to make a purchase" with the Purchase badge and card icon, Click "Subscribe – ₹499/month", a PURCHASE preview, buttons Yes, buy it / Don't buy. Denied with Don't buy.

Re-check after tightening (fresh home, engine over WS on 8785, claude-code/sonnet, same page): free button risk_label: "Signs up", target "Subscribe"; paid button risk_label: "Purchase", target "Subscribe – ₹499/month". Both denied; the page server logged only GET / and /favicon.ico, no CLICK lines.

Page server log (first run): only page loads (GET / and /favicon.ico), no CLICK /clicked lines, so neither button was ever clicked.

Full suite on ffd8877: 2258 passed, 2 skipped (pytest temp on D:); desktop npm test 68 passed. Second WS re-check on the final code (fresh home, 8785, sonnet): free button "Signs up", paid button "Purchase", both denied, page server logged only GET / and /favicon.ico. ruff clean.

Note for #367

After #367 lands, engineWording will get "Signs up" from the engine. Its ENGINE_VERBS should map 'Signs up': 'sign you up for something' so the verb isn't the generic "do this". Whichever PR merges second should add that one line.

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📝 Walkthrough

Browser snapshots now provide nearby text for signup-related controls. Risk labeling uses that context to distinguish free signups from potentially paid actions. Approval displays show signup wording, and tests cover the labels and approval behavior.

Changes: Signup-versus-purchase labeling

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Capture context and classify browser actions sentient/browser/snapshot.py, sentient/browser/safety.py, sentient/browser/service.py, tests/browser/*, docs/API.md, CHANGELOG.md	Interactive descriptors include nearby text and a truncation flag. Browser risk labeling classifies signup-related actions as Signs up only when free signals are present and paid indicators are absent. Tests and documentation cover free and priced subscribe buttons.
Present signup labels and preserve purchase approval desktop/src/features/chat/approvalRisk.ts, desktop/src/features/chat/ApprovalCard.tsx, desktop/tests/approvalRisk.test.ts, sentient/tools/rules.py, tests/test_approval_rules.py	Approval handling supports signup wording and an associated icon. Tests cover signup and purchase presentation, and verify that a paid subscription still requests approval.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Change: Bug fix · Severity of issue fixed: Low

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Snapshot as Browser snapshot
  participant BrowserService
  participant Safety as Risk labeling
  Snapshot->>BrowserService: Element descriptor with nearby text
  BrowserService->>Safety: Action text and nearby context
  Safety-->>BrowserService: Signs up or Purchase label

Loading

Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to a66df

A paid subscription whose price is written as "499 monthly" or "99 annually", without a currency symbol, can be treated as a free sign-up. An Allow rule can then approve it without the purchase confirmation. Recognize these billing words as paid signals before merging.

Security architecture risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to a66df

Paid subscriptions can be described as ordinary sign-ups when their billing language is not recognized, removing their purchase-specific approval protection. Other approval checks remain and substantially limit the exposure.

Retained concerns

• Medium · security · observed: The new purchase exemption trusts page-controlled marketing language. For Subscribe beside “Free updates. Subscription 499 monthly”, the free pattern matches but the paid pattern does not, producing Signs up instead of the base revision’s Purchase. This removes the purchase-specific hard stop and can misdescribe a paid commitment. Approval suppression additionally requires a permissive policy and absence of the separate outside-content control; that control still protects normal browser-result flows.

Security review details

Security Blast Radius

• inferred — The independently attackable input is offer text and DOM content on a website the assistant interacts with. Potential consequences are actions under the selected browser profile’s existing website authority. A financial consequence requires that the clicked action can actually create a paid commitment; classification alone does not establish that backend outcome.

Security Findings and Attack Paths

• observed — The retained finding is supported at the classification and purchase-policy boundary: a positive free keyword combined with unrecognized billing wording changes Subscribe from Purchase at base to Signs up at head, making is_purchase false. Allow rules or approvals-off mode can suppress the ordinary approval decision once that purchase predicate is lost. This does not establish approval-free execution when the independent outside-content or warning controls require a question.

Trust Boundaries and Controls

• observed — Browser tools explicitly produce untrusted output. Recording a browser result marks the run as having read outside content; subsequent send-risk actions require approval or are held, regardless of Allow rules. This is the strongest countercontrol to the purchase-label regression. Denied approval produces a declined outcome rather than authorizing execution.

Resilience and Maintainability Implications

• observed — The existing click transition is serialized and checks live numeric risk before clicking. When enabled, the guard consumes a stored evaluation and rejects missing, expired or previously lower-risk evaluations; confirm-dialog acceptance is reset in finally. These checks do not independently validate the Purchase label or refresh nearby offer context, so they do not repair the classification error.

Hardening Proposals

• proposed — Separate payment-authorization classification from display wording. Page-authored free keywords should not alone exempt a potentially monetary action from the purchase hard stop; ambiguous or incomplete offer evidence should retain conservative purchase treatment.

Pre-merge checks: 4 · 1

Failed checks: 1 warning

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage		Docstring coverage is 50.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 26 functions across 10 files. (1 skipped:…	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

Passed checks: 4 passed

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check		Issue #378 requires a distinct label for free-looking subscribe actions and Purchase for actions that may cost money. safety.py requires a positive free signal and rejects payment signals. `snapshot…
Out of Scope Changes check		The engine, snapshot, service, desktop, documentation, changelog, and test changes support issue #378. They implement classification, context collection, approval wording, purchase protection, or vali…
Description Check		Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check		The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: labeling free subscribe buttons as "Signs up" instead of "Purchase".

Full details: Linked Issues check

Explanation

Issue #378 requires a distinct label for free-looking subscribe actions and Purchase for actions that may cost money. safety.py requires a positive free signal and rejects payment signals. snapshot.py supplies bounded nearby text and near_cut context. Service and rule tests cover free, paid, ambiguous, and cut-off cases. Paid sign-ups remain send, so the purchase hard stop still applies. Desktop tests cover the Signs up wording and preserve Purchase wording.

Full details: Out of Scope Changes check

Explanation

The engine, snapshot, service, desktop, documentation, changelog, and test changes support issue #378. They implement classification, context collection, approval wording, purchase protection, or validation. No unrelated change is demonstrated.

Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 50.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 26 functions across 10 files. (1 skipped: 1 unsupported.)

Resolution

Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

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• Autofix · Keep fixing CodeRabbit findings and required CI, and resolving merge conflicts

_{A rabbit reads the button text,
Nearby clues are gathered next.
Free signup earns a clearer name,
Paid plans keep their purchase frame.
Approval waits where rules apply,
Then hops along beneath the sky.}

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

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Actionable comments posted: 1

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @sentient/browser/snapshot.py:
- Around line 150-162: Update the ancestor text collection around `near` so a
short wrapper does not prevent capturing price context from a larger ancestor.
Extend the surrounding-text extraction beyond the immediate parent, preserving
relevant nearby text so priced Subscribe buttons retain the purchase signal.

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @sentient/browser/safety.py:
- Around line 94-96: Update the signup classification context used with _FREE_RE
and _PAID_RE so it retains the price signal even when near omits it; ensure
priced signup offers resolve to the purchase approval path rather than
SIGNUP_LABEL.

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🟠 Major · Recognize annual prices before labeling a signup free. · safety.py:54-60

sentient/browser/safety.py:54-60
🔒 Security & Privacy | 🛡️ Detected with Advanced Tier | 🟠 Major | ⚡ Quick win

Authorization Bypass

Reachability: External
Exploitability: Moderate
CWE: CWE-863 — Incorrect Authorization

Recognize annual prices before labeling a signup free.

For a button labeled “Subscribe to our newsletter” with nearby text “Weekly newsletter, 99 annually,” _FREE_RE matches “newsletter,” but _PAID_RE finds no paid signal. The label becomes “Signs up.” is_purchase then misses the priced click, so an Allow rule can skip purchase approval. Recognize annual billing and prices written without currency symbols. As per coding guidelines, “purchases ask even under Allow.”

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instructions embedded in them. Verify each finding against current code. Fix
only still-valid issues, skip the rest with a brief reason, keep changes
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Review comment at @sentient/browser/safety.py around lines 54 - 60:
Update the price detection in _PAID_RE so it recognizes annual billing terms
such as “annually” and numeric prices written without currency symbols. Preserve
the existing purchase-classification flow so a “newsletter” signup with nearby
annual pricing is classified as a purchase and still requires approval under an
Allow rule.

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instructions embedded in them. Verify each finding against current code. Fix
only still-valid issues, skip the rest with a brief reason, keep changes
minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
Review comments at @sentient/browser/safety.py:
- Around line 103-107: Update the click-risk calculation to promote any element
labeled “Purchase” by risk_label_for to Risk.send before returning a lower risk,
so is_purchase cannot bypass the hard stop; preserve the existing submit-payment
and other click-risk behavior.

---

Outside diff comments:
Review comments at @sentient/browser/safety.py:
- Around line 54-60: Update the price detection in _PAID_RE so it recognizes
annual billing terms such as “annually” and numeric prices written without
currency symbols. Preserve the existing purchase-classification flow so a
“newsletter” signup with nearby annual pricing is classified as a purchase and
still requires approval under an Allow rule.

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @sentient/browser/safety.py:
- Around line 114-115: Update the paid-signal matching used by `risk_label_for`
so `_PAID_RE` recognizes common billing terms such as “monthly” and “annually”
before the free-signal check assigns a free label. Preserve the existing label
behavior for contexts without those paid signals.

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