rtk go test -v ignores the explicit -v flag and drops all passing-test output, breaking grep-based gates

rtk go test -v ignores the explicit -v flag and drops all passing-test output, breaking grep-based gates

Version: rtk 0.49.0
Platform: Linux x86_64 (musl build, installed via install.sh), Go 1.26.4

Summary

-v on go test is an explicit request for per-test output. rtk go test -v still collapses passing tests to a count, so any line a passing test logged is absent from stdout.

Failure bodies are preserved (good — this appears to have improved in recent versions), but passing-test output is gone. That silently breaks the common agent/CI pattern of gating a follow-up step on a marker grep.

Reproduction

T=$(mktemp -d); cd "$T"
cat > go.mod <<'EOF'
module rtkprobe

go 1.26
EOF
cat > m_test.go <<'EOF'
package m

import "testing"

func TestPasses(t *testing.T) { t.Log("PASS_MARKER_A") }
func TestFails(t *testing.T) {
	t.Log("PROBE_MARKER_UNIQUE")
	t.Errorf("ASSERT_BODY: expected %d got %d", 42, 7)
}
EOF

for m in PROBE_MARKER_UNIQUE ASSERT_BODY PASS_MARKER_A; do
  printf '%-22s raw=%s rtk=%s\n' "$m" \
    "$(go test -v ./... 2>&1 | grep -c "$m")" \
    "$(rtk go test -v ./... 2>&1 | grep -c "$m")"
done

Actual

PROBE_MARKER_UNIQUE    raw=1 rtk=1
ASSERT_BODY            raw=1 rtk=1
PASS_MARKER_A          raw=1 rtk=0     <-- lost

rtk go test -v output:

Go test: 1 passed, 1 failed in 1 packages

rtkprobe (1 passed, 1 failed)
  [FAIL] TestFails
     m_test.go:7: PROBE_MARKER_UNIQUE
     m_test.go:8: ASSERT_BODY: expected 42 got 7
[full output: rtk recall 2aa88fa8b4f0]

Expected

With -v explicitly passed, per-test output passes through (or at least passing tests' t.Log lines are retained). The docs state filters are flag-aware and back off when the user requests verbosity; that back-off does not happen here.

Why this is a correctness problem, not a preference

A very common agent pattern is to gate the next action on a marker in test output:

rtk go test -v ./... | grep -q READY_MARKER && ./deploy.sh

Under rtk the grep finds nothing even though the raw output contained the marker, so the gate silently takes the wrong branch. In local session history this exact class of failure was recorded verbatim by an agent: "The grep check returned 0 because rtk reformats test output, which broke the && chain and prevented the commit."

Note also that rtk recall cannot recover this case when the suite passes, because the recall store only retains failures (exit != 0) — so on a green run the dropped output is unrecoverable.

Same class as #1499 (rtk git branch -vv has no -vv awareness), but for go test.

Suggested fix

In the go test filter, detect -v / -test.v / -json and pass output through unfiltered (or retain per-test log lines for passing tests). More generally, treating an explicit verbosity flag as an opt-out of compression would fix this whole family.

Discovery context

Found while auditing ~14,700 real RTK_DISABLED=1 bypasses in local agent session history: every go test -v -count=1 -run ... invocation in that corpus carried a manual bypass, which is consistent with the back-off never firing.

Start with the go test filter entry point and reproduce the issue using the temporary module's m_test.go and the shown go test -v ./... commands. Verify that passing-test output, including PASS_MARKER_A, is retained for -v, -test.v, or -json, and add regression coverage for the expected behavior.