apm compile --target claude silently skips dependency instructions without --local-only

[chkp-roniz]

Summary

apm compile --target claude silently produces no CLAUDE.md when compiling dependency instructions. The distributed optimizer reports Instruction Processing: 0.0ms and exits successfully without generating any output file. Adding --local-only fixes it.

Reproduction

mkdir test && cd test
apm init
apm install chkp-roniz/cc-rubber-duck --target claude
apm compile --target claude --verbose

Expected: CLAUDE.md is generated with the package's instruction content.

Actual: Compilation reports success but processes 0 instructions and writes no file:

[*] Starting context compilation...
[i] Compiling for CLAUDE.md (Claude Code) - explicit --target flag
Verbose mode: showing source attribution and optimizer analysis
  Project Analysis: 0.2ms
  Instruction Processing: 0.0ms
[+] Compilation completed successfully!

Workaround

apm compile --target claude --local-only

This correctly finds the instruction in apm_modules/chkp-roniz/cc-rubber-duck/instructions/rubber-duck.instructions.md, runs the full optimizer, and generates CLAUDE.md:

Instruction Processing: 1.0ms
...
Generated 1 CLAUDE.md file
+- Context efficiency:    100.0%

Details

• --validate correctly finds the instruction (1 instructions), so the primitive is discoverable
• The copilot and all targets exhibit the same 0-instruction behavior (without --local-only)
• The package instruction has applyTo: "**/*" frontmatter
• apm_modules/ is in the default exclusion list — the distributed optimizer may be applying this exclusion to dependency instruction scanning, while --local-only bypasses it

Environment

• APM version: 0.8.11
• Package: chkp-roniz/cc-rubber-duck@35f9b83b
• Package type: marketplace_plugin / apm_package (varies by install flags)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) noreply@anthropic.com