Quality of life comprehensive improvements for RFC-aligned catalog integration with version comparison and enhanced verbose output.

Changes

Core Feature: Automatic Extension Updates

• Automatic extension updates: Implement download → remove → install flow with confirmation
• Atomic backup/restore: Full rollback on failed updates including:
  • Extension directory backup/restore
  • Command files for all AI agents backup/restore
  • Hooks in extensions.yml backup/restore
  • Registry metadata backup/restore
• Config preservation: User config files preserved during updates (via keep_config=True)
• Extension ID verification: Verify downloaded ZIP contains expected extension ID (security) - now validates BEFORE installing
• Better error handling: Catch all exceptions except KeyboardInterrupt in update loop
• Enabled state preservation: Disabled extensions stay disabled after update

Name Resolution & UX Improvements

• Display name support: All extension commands (enable/disable/update/remove/info) accept display names in addition to IDs
• Ambiguous name handling: When multiple installed extensions share a display name, shows a table of matches and asks user to specify by ID
• Catalog display name lookup: extension info resolves display names from catalog for uninstalled extensions
• Resolved names in messages: Status messages use resolved display names for consistency

Error Handling & Fallbacks

• Catalog error fallback: extension info falls back to local installed info when catalog is unavailable
• Catalog unavailable vs not found: Clear distinction between "catalog unavailable" (network error) and "not found in catalog"
• Registry integrity: Preserve installed_at timestamp on rollback and enable/disable (using direct registry manipulation)

Functional Testing Results ✅

All extension operations were tested end-to-end in an isolated temporary environment:

Test Environment

• Temporary git repository with specify init
• Local extension (spec-kit-jira) installed via --dev flag
• Custom catalog config with install_allowed: true for update testing
• Verified installed_at timestamp preserved across enable/disable cycles
• Verified backup directory cleanup after successful update

Test Coverage

• All 163 tests pass (5 new tests for ExtensionRegistry.update()/restore())

Reviewer Feedback Addressed ✅

• Ambiguous name handling in enable/disable/update
• Catalog error fallback for installed extensions
• UX message clarity (catalog unavailable vs not found)
• Resolved ID in status messages
• enable/disable preserves installed_at
• Registry rollback preserves installed_at
• Rollback completeness (command files, hooks, extensions.yml)
• Non-ExtensionError handling in update loop
• Always backup registry (even without directory)
• Extension ID mismatch detection (security)
• Catalog display name lookup for uninstalled extensions
• Safe author access in extension_info fallback
• Unused parameter cleanup (_print_extension_info)
• Clean up wrongly installed extension on ID mismatch
• Preserve backup on failed rollback for manual recovery
• Use restore() method for rollback (not update())
• Cache invalidation when SPECKIT_CATALOG_URL changes
• Hook rollback handles empty backup_hooks (falsy dict issue)
• extension_info uses resolved ID for catalog lookup
• Rollback removes new extension dir even if no backup existed
• Validate extension ID from ZIP BEFORE installing (not after)
• Preserve enabled state during updates
• Optimize _resolve_catalog_extension with query parameter
• update() merges metadata instead of replacing (preserves fields)
• Add tests for ExtensionRegistry.update() and restore()

Authored with GitHub Copilot and Claude