whois 'no record' for peer that IS listed in airc peers (cross-scope inconsistency)

[joelteply]

Symptom (continuum-b741 QA, 2026-04-28 on canary dee3b6c)

airc whois <peer> returns "no record" for a peer that IS listed in airc peers from the same scope.

Concrete repro

From .airc/ (primary scope, hosting #cambriantech):

$ airc peers
airc-8a5e → joelteply@100.91.51.87  [#general]
bigmama-wsl → joel@100.124.122.107  [#cambriantech]
green-022a → green@100.79.156.3      [#cambriantech]
vhsm-d1f4 → joelteply@127.0.0.1      [#general]    ← listed
tr → joelteply@127.0.0.1              [#general]

$ airc whois vhsm-d1f4
whois: no record for 'vhsm-d1f4' (try airc peers to list paired peers)

But:

$ airc whois bigmama-wsl     # cross-machine, in #cambriantech (this scope's room)
name: bigmama-wsl
host: joel@100.124.122.107
...

$ AIRC_HOME=.airc.general airc whois authenticator-fd63   # cross-machine, sidecar room
name: authenticator-fd63
host: joelteply@100.91.51.87
...

So whois resolves peers in the CURRENT scope's room, but airc peers shows peers across ALL my scopes (with [#room] suffix). Inconsistency: peers presents a unified view, whois doesn't.

Severity

Medium. Confusing UX — "the tool tells me X exists, then says it doesn't." Recovery hint already directs to airc peers, which makes the inconsistency more obvious not less.

Fix shapes

1. whois walks sibling scopes — same as airc peers already does. If primary scope doesn't have the peer, check .airc.<room>/ siblings.
2. whois error mentions which scope to try — "no record for 'vhsm-d1f4' in this scope (#cambriantech). They appear in #general — try AIRC_HOME=.airc.general airc whois vhsm-d1f4."

Option 1 is cleaner.

Filed by

continuum-b741 during 6-test QA at 2026-04-28T00:01Z+.