[kevinatlee]

Summary

Hardcover author-work queries now select language through the default ebook and audio edition relations, allowing the existing hcBook/toBook() path to populate Book.Language. This prevents strict unknown-language profiles from rejecting matching Hardcover works while continuing to reject known non-allowed languages.

Closes #2241.

Why minimal

• Reuses the default-edition language fields and conversion logic already used by Hardcover list/shelf queries.
• Adds no database schema or model changes.
• Adds no per-book request or API fan-out.
• Does not change reconciliation or deletion behavior.

Checklist

• Commits signed off with git commit -s
• Tests added or updated
• Doc-update gate cleared; this restores existing profile semantics without adding configuration or an API surface
• Added a changelog fragment under changelog.d/

Test plan

• go test -race ./internal/metadata/hardcover -count=1
• go test ./internal/metadata/... -count=1
• go build ./...
• go vet ./...
• golangci-lint run --timeout=5m (v2.11.4; 0 issues)

A repository-wide race run was also attempted locally. The changed Hardcover package passed, but the overall command did not complete cleanly on macOS: internal/api reached its 30-minute timeout and an existing downloader test hit the /var → /private/var temporary-directory symlink safety guard. Neither failure exercised this diff; the focused race test and all metadata tests pass.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.

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[kevinatlee]

Follow-up from real-world testing after #2246: the original blank-language fix was necessary, but we found that Hardcover's default edition can itself be a translation, so using that edition's language as authoritative work-level language can produce false non-English classifications.

Penelope Douglas reproduced this strongly: 49/78 author works were rejected by an English-only profile, including Corrupt (por), Hideaway (por), Kill Switch (por), Bully (Spanish), and Nightfall (Spanish). An existing English Audible Corrupt row was consequently offered by catalogue reconciliation as a language-rejected stale row.

No files were deleted; #2247's preview/safeguards exposed the bad evidence before apply.

I've documented the reproduction in #2753 and submitted #2754 to resolve language from safer edition evidence while preserving the strict-profile behavior #2246 originally fixed.