# 🛠️ Implementation Plan: Agent-Creation Reliability Fixes (Job `c38ddfcf`)

- **Author**: `planner-reviewer-claude-01` (Planner)
- **Source**: `mam-agent-creation-fix-report.md` (untracked, root of repo) — a field report describing 4 issues observed while creating `reviewer-opencode-01` and other sessions. At the time this plan was written, **none of the 4 fixes it describes were actually present in the code** (verified directly: `.agents/skills/lib_py/agents/adapters/opencode.py`'s `ready_tokens` was still `'OpenCode|Chat'`, and none of the `lib.sh` diffs it shows existed on disk) — the report documents intended fixes, not landed ones.
- **Branch**: `fix/agent-creation-issues`
- **Status**: Plan executed in this same job — code changed, tests updated/passing, version bumped (see §5).

---

## 1. Problem 1 — OpenCode TUI ready-token mismatch

- **File**: `.agents/skills/lib_py/agents/adapters/opencode.py`
- **Root cause**: `ready_tokens` was `'OpenCode|Chat'`, which never appears in OpenCode's actual TUI (the banner renders as an ASCII block, not text matching those words). `wait_for_tui_ready()` (`.agents/skills/lib.sh:1830`) therefore ran the full 30s timeout loop before declaring readiness (or failing outright), even though the process was healthy.
- **Fix**: extend `ready_tokens` to include real, observed TUI surface text: `'OpenCode|Chat|Ask anything|tab agents|ctrl\+p|Build auto|commands'`. The `\+` escaping is required because `wait_for_tui_ready` matches this string with `grep -E` (confirmed at `lib.sh:1901`); an unescaped `+` would be interpreted as an ERE quantifier.
- **Why safe**: `OpenCodeAgentAdapter` does not override `strong_ready_tokens`/`weak_ready_tokens`, so the base class's default (`strong = ready_tokens`, `weak = ''`) still applies — the 2-tier `S ∨ (W ∧ C)` decision in `wait_for_tui_ready` degrades to plain `S`, matching every other single-tier adapter (`agy`, `hermes`, `grok`).
- **Test impact**: `tests/test_a4_adapter_contract.py::test_adapter_required_properties` hardcodes the exact `ready_tokens` string per agent — updated in lockstep. `tests/test_c1_tui_readiness.py::test_adapter_strong_weak_partition` is schema-agnostic (splits on `|` and checks set algebra) — unaffected.

## 2. Problem 2 — Missing `PYTHONPATH` in the herdr shim

- **File**: `.agents/skills/lib.sh` (the `<<'EOF'` heredoc that `_init_herdr_isolation()` writes to `$WORKSPACE_ROOT/.mam/shim/herdr`)
- **Root cause**: the shim script (once written to disk) directly calls `python3 -m lib_py.layout` (line ~682 in the heredoc) and imports `from lib_py.agents.sanitize import ...` (line ~528). These only resolve if `PYTHONPATH` includes `.agents/skills`. `lib.sh` itself exports `PYTHONPATH` when *sourced* (line 25), but the shim is a **separate executable** invoked directly via `$PATH` by herdr/other processes — it does not always inherit that export (e.g. a freshly spawned pane's shell never sourced `lib.sh`).
- **Fix**: added a self-locating `PYTHONPATH` export at the very top of the heredoc, right after `set -euo pipefail`:
  ```bash
  _SHIM_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)"
  _SKILL_DIR="$(cd "$_SHIM_DIR/../../.agents/skills" 2>/dev/null && pwd || true)"
  [ -n "$_SKILL_DIR" ] && export PYTHONPATH="$_SKILL_DIR:${PYTHONPATH:-}"
  ```
  Because the heredoc is single-quoted (`<<'EOF'`), `${BASH_SOURCE[0]}` is **not** expanded at write time — it's copied verbatim and resolves at the shim's own runtime, correctly pointing at wherever `.mam/shim/herdr` actually lives (`$WORKSPACE_ROOT/.mam/shim/../../.agents/skills` = `$WORKSPACE_ROOT/.agents/skills`).
- **Test impact**: `tests/test_herdr_shim_contract.py::test_h19_single_resolver_helper_used_by_all_branches` already asserts `bash -n` on both the generated shim and `lib.sh` — passes. No test previously asserted `PYTHONPATH` presence in the shim; none needed updating.

## 3. Problem 3 — `herdr agent start` timeout treated as unconditional failure

- **File**: `.agents/skills/lib.sh`, the `agent) start)` case arm (~line 756–end of the W5/W6 backoff loop)
- **Root cause**: on a slow TUI render, herdr can return `"timed out waiting for agent startup"`. The existing loop deliberately does **not** treat that string as success (see the pre-existing comment: *"Do NOT treat 'timed out waiting for agent startup' as success: herdr returns that for a dead process too"*) — a correct design constraint I preserved rather than overrode, because herdr genuinely returns identical text for a live-but-slow process and a dead one.
- **Fix**: rather than trusting the ambiguous *text*, added a post-loop branch that re-queries herdr directly for ground truth:
  1. If `_herdr_agent_get_scoped "$agent_name"` now resolves a pane_id (i.e. herdr's own registry shows the agent alive), treat as success.
  2. Otherwise, fall back to injecting the launch command directly into the pane (`pane send-text` + `pane send-keys ... Enter`, mirroring the existing `paste-buffer` pattern at `lib.sh:1040`), wait 1s, and re-check liveness once more.
  3. Only if still unresolved does the existing `exit 1` failure path trigger.
- **Why this doesn't reintroduce the bug the comment warns about**: the original concern was blindly promoting the *timeout string* to success. This fix never inspects the string as a truth signal for liveness — it always asks herdr's live registry, which is authoritative for both the dead-process and slow-render cases.
- **Test impact**: `tests/test_b19_headless_reconcile_fixes.py::test_agent_start_success_tokens_exclude_startup_timeout` (D-1) asserts the *original* success-token grep line still excludes the timeout string — untouched, still passes, since the new logic is a separate branch appended after the loop, not a change to that line.

## 4. Problem 4 — `_resolve_herdr_pane_id` lacks a pane_id fast-path and mismatches on workspace label

- **File**: `.agents/skills/lib.sh`, `_resolve_herdr_pane_id()` (inside the shim heredoc)
- **Root cause (fast-path)**: every call went through `agent get` + `pane list` resolution even when the caller already had a real pane_id (`wN:pM`) in hand — wasted round-trips, and a pointless second point of failure.
- **Root cause (label matching)**: the pane-list-based workspace filter compared `target_ws` directly against each pane's `workspace_id`. If a caller passed a workspace **label** (e.g. `$MAM_WS_LABEL`, such as `"mam-agents"`) instead of the raw id, the filter always failed to match, since panes never carry a label field — only `herdr workspace list` returns `{workspace_id, label}` pairs (confirmed against `tests/conftest.py`'s mock herdr, which is the closest ground truth available for herdr's real JSON schema in this repo).
- **Fix**:
  1. Added a fast-path at the top of the function: if `$target` already matches `^w[A-Za-z0-9]+:p[A-Za-z0-9]+$`, return it immediately.
  2. Added a `target_ws` normalization step: call `herdr workspace list`, and if `target_ws` isn't already a live `workspace_id`, look it up as a workspace `label` and substitute the resolved id. Falls back permissively to the original value on any lookup failure or no-match (preserves all prior behavior when `target_ws` is already a raw id, which is the common case).
- **Why the fallback is safe under `set -e`**: mirrors the exact pattern already used by `_herdr_agent_get_scoped` a few lines above it — the inner Python explicitly `sys.exit(1)` (printing nothing) on any non-match/exception, and the **outer** `|| echo "$target_ws"` supplies the single fallback line. (An earlier draft of this fix had the Python script itself print-then-succeed in the fallback case, which double-emitted the value once `pipefail` propagated the upstream `_real_herdr` failure — corrected before landing, verified via `test_resolve_pane_id_fails_cleanly_under_set_e`.)
- **Test impact**: `tests/test_b19_headless_reconcile_fixes.py::test_no_substring_matching_remains_in_lib_sh` (D-6) asserts the pane_id regex literal exists inside the function body — still true (now appears twice: once in the new fast-path, once in the pre-existing final validation). `tests/test_b19_headless_reconcile_fixes.py::test_resolve_pane_id_fails_cleanly_under_set_e` (D-4) and `tests/test_herdr_shim_contract.py::test_h20_pane_id_regex_accepts_alphanumeric_workspace` (H-20) both exercise this function with an all-failing mocked `_real_herdr` — both still pass, confirming the new lookup degrades gracefully rather than aborting the shim under `set -euo pipefail`.

## 5. Verification & Versioning

- Targeted tests (`test_a4_adapter_contract.py`, `test_c1_tui_readiness.py`, `test_b19_headless_reconcile_fixes.py`, `test_herdr_shim_contract.py`, `test_version_consistency.py`): **78 passed**.
- Full suite (`pytest tests/ -q`): run and confirmed green before the version bump landed (see job report for the exact count/duration).
- **SemVer classification**: PATCH (`v4.1.0` → `v4.1.1`). None of the 4 fixes add or change any public CLI flag, YAML schema key, or agent-facing contract — they are internal reliability/robustness fixes to code already shipped in `v4.1.0` (TUI-detection tuning, shim environment robustness, a startup-race fallback, and a pane-resolution robustness improvement). This matches the `v3.0.1` precedent (*"Herdr Shim Routing Contract Refactor, Multi-Workspace Isolation"*) — the closest prior release of the same shape.
- 3-way lockstep bump applied: `lib.sh:MAM_VERSION`, `VERSIONS.md` (header + line-24 prose + 8-row matrix + new changelog section), 8× `SKILL.md` frontmatters.
