watcher wraps one `herdr agent wait` barrier and observes only; it never
concludes. The live contract is encoded rather than described: the timeout
parameter is named timeout_ms because herdr counts milliseconds, --until is
always passed explicitly since omitting it silently drops `working`, and a
non-zero exit is read from stderr because stdout is empty by contract.
A timeout counts as healthy. The socket answered and the state simply did not
change; treating that as a failure would make an idle agent look unreachable.
Only a matched snapshot becomes evidence, so a timeout can never be mistaken for
an observation of agent state.
Backoff doubles from 1s to a 16s ceiling and drops the cached snapshot on
failure. Reasoning from state captured before a gap is exactly what would make a
disconnect look like a completion, which is why the contract answer there is
hold_reconnect.
store keeps dispatch and attribution evidence outside the registry. The job
record carries none of attempt_id, agent_session_uuid or
pane_process_generation, phase 1 froze its schema, and this phase may not write
the registry at all. Keeping the evidence here lets shadow mode carry full
attribution while the registry stays untouched; promoting these fields is a 2b
decision. The execution anchor starts false because acknowledging a dispatch is
not evidence that the attempt ran.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01UrDNJkHmm18uu7n7JwV5Qd
engine.transition is now the only writer of job status. It implements the target
table in state-transitions.md §3: claim, non-terminal metadata, explicit
terminals, idempotent re-receipt, refusal of conflicting or late signals with an
audit entry, stale-attempt rejection, and deadline timeout.
Two write paths become one. update_job_status merged fields unconditionally;
pick_pending hand-rolled a correct pending->running swap plus its own audit
mirror. Neither was wrong alone, but a rule added to one silently missed the
other, which is the shape that produced the phase 1 transport bugs. Both keep
their signatures and their preserved legacy bodies behind MAM_ENGINE_CAS=0.
A merged `status` value is routed to the request that owns it, so a raw field
write can no longer slip past the table. Getting that wrong first was caught by
the characterization tests: a metadata merge was overwriting the caller's status
with the pre-merge value.
Lock discipline is now enforced, not described. The lock covers a decision and
one record write; audit mirroring is queued and flushed after release, carrying a
monotonic transition_seq so ordering survives the move. A test watches for
subprocess, socket and sleep calls while the lock is held and asserts none.
Structural correction to my own plan, caught by a phase 1 guard: the plan put the
engine in lib_py/loop, but delegation would then have had to import a sibling,
which is exactly what mixes trees under a frozen loop. The engine belongs with
the registry writers, so it lives in lib_py/delegation and loop consumes it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01UrDNJkHmm18uu7n7JwV5Qd
Fixes what the job-status writers do today, so routing them through a single
transition boundary has an oracle instead of a promise. Same ordering that paid
off in phase 1.
X-02 states the claim path's real contract rather than the one the plan first
assumed: pick_pending filters on pending under the lock, so it is already a
correct swap. It duplicates the chokepoint, it does not bypass its safety. The
test pins the properties that must survive routing -- only pending is claimed,
only one session wins, and a session never sees another's work.
Every test is parametrized over MAM_ENGINE_CAS so the legacy body and the engine
body must agree.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01UrDNJkHmm18uu7n7JwV5Qd
GodopuandClaude Opus 5