# Orchestra — spec conformance audit & remediation status Audited 2026-07-27 against `orchestra-spec (1).md` at commit `325c684`. Method: read every non-test file in `internal/` and `cmd/`, traced each spec section to its call site, and checked whether the live path (`main.go` → router → coordinator → adapter) actually reaches it. This file is the single merged record — a prior split between `AUDIT.md` (audit + plan) and `progress.md` (chronological session log) has been flattened here; treat any older chronological git history of either file as session notes, not ground truth. **Ground truth rule for future sessions:** this repo has a documented history of code that *looks* wired but isn't (packages with tests that pass in isolation while the live call path silently no-ops). Before trusting any "done"/"fixed" claim below, check the actual call site, not just this document. --- ## Current verdict (as of 2026-07-29) The core code and targeted tests are substantially ahead of the deployed operator surface. The live API is reachable over HTTP at `orchestra.kvmx.ru` (HTTPS currently returns nginx `502`), but its historical `test-e2e` backlog is not an operationally useful control plane yet. ### Live evidence, checked 2026-07-29 - One `workpc-opencode` worker is heartbeating and reports capacity 1. Its Unix-socket herdr path is the meaningful reachability signal; legacy coordinator TCP probes are not. The coordinator now skips remote herdr protocol probes entirely and logs them as worker-owned; local herdr probes remain separate. - The API reports 28 tasks: **22 blocked, 5 completed, 1 failed, and no queued, leased, approval-pending, or captured sessions**. The visible queue is therefore historical E2E residue, not current work. - The API and SPA were rebuilt/redeployed on 2026-07-29. API health and the browser shell returned `200`; the deployed logout endpoint returns `204`. This ships the empty-collection fixes that prevent the prior `sessions.length`/`events` null crashes. A real authenticated browser smoke is still outstanding. - The task record for a blocked task and the failed E2E task had no retained session and no lifecycle events. Every lifecycle control was correctly disabled, but neither record could explain its state. - ntfy delivery now has a configured publisher token. A read-only authenticated account check returned `200`, resolving the prior publish `403 Forbidden`; no test notification was sent. Earlier successful OpenCode approval and worker-flow checks remain useful historical evidence, but they do not prove the current deployment or a successful worker-owned handoff/release/pickup. Cross-machine continuity is still deliberately incomplete; Design A must not operate a non-local checkout. ### Operator UI: remaining work The current UI should become a diagnosis surface, not a five-column task catalogue. 1. ~~**Persist and show a blocked diagnosis.**~~ **Closed in code, deployment verification outstanding (2026-07-29).** `TaskBlocked` now carries a validated `block_reason`; coordinator and browser-created blocks set it, while older events receive a deterministic projection fallback. The board groups blocked tasks by diagnosis and orders each group oldest first instead of rendering one generic “Blocked” lane. 2. ~~**Persist last-session and pane evidence.**~~ **Closed in code, deployment verification outstanding (2026-07-29).** Before worker completion/release cleanup, the worker captures a `session_evidence` snapshot (harness, pane, observed pane status, capture/check timestamps, and source); coordinator blocks record their own check snapshot. The task projection retains it and blocked cards state the source and timestamp. Legacy records still say **unknown — legacy record has no retained blocker/pane evidence**, never implying a live or closed pane. 3. ~~**Make the task page lead with the diagnosis.**~~ **Closed in code, deployment verification outstanding (2026-07-29).** The task detail now leads with reason, last activity, pane state, retained evidence, and the next safe action. Only server-enabled lifecycle actions are shown directly; unavailable actions are kept in an “Unavailable actions” disclosure. 4. **Separate active work from history.** Default the board to active, waiting, and needs-attention work; move completed/failed/test residue to filters or a compact history view. Add search, project filtering, and an explicit “no live work” state. 5. **Complete the worker truth model.** Show worker-owned heartbeat, local herdr reachability, active task/pane, and last error separately from legacy coordinator probes. 6. **Deploy and verify the browser path.** Ship the null-collection fixes and session logout endpoint, then record real login, refresh, expiry, board, task-detail, and approval browser flows. Keep `web/dist` and embedded assets synchronized as part of that build. --- ## Blocking defects The sections below are retained defect provenance and implementation detail. Their dated deployment claims do not supersede the current verdict above. Read them when changing the affected path; use the current verdict for the live state and remaining operator work. ### B18 — the web UI surface is unauthenticated (found by audit 2026-07-28, uncommitted working tree) — closed (code fix; requires an env change before restart) `cmd/orchestra/main.go:205` mounts the browser read/write surface with no handler-local credential check: ```go mux.Handle("/v1/ui/", ui.Server{Store: s, Workers: workers, Coordinator: coordinator, ...}.Handler()) ``` Unlike the worker/harness endpoints on the same mux (`main.go:342, 372, 467, 821, 840`), it performs no check of its own and stamps its events `Surface: string(authz.Web)` (`internal/ui/ui.go:222, 337, 368`). **It is not, however, ungated in principle.** `authz.HTTP` wraps the entire mux (`main.go:1167`) and defaults a request with no `X-Orchestra-Surface` header to `Web`, so `/v1/ui/` is covered by `ORCHESTRA_WEB_TOKEN`. The defect is that this gate is opt-in — `authz.HTTP`'s own comment says "authentication is optional for local development," and `expected != ""` is the only thing standing between the LAN and the surface. **The live deployment has opted out.** `.orchestra-config/orchestra.env` sets no `ORCHESTRA_*_TOKEN` at all, and the server binds `":"+port` (all interfaces, 9145). So on the deployed homesrv instance this surface is in fact reachable unauthenticated from the LAN. **Consequence.** Unauthenticated reachable actions include `TaskCreated`, and per-task `release`, `block`, `complete` and `handoff` (`ui.go:345-361`). Most seriously, `grant_approval` / `deny_approval` (`ui.go:301`) terminate in `pane.send_text` against a live pane — so an unauthenticated caller can inject keystrokes into a running agent session on workpc. B14 was filed because Orchestra could *accidentally* advance a permission dialog; this surface allows it deliberately, from the network. **Why simply setting `ORCHESTRA_WEB_TOKEN` does not fix it.** `mux.Handle("/", webui.Handler())` serves the SPA from the same listener, behind the same middleware. A browser cannot attach an `Authorization` header to a top-level document load, so setting the token returns 401 for `index.html` and the web UI stops loading entirely. Bearer-token auth and a browser-served SPA are incompatible as currently wired; that is likely why no token is set. **Required fix (design decision, not a one-liner).** The browser needs a credential it can actually present on a document load — a login endpoint that exchanges the Web token for an `HttpOnly`, `SameSite=Strict` session cookie, with `authz.HTTP` accepting either that cookie or a bearer token for the `Web` surface. Alongside it: make the token mandatory rather than opt-in whenever the UI is mounted (refuse to start, rather than silently serving an open control plane), and bind to loopback by default so exposure is a deliberate configuration act. Approval commands in particular must not be reachable without it. **Fix (2026-07-28):** 1. **The token is now mandatory** (`cmd/orchestra/main.go`): startup calls `log.Fatal` if `ORCHESTRA_WEB_TOKEN` is empty. Serving the control plane openly is no longer something a missing env var can cause silently. 2. **`authz.Sessions`** (`internal/authz/authz.go`) issues 32 random bytes as a session value and stores only its SHA-256, so a leaked snapshot of the map yields nothing usable. Sessions expire (12h default) and are swept on each issue. 3. **`POST /v1/ui/session`** verifies the Web token in constant time and sets the value as an `HttpOnly`, `SameSite=Strict`, `Secure` cookie. `Secure` is dropped only if `ORCHESTRA_UI_INSECURE_COOKIE` is set, which is required to reach the UI over plain HTTP. 4. **`authz.HTTPWithSessions`** accepts that cookie *in place of* the bearer token, and only for the `Web` surface; the bearer comparison is also now constant-time. Two paths are exempt from the gate, both necessarily: the login endpoint (which performs its own check — gating it would make login unreachable) and non-`/v1/` GET/HEAD, i.e. the SPA shell and its static assets, which are not secrets. Every `/v1/` control path stays gated. `TestWebSessionCookieGatesControlPathsOnly` asserts the whole shape: an uncredentialed control path is 401, the shell and login endpoint are reachable, a valid cookie authorizes, a forged one does not, and a cookie presented on the TUI surface is rejected. `TestSessionExpires` covers TTL. **Operational precondition — this is a breaking config change.** `.orchestra-config/orchestra.env` currently sets no tokens, so `orchestra.service` will refuse to start until `ORCHESTRA_WEB_TOKEN` is added (plus `ORCHESTRA_UI_INSECURE_COOKIE=1` if the UI is served over plain HTTP). Setting a Web token also newly gates the other `/v1/` surfaces that default to `Web` — any existing unauthenticated client of this instance will begin getting 401s and needs the token too. Do not restart the service without making that env change first. **Still open:** the listener binds all interfaces (`":"+port`); loopback-by- default was considered and deliberately not taken, so exposure remains a network-level concern. ### B14 — `agent.prompt` can duplicate a task prompt after an ambiguous wait timeout (found live 2026-07-28) — closed (code fix; not re-verified live) Live Claude E2E task `06FTF8CPH3K3DPN6XQA7G3WRQ8` (pane `wM:p1`) received the same initial `Begin Orchestra task ...` prompt twice. Claude completed a first turn inspecting the repository and asking for task context, then began working on the identical prompt again after the turn stopped. This was observed directly in the pane transcript; it is not merely a UI replay. **Root cause:** `CLIAdapter.Lease` calls `Client.Prompt` with `wait.until=idle` and a 60-second wait. `Client.Call`, however, applies the client's default 10-second connection deadline when the caller context has no deadline. Once that local read deadline expires, `Prompt` treats the result as any other transient failure and retries `agent.prompt` with the same payload for up to `bootRetryWindow`. Herdr may already have accepted the first request, so this is an ambiguous outcome, not a safe retry. **Consequence:** an agent can repeat work, waste context/quota, or overwrite its own in-progress changes. The initial task prompt is especially exposed because it deliberately waits for the agent to become idle. **Additional live consequence — OpenCode permission bypass (2026-07-28):** the OpenCode E2E task `06FTF9Z8RP5FM4F9M2SKAQNFZ4` was leased to `workpc-opencode` in `/tmp/test-e2e-worktrees/06FTF9Z8RP5FM4F9M2SKAQNFZ4`. An operator directly observed OpenCode stop at the interactive permission dialog for its initial `git log --oneline -10 && git status --short` command, then advance and run that command without operator input. Workpc herdr's live log records Orchestra's `agent.prompt` calls at 07:37:09 (request IDs 6 and 7), 07:37:10 (ID 8), and 07:37:20 (ID 9); the last two only ended when Orchestra's 10-second RPC deadline disconnected the client. Herdr labels each as `changes_ui=true`. The active OpenCode manifest contains only permission-*detection* rules and no auto-approval rule. The task later blocked at the next prompt (`~/.claude/RTK.md`) when no further prompt retry advanced it. This does not prove which internal herdr action produced the equivalent of Enter, but it proves the safety boundary is broken: an Orchestra-originated UI-changing `agent.prompt` operation can advance an OpenCode permission dialog. Treat this as an authorization bypass, not merely duplicate work. **Required fix:** make the RPC deadline at least the requested herdr wait (plus a small transport margin), and do not blindly resend `agent.prompt` after a timeout or other ambiguous post-write error. Record an observable failure instead, or use an idempotency/acknowledgement mechanism if herdr adds one. In addition, never issue `agent.prompt` while `agent_status` is `blocked` (or a pane read matches a permission dialog); treat the condition as requiring explicit operator approval. Do not run further unattended OpenCode E2E tasks until both controls are verified live. **Fix (2026-07-28), in `Client.Prompt` (`internal/herdr/herdr.go:280`):** 1. The RPC deadline is now derived from the requested wait, not the client default: when the caller's context has no deadline within `wait + 5s`, `Prompt` installs one (`herdr.go:307-314`). A 60s `wait.until=idle` no longer expires against a 10s transport deadline. 2. Retry is split by error class. A JSON-RPC protocol error is herdr's explicit rejection *before* it acted and stays retryable for the bounded boot window; a transport failure after the write is ambiguous and is never resent (`herdr.go:315-325`). Covered by `TestPromptDoesNotRetryAmbiguousDelivery`, which closes the connection mid-`agent.prompt` and asserts exactly one `agent.prompt` is issued. 3. The authorization-bypass half is addressed by inspecting the pane before prompting: `Prompt` refuses a pane whose `agent_status` is `blocked` (`herdr.go:285`) and refuses any pane whose transcript matches `permissionPrompt` (`herdr.go:292`). Approval is now an explicit, separately authorized operation — see the command-channel section below. Not re-verified live. The original live reproduction was cross-machine, and the "do not run further unattended OpenCode E2E tasks until both controls are verified live" instruction above still stands. ### B15 — a coordinator-side block cannot reconcile a later live completion (found live 2026-07-28) — closed (code fix; operator-mediated, not re-verified live) The same OpenCode E2E task `06FTF9Z8RP5FM4F9M2SKAQNFZ4` was marked `TaskBlocked` when the coordinator's `agent.prompt` RPC timed out, despite the agent having received the task. The operator later explicitly approved the one pending `~/.claude/RTK.md` read through herdr; OpenCode completed the verification and became `idle` in pane `wN:p1`. Orchestra still showed `state: "blocked"` because `Coordinator.Start` returned through `block()` and never persisted a session; its monitor therefore has no live pane to observe or reconcile. **Consequence:** the event log can permanently claim a task is blocked when the leased harness has actually completed it. This is not merely stale UI: blocked tasks have no normal completion hook path and their receipt/quota record is lost unless an operator manually corrects the lifecycle. **Required fix:** retain enough launch/session identity after an ambiguous lease failure to reconcile `agent.get`/completion evidence, or introduce a versioned `TaskCorrected` terminal-state workflow that records the original blocker and evidence without pretending it never happened. A live pane must not be left outside the coordinator's session map simply because prompt delivery timed out. **Fix (2026-07-28), in `Coordinator.Start` (`internal/orchestrator/orchestrator.go:911-922`):** when the lease call fails but a pane was actually created, the session is completed with `HerdrID`, `TaskFileSHA` and `ConventionsHash` and persisted via `rememberSession` *before* `block()` records `TaskBlocked`. `Reconcile` (`orchestrator.go:421`) explicitly retains mappings for `StateBlocked` as well as `StateLeased`, so a restart does not orphan them either. The live pane therefore stays observable through `Capture` and the monitor. **Scope limit — reconciliation is operator-mediated, not automatic.** Nothing promotes a blocked task to completed on its own; the router still never retries a blocked task. What exists now is the evidence and the surface: the retained session plus the `complete` / `release` / `handoff` actions on the UI task endpoint (`internal/ui/ui.go:345-361`), and the pre-existing versioned `TaskCorrected` workflow (S8) for recording the correction without pretending the block never happened. That satisfies the "must not be left outside the session map" requirement; it does not implement autonomous reconciliation, which remains unbuilt by choice. ### B16 — hardcoded harness name makes each harness globally single-instance (found live 2026-07-28) — closed (code fix; contract test only partially satisfied) While starting the real OpenCode healthcheck task `06FTFDW22833F1CCB8K43Z8808`, Orchestra created worktree/pane `wP:p1` but herdr never attached an agent. A direct retry exposed the actual cause: `agent.start` was sent with `name: "opencode"`, which herdr rejected with `agent_name_taken` because the completed prior E2E agent in `wN:p1` already owned that name. This is not a herdr limit of one OpenCode process per machine: retrying the same `kind: "opencode"` in `wP:p1` with the valid, unique lowercase name `oc-06ftfdw22833f1cc` immediately started a second attached, idle OpenCode session while `wN:p1` remained intact. **Root cause:** `Client.StartAgent` passes the harness kind as both `kind` and `name`; every OpenCode lease therefore competes for the same global agent-name slot. The same defect applies to Claude and Codex. **Required fix:** keep `kind` as the configured harness, but derive `name` from a validated, bounded task/session identifier (lowercase letters, digits, `-`, `_`, maximum 32 characters) and persist it in `Session` for subsequent lifecycle operations. Add a contract test that starts two same- harness sessions in distinct panes and verifies both attach. **Fix (2026-07-28):** `agentName(harness, taskID)` (`internal/herdr/herdr.go:452`) derives a bounded, validated name — a per-harness prefix (`oc`/`cl`/`cx`), the lowercased task ID with everything outside `[a-z0-9_-]` collapsed, capped at 32 characters. Over-long IDs keep a leading stem plus an 8-hex-character SHA-256 suffix, because plain truncation made distinct long task IDs collide in herdr's machine-global namespace. `StartAgent` passes it as `name` while `kind` stays the configured harness (`herdr.go:393`), persists it as `Session.AgentName` (`herdr.go:145, 445`), and binds it for prompt routing (`herdr.go:446`, `adapter.go:144`). Pane-scoped operations deliberately keep using `PaneID` — `AgentName` is only for agent-targeted calls (`adapter.go:531`). **Requirement not fully met:** the requested contract test does not exist. What is covered is name derivation — `TestAgentNameIsBoundedAndValid` and `TestAgentNameLongIDsDoNotCollide` — plus `TestPromptDoesNotRetryAmbiguous Delivery` asserting the prompt target is the unique name. Nothing yet starts two same-harness sessions in distinct panes and verifies both attach, so the `agent_name_taken` failure mode itself is untested end-to-end. ### B17 — opaque harnesses must not author canonical handoff anchors (found live 2026-07-28) — closed; worker path live-verified The real OpenCode healthcheck run showed that prompting an opaque agent to write the full `continuity.Handoff` schema is the wrong ownership boundary. The agent wrote JSON that looked plausible but used `anchor.sha` instead of `anchor.git_sha`, omitted required top-level fields by nesting them under `knowledge`, and could not correctly represent the uncommitted handoff file as a dirty-file hash (a file cannot contain the SHA-256 of its own final contents). Repeated corrective prompts made the handoff less reliable and turned Orchestra's protocol details into agent prompt lore. **Required direction:** prompt a harness exactly once for a small semantic handoff/review report (what changed, validation evidence, remaining work, review findings). The worker that owns the checkout must then deterministically collect `HEAD`, branch, dirty paths and SHA-256 values, construct the canonical handoff artifact, and validate it before publication. Canonical handoff files are worker-owned protocol state and must be excluded from their own dirty-file list. Project-level commands and stable expectations (`build`, `test`, file ownership/invariants, etc.) belong in `AGENTS.md`/`CLAUDE.md`; only task- specific evidence belongs in the handoff. This cannot be safely implemented in Design A by homesrv: its coordinator does not own the workpc checkout. Expand the bridge into a real worker-side continuity participant (the deferred Design B direction) so all Git-derived handoff facts are gathered and sealed on the machine that hosts the worktree. **Live evidence (OpenCode healthcheck/review run, 2026-07-28):** task `06FTFDW22833F1CCB8K43Z8808` initially hit B13/B16: Orchestra created `wP:p1` but its hardcoded `name: "opencode"` conflicted with the prior E2E session. Starting the same `kind: "opencode"` with unique name `oc-06ftfdw22833f1cc` attached successfully without closing the prior pane. The implementation agent created executable `scripts/healthcheck.sh`, validated `bash -n`, its normal mode, and `--help`, then committed `672c123 Add scripts/healthcheck.sh`. It first authored a lookalike handoff (`anchor.sha`, incomplete `meta`, and all protocol fields under `knowledge`). A distinct reviewer in a second pane (`wP:p2`) independently repeated the checks, noticed the nesting error, and rewrote the document. Its claimed schema validation checked only JSON syntax and the presence of keys — it did **not** use `continuity.Decode` or the actual typed contract: `test` remains an array where `Handoff.Test` is a string, and `last_result` remains a string where `Handoff.LastResult` is a structured object. This is a concrete proof that a reviewing harness cannot be trusted to validate canonical protocol state by visual shape alone. The task is deliberately still `TaskBlocked` from its original failed automatic attach even though its manually-started implementation/review panes are live, a second live confirmation of B15. The reviewer pane is left open for operator inspection; do not close or release it without approval. **Related live observation — unexpected Claude launch explained:** Claude pane `wM:p1` did not start spontaneously. At 08:00:41Z the expired lease for task `06FTF8CPH3K3DPN6XQA7G3WRQ8` emitted `TaskReleased(reason: "lease_expired")`; the router re-leased it at 08:00:42Z, and workpc herdr attached Claude at 08:00:43Z. The renewed attempt then hit B14's prompt timeout and became blocked. This is expected retry behavior, but illustrates why lifecycle retries must be visible to operators. **Status:** satisfied on the worker path. `cmd/orchestra-worker` now implements the required ownership boundary. The harness is asked once for a bounded semantic report; `releaseReady` (`cmd/orchestra-worker/main.go:180`) then runs `CLIAdapter.Release` and `herdr.HeadSHA` **on the machine that hosts the worktree**, so `HEAD`, branch, dirty paths and SHA-256 values are collected locally and the canonical artifact is validated before publication. The handoff-provenance correction documented at the end of this file supplies the parsing and validation half. The coordinator no longer accepts a non-local herdr operation; the standing rule is enforced rather than advisory. **Failed QA fixture (2026-07-29):** the bounded disposable task `06FTSHBPYHQXN8MM849PFA1V6M` reached the worker and wrote its semantic report, but publication correctly refused it. Its prescribed fields combined to the canonical action `inspect the marker file — verify worker-owned handoff construction`; the circular-action guard rejects that word even when it occurs in the explanatory `WHY` text. This is an invalid QA fixture, not a release-path regression. **Live success (2026-07-29):** after configuring `test-e2e` on the `workpc-opencode` worker, disposable task `06FTY8ZA45CCZZHQ7H44SMQG14` completed the full path. Its first pane (`w1B:p1`) created the marker and the bounded semantic report. The worker, not the harness, published canonical handoff `5e9e942f269f6d6394896186377e35d596d403bd04a58f0c307818af0499b208`: its anchor was worker-derived (`git_sha` `d73b576882b07bac34abaf2beabeacfaa8f79529`, branch `orchestra/scratch/oc-06fty8za45cczzhq7h44smqg14`) and its semantic action was `Verify the B17 probe marker file contents. — Verify canonical artifact construction.` The worker recorded `TaskReleased`, routed a successor lease with that handoff reference to a new pane (`w1C:p1`), and the successor verified the marker through the scratch checkpoint. It then completed the task with report artifact `9a41950548118a47232747ff57fb7ac109dbdb2e45e0b8a8141d4828a6351f18`. After `TaskCompleted`, the worker state had no sessions or leases. The disposable worktree was intentionally retained; pane/session cleanup passed. ### B13 — `agent.start` silently no-ops under back-to-back leases (found live 2026-07-28) — closed (code fix; not yet re-verified live) Discovered while live-verifying the B12 fix below. B12 itself is confirmed fixed (see that entry), but re-testing it exposed a second, deeper defect that B12's retry logic cannot address. Three fresh tasks were leased in quick succession against `workpc-claude` (`06FTAKSJZTB73FZQE3QT7XQ1J0`/pane `wD:p1`, `06FTAMFKVEPGPKR0H86C08ZZNG`/pane `wE:p1`, `06FTANAYZPA55BABR2J4MWQ050`/pane `wF:p1`). All three got a `worktree.create` success and an `agent.start` call that returned **no error**. Checked live via `pane.get`/`pane.list` (and independently confirmed by the user cd'ing into each worktree by hand): - `wD:p1` (the first, given time alone to settle): a real `claude` process did eventually attach — `agent: claude`, `agent_status: idle`, `revision: 2`. This is consistent with B12's model: `agent.start` acknowledges the request but the actual attach is asynchronous, sometimes taking well over a minute. - `wE:p1` and `wF:p1` (started moments after `wD:p1`, while it was presumably still initializing): **still no agent attached after 2+ minutes of polling** — `agent_status: unknown`, no `agent` field, `revision` never incremented past its creation value. Empty shells, confirmed both via `pane.get` and by the user directly `cd`ing into the worktree and finding no session running. So `agent.start`'s "success" is not just delayed for these two — it never happened at all, and `agent.start` never returned an error to tell Orchestra that. One plausible cause: something about launching a second/third `claude` CLI process while a prior one on the same host/account is still mid-startup (auth handshake, config lock, etc.) silently drops the later request(s) rather than queuing or erroring them. Not confirmed — would need a controlled single-at-a-time repro to isolate from herdr's own internals, which requires spinning up more real panes and wasn't done this pass (see "three orphaned panes" below). **Consequence:** unlike B12 (which at least produced an observable `TaskBlocked`), this failure mode leaves the task leased indefinitely against a pane that will never produce a session, with no error surfaced anywhere — worse than B12 was, because nothing currently distinguishes "still booting, give it more time" from "silently dead, will never start." A client-side retry on `agent.start` itself (B12's approach) cannot fix this, since the call that should have started the process already returned success with no error to retry on. **Fix:** since `agent.start`'s own return value can't be trusted, `StartAgent` (`internal/herdr/herdr.go`) no longer treats its success as the end of the story. After `agent.start` returns without error, it polls `pane.get({pane_id})` (new `paneAgentAttached` helper) until the pane reports a real attached agent (`agent` non-empty and `agent_status` present and not `"unknown"`), bounded by a new `agentAttachWindow` (90s, longer than `bootRetryWindow`'s 15s since a legitimate attach was observed live taking "well over a minute"). If the window elapses with no attach, `StartAgent` now returns an explicit error instead of a false success — this is exactly the "recorded/observable failure over silent `continue`" pattern this repo's CLAUDE.md calls for, and should surface as `TaskBlocked` through the same path B12's fix already proved reachable. **Not yet done:** re-verified against a live herdr instance (the schema for `pane.get`'s result — `agent`/`agent_status` fields — was inferred from prose in this file's own B12/B13 narration of live `pane.get` output, not re-confirmed by a fresh probe of `192.168.1.105:9245`; `deploy/herdr-schema.json` has no entry for `pane.get`'s result shape). `go build`/`go vet`/`go test ./...` all pass, but no test exercises `StartAgent`'s new polling loop directly (existing `internal/herdr` tests don't call `agent.start`/`pane.get` through the fake TCP listener at all). Next session should confirm the `pane.get` field names live before trusting this closes B13 operationally, and ideally fire a fresh back-to-back-lease test against workpc once that's confirmed. **Side effect of this investigation — three live orphaned panes on workpc, left untouched on purpose:** `wD:p1` (has a real but abandoned `claude` session, task now stuck in `blocked` from before B12's fix), `wE:p1` and `wF:p1` (empty shells, no agent ever attached). Not cleaned up — same standing rule as the pre-existing `wA:p1` stuck task: don't call `pane.close`/`pane.release_agent` against live panes without asking first. --- ## B12 — `StartAgent` races the pane's shell readiness (found live 2026-07-28) — closed (this specific race; see B13 for a second issue it exposed) Discovered during the first real end-to-end run against a freshly rebuilt/ redeployed binary (the running service had been on stale pre-audit commit `325c684` the whole time). Created a fresh task (`06FTAH4MCRCAJYY7V75Z4V2YGG`, project `test-e2e`, capability `opencode`). It reached `TaskLeased` onto `workpc-opencode` (worktree created for real at `/tmp/test-e2e-worktrees/` on workpc, confirmed via a live `pane.list` — pane `wB:p1`, correct `cwd`), then **445ms later** hit `TaskBlocked`: ``` lease: herdr protocol error: agent target pane wB:p1 is not an available shell ``` `internal/herdr/herdr.go:199` (`StartAgent`) calls `agent.start` on the pane `Worktree` just recorded, with no wait or retry after `worktree.create` returns. herdr hands the pane back before its shell has actually finished initializing, and `agent.start` refuses it as not-yet-a-shell. None of B1–B11 exercised this — every prior fix assumed a session already existed (occupancy, rotation, handoff); nothing in the remediation plan tested the very first `Lease` call against a real herdr pane end-to-end. Phase 0's probing used `params:{}`/missing-field tricks, never a real `worktree.create` → `agent.start` sequence timed against actual pane boot. **Reproduced a second time, 2026-07-28**, same session: a second fresh task (`06FTAHW8GZP0S6DCHEQ6PJXWB0`) leased onto a brand-new pane (`wC:p1`) and hit the identical error on the same sub-second timeline. Two for two — a systematic race, not a flake. **Consequence:** every fresh lease that hits this race goes straight to `TaskBlocked`, and the router **never retries a blocked task** (`internal/router/router.go` has no reference to `StateBlocked` at all, confirmed by grep) — so it sits there permanently until a human intervenes via the approval surface. This is now the single blocking defect for proving the rest of the remediation plan against a real live task. **Fix, iterated live across three rounds, 2026-07-28:** 1. First pass: bounded-retry `agent.start` (10×, 500ms apart) specifically on the `"not an available shell"` string. Redeployed and re-tested against a real fresh lease — this cleared that exact error, but the very next call in the sequence (`Lease`'s post-`agent.start` `Prompt`) then hit a *different* transient error, `"agent ... is not an active named agent"` — same underlying readiness race, one call later, worded differently. 2. Second pass: added the identical string-matched retry to `Prompt` for that specific message. Redeployed, re-tested — this time hit a *third* distinct wording, `"agent target ... not found"`, on the same call. 3. Given three different error strings for the same race across three live attempts, string-matching was abandoned as unwinnable (herdr's wording for "not ready yet" isn't fixed enough to enumerate). **Final shape:** both `StartAgent`'s `agent.start` call and `Prompt`'s `agent.prompt` call now retry on *any* error, bounded by wall-clock time (15s, `bootRetryDelay` of 500ms) rather than attempt count or specific wording — there is no other legitimate reason a call against a pane/worktree orchestra itself just created would fail immediately. `StartAgent` still special-cases `"already"` as a non-error (idempotent re-lease). Confirmed this closes the original race: task `06FTAKSJZTB73FZQE3QT7XQ1J0` (pane `wD:p1`) leased successfully, and polling `pane.get` live shows a real `agent: claude` / `agent_status: idle` attach — independently confirmed by the user `cd`-ing into that worktree by hand. `go build`/`go vet`/`go test ./...` all pass throughout. **Not fully clean, however:** re-testing this fix by firing two more tasks shortly after the first one surfaced a second, separate defect — `agent.start` returning success while never actually starting an agent, with no error for the retry logic to even see. That's **B13**, above — this entry only covers the specific shell/agent-readiness race B12 was originally filed for, which *is* fixed; B13 is a distinct root cause the same investigation exposed. --- ## Web UI and the capture / approval command channel (uncommitted, 2026-07-28) Roughly 520 lines of Go across eight tracked files, plus the untracked `internal/ui`, `internal/webui` and `web/` trees, were added after the last commit and were previously undocumented here. Recording the design so the next session does not have to re-derive it. **Capture/command model (`internal/federation/federation.go`).** Two new worker-scoped maps on `Registry`. `PutCapture` stores the latest pane text per (worker, task) and bumps a monotonic `Revision` only when the text or pane actually changes. `Queue` accepts only `grant_approval` / `deny_approval`, and requires a non-zero `CaptureRevision` — a command is bound to the exact capture an operator was looking at. `CompleteCommand` refuses to resolve a command twice. **Worker side (`cmd/orchestra-worker/main.go`).** `publishCaptures` pushes recent pane text for every held session; `runCommands` polls `/v1/federation/commands` and, for each command, re-reads the pane, re-publishes it, and refuses with `stale` if the resulting revision differs from the one the command was issued against. `approvalResponse` decides the keystroke: it sends `y`/`n` only for a visible `[y/n]`/`(y/n)` prompt, and sends bare Enter only for OpenCode's fully-labelled `Allow once / Allow always / Reject … enter confirm` selector — where Enter is a bounded one-time grant. It refuses to *deny* through that selector, because doing so would require unobservable navigation. Unknown dialog layouts are rejected outright rather than guessed at. Both branches are covered by `TestApprovalResponseOpenCodeAllowOnce` and `TestWorkerApprovalCommandIsRevisionBoundAndAcknowledged`. This is the right shape for B14's authorization half: approval becomes an explicit, revision-bound, separately-issued operation instead of a side effect of prompting, and it executes on the worker that owns the pane rather than over a coordinator-driven remote socket. **Coordinator side.** `Coordinator.RespondApproval` and `herdr.ApprovalResponder` (`internal/herdr/adapter.go:602`) are the local-herdr equivalent, applying the same re-read-before-send rule via an `expectedCapture` comparison and the same y/n-only refusal. `Coordinator.RequestHandoff` exposes the handoff request as an operator action without releasing the pane. **Known weaknesses of this channel.** The defects found in it are filed individually below — **B19** (federated approvals emit no event), **B20** (the local capture revision is a timestamp, not a change counter) and **B21** (`Registry.commands` never prunes). Two further gaps remain: - **`RespondApproval` (coordinator path) has no test**, unlike its worker counterpart — and per B20 it is the path whose revision is meaningless, so its text-comparison guard is the only thing actually binding the decision to what the operator saw. That guard is untested. - **`web/` is a full Vite/React app whose build output is embedded** via `internal/webui`'s `go:embed assets/*`. The embedded assets are checked in as build output; there is no documented step tying `web/` sources to a rebuild of `internal/webui/assets`, so the two can silently diverge. ## Found while implementing B18 (2026-07-28) — all fixed the same day These were noticed while wiring the session gate, and all five were fixed in the following pass. Each section states the original defect first, then how it was closed. ### B19 — federated approvals leave no audit trail — closed (2026-07-28) `Server.action`'s `grant_approval` / `deny_approval` branch (`internal/ui/ui.go:301-341`) has two exits that are **not** symmetric. The local-coordinator path calls `RespondApproval` and then appends `ApprovalGranted` / `ApprovalDenied` to the store. The federated path calls `s.Workers.Queue(...)`, writes the command to the response, and **returns before appending any event**. So the single most safety-critical operation in the system — injecting a keystroke that advances a permission dialog on another machine — is invisible in the event log precisely when it crosses a machine boundary. There is no record of who approved what, or that an approval happened at all. §7.1's authorization model assumes the event log is the record. Fixing this needs a decision the local path did not have to make: the command is *queued*, not executed, so the honest event is a request at queue time plus a resolution when the worker acknowledges (`CompleteCommand` already carries `acknowledged` / `rejected` / `stale`). Emitting `ApprovalGranted` at queue time would claim an outcome that has not happened yet. **Fix.** The resolution half already existed and this entry understated it: `/v1/federation/commands/` in `cmd/orchestra/main.go` appends `ApprovalGranted`/`ApprovalDenied` — but only on `status == "acknowledged"`, so a queued click never claims an outcome. What was missing was the request half. `Server.action` now appends `ApprovalRequested` at queue time, with `subject_ref` set to the command ID that the later resolution event carries, plus `decision`, `worker`, `pane_id` and `capture_revision`. If that append fails the queued command is immediately resolved `rejected`, so the worker can never execute a keystroke that left no audit trail. `rejected`/`stale` outcomes still emit no resolution event; the `ApprovalRequested` stays unresolved and surfaces in `operations.NeedsAttention`, which is the honest reading. Covered by `TestFederatedApprovalIsQueuedAtTheWorkerRevisionAndAudited`. ### B20 — the local capture revision is a timestamp, not a change counter — closed (2026-07-28) `Server.capture` (`ui.go:80`) fabricates `Revision: uint64(time.Now().UnixNano())` for the coordinator path. The federation path's revision is a real per-change counter (`Registry.PutCapture` bumps it only when pane text or pane ID actually changes), and the worker's staleness check depends on that meaning. Two consequences: 1. The local revision changes on every read, so it conveys nothing about whether the pane changed. The local path is still safe, but only because `RespondApproval` re-reads and compares capture *text* — the revision it reports to the browser is decorative. 2. If a task has both a live coordinator session and a published worker capture, `capture()` prefers the coordinator (`ui.go:77`) and returns a timestamp revision, which `action()` then passes to `Queue` as `CaptureRevision`. That value can never equal the worker's counter, so the worker resolves every such command `stale` and the approval silently never happens. The precedence between the two capture sources needs to be explicit rather than incidental. ### B21 — `Registry.commands` is append-only — closed (2026-07-28) `r.commands[worker]` is only ever appended to (`federation.go:119`); `CompleteCommand` flips a status in place and nothing is ever deleted. Resolved commands accumulate for the process lifetime, and `Commands()` rescans the entire history on every worker poll. Combined with the in-memory-only storage already noted, the lifecycle is wrong at both ends: it forgets across restarts and never forgets within one. **Fix.** `Registry.pruneCommands` drops resolved commands older than `CommandRetention` (30 minutes), running on both `Queue` and `Commands`, so the per-worker list is bounded and the poll path no longer rescans unbounded history. Pending commands are never pruned, at any age — dropping one would silently discard an operator decision. Captures, commands, and the worker identity/token binding now persist atomically in `$ORCHESTRA_DATA/federation-state.json` (mode 0600), so the worker must re-register with its original token after restart before it can consume a recovered command. Covered by `TestResolvedCommandsArePrunedButPendingOnesSurvive` and `TestPendingApprovalSurvivesRegistryRestart`. ### S12 — `ORCHESTRA_NTFY_TOKEN` serves two unrelated purposes — closed (2026-07-28) The same env var is the ntfy *server* credential (`main.go:1153`, `delivery.Ntfy{Token: ...}`) and the authz *surface* credential for `authz.Ntfy` (`main.go:1165`). These are unrelated secrets with different trust boundaries: one is handed to a third-party notification server, the other authenticates callers to Orchestra. Setting the former silently makes it a valid inbound credential. They need separate variables. **Fix.** The `authz.Ntfy` surface token is now `ORCHESTRA_NTFY_SURFACE_TOKEN`; `ORCHESTRA_NTFY_TOKEN` is once again only the credential handed to the ntfy server. Documented in `deploy/orchestra.env.example`. **Operator action:** any deployment that relied on the old dual use must now set the new variable explicitly, or the ntfy surface reverts to having no inbound gate. ### S13 — dead `auth()` middleware in `cmd/orchestra/main.go` — closed (2026-07-28) `func auth(next http.Handler)` (`main.go:1212`) is defined and never referenced; Go does not flag unused functions, so `go vet` stays quiet. It reimplements the notify-only rule that `authz.HTTP` already enforces. It is harmless today and a trap tomorrow — a second, divergent copy of the authorization policy sitting next to the real one. Delete it. ### Positive note — B8 is more strongly closed than it was `authz.HTTP` downgrades a caller-declared `system` surface to `Web` before the token comparison. Previously that landed on a surface whose token was unset in production, i.e. no gate at all. With `ORCHESTRA_WEB_TOKEN` now mandatory, the downgrade lands on a genuinely gated surface, so the B8 bypass is closed by construction rather than by the header check alone. --- ## What's next In dependency order, not importance order: 1. **Address the Web UI backlog above**, starting with queue explanations, actionable worker health, and a usable approval/recovery workflow. 2. **Record a browser smoke.** Confirm login, refresh, invalid token, and expired-session behavior in an actual browser after the deployed assets settle. Deliberately *not* next: building further on Design A's cross-machine calls, and closing B17 for the coordinator path. Both wait on the federation-fork decision below. --- ## Closed defects Each entry is the flattened final state — design + what's verified — not the session-by-session narration. Grouped by original defect ID. ### B1 — Occupancy measured from the wrong value (§5.2.1) — closed `CLIAdapter.Occupancy` was calling `a.Usage(s.PaneID)` (a herdr pane id) against readers (`ClaudeUsage`/`CodexUsage`/`OpenCodeUsage`) that want a filesystem path to session state — every call failed and was swallowed by a bare `continue`. Fixed: `herdr.Session.SessionFile` is resolved at lease time per harness (Claude: newest-mtime transcript under Claude Code's own project dir; Codex: existing `CodexActiveUsage` sqlite discovery; opencode: refuses loudly rather than guess, since it needs a live session id not resolvable from the worktree alone). A missing/unreadable session file is now a hard error surfaced via `SessionHealth.Occupancy`/`OccupancyError` on `GET /v1/tasks/{id}/health`, never a silent zero. **Still open:** live verification against a real Claude Code session at a known context fill — not possible from this sandbox, blocked further by B13 now that fresh leases don't reliably survive. ### B2 — Adapter lookup keyed wrong in 3 of 4 call sites (§5.3, §5.4) — closed `AdapterFactory.Herdrs` is keyed by herdr instance id (`homesrv-claude`); `Reconcile`/`expire`/`rotate` were looking it up by `session.Harness` (the harness kind, `claude`) and silently no-op'ing (`continue`) on every miss — orphaned panes never killed, expired leases never killed their pane, rotation never began. Fixed with a single `Coordinator.adapterFor(session)` routed through at all four call sites. Regression test registers an adapter under a herdr-id key distinct from the harness kind and asserts rotation still fires. ### B3 — Nothing emitted `TaskCompleted` (§4, §5.2) — closed Only producer used to be a human calling `POST /v1/tasks/{id}/complete`. Added `POST /v1/harness/complete`: a Claude Code Stop hook (`deploy/hooks/orchestra-stop.sh`) fires every turn boundary but only reports completion once the agent has written a `.orchestra-report.md` marker at the worktree root (an ordinary turn boundary is a no-op). The server builds the `receipt` itself from `herdr.ClaudeUsage` against the transcript (never trusts a self-reported number) and uploads the report body to CAS for `report_ref`. Gated by optional `ORCHESTRA_HARNESS_TOKEN`; event appended with `Surface: system` set directly in Go, consistent with B8. Extended to Codex/opencode via an optional `harness` field in the request body (`"codex"` → `CodexUsage`, `"opencode"` → `OpenCodeUsage`). Covered by `TestHarnessCompletionBuildsReceiptAndQuotaFromTranscript`, which exercises authentication, transcript-derived receipts, `TaskCompleted`, and the matching `QuotaReported` event through the actual HTTP handler. ### B4 — Router counted rotation as a retry (§5.3, §5.4) — closed Every `TaskReleased` (including rotation, which carries a valid `handoff_ref`) advanced `MaxAttempts`, and lease also double-counted — a task healthy enough to rotate twice was killed. Now only a release *without* a `handoff_ref` (expiry/crash) advances the counter. ### B5 — Herdr protocol methods unverified/invented — closed Confirmed live against `192.168.1.105:9245` (raw JSON-RPC probing, no local `herdr` CLI available — schema reconstructed from Rust serde's "unknown variant"/"missing field" errors). `pane.release`, `pane.kill`, `pane.rotation_signal`, `pane.status` **do not exist**. Real replacements: `pane.close({pane_id})` for kill (drop-in); `pane.release_agent({pane_id, source, agent})` for release — structurally different, does **not** return a `handoff_ref` (herdr never writes handoffs; the agent does, §6.1). `RotationSignal` interface/method/call site deleted outright (no replacement exists; herdr has no concept of Orchestra rotation). `CLIAdapter.Release` now: reads the agent-authored `.orchestra-handoff.json`, validates with `continuity.Decode`, cross-checks its anchor SHA against the worktree's real `HeadSHA`, re-verifies every `Anchor.Dirty` file hash, scratch-commits any dirty files (`continuity.ScratchCommit`, idempotent across multiple rotations) and rewrites the handoff's anchor to the new scratch commit before uploading to CAS via `continuity.Save` (minting the real `handoff_ref`), and only then calls `pane.release_agent` — sequenced last so a herdr-side error can't strand an uploaded handoff. Any failure (missing file, invalid schema, anchor mismatch, stale dirty hash, herdr error) is a refusal, which `rotate` already treats as "retry next tick." `CLIAdapter.Lease`'s bootstrap prompt also fixed to pass `time.Minute` (not `wait=0`) for inline-wait, matching `Bootstrap` and closing the send-into-a-half-rendered-prompt race §5.1 requires guarding against. Covered by `internal/herdr/adapter_test.go` against a real git worktree and a fake in-process herdr TCP listener: upload-and-release on a valid handoff, refusal with no handoff file, refusal on anchor mismatch, refusal on stale dirty-file hash, refusal with no CAS configured. Protocol version confirmed live as a bare JSON number (`17`), not the string `config.jsonc` declares — `CheckProtocol`'s raw-bytes fallback happens to compare correctly today; don't "clean up" that code without re-checking this, or it may start doing a real numeric-vs-string comparison and break. **Still open:** nothing makes the agent actually write `.orchestra-handoff.json` unprompted (closed separately, see B6/Phase 4 item 2 below) — that's the piece this entry originally deferred. ### B6 — Layer 3 (continuity) was entirely dead code (§6) — closed Nothing wrote `TASK.md`, so pickup validation had nothing to check and never ran. Fixed in full: - `GitWorktrees.Create` now writes and commits an immutable `TASK.md` (`continuity.RenderTaskFile`) into every fresh worktree; `continuity.TaskFileHash` reads it back for `w.TaskFileSHA`. - `Coordinator.Start` runs `continuity.ValidatePickup` (anchor SHA + dirty-file hashes + TASK.md hash) before bootstrapping a successor onto a `handoff_ref` — failure kills the session and emits `TaskBlocked` instead of trusting an unvalidated ref. - `ScratchCommit` wired into `Release` (see B5) so pickup collapses to a single HEAD compare instead of per-file rehashing. - `CLIAdapter.Bootstrap`'s prompt rewritten to point the agent at `git log`/the scratch branch (trust already established by the plane's own `ValidatePickup`) instead of vague "read the handoff" prose, and deliberately does not claim a `GET /v1/artifacts/` endpoint since none exists (`/v1/artifacts` is POST-only — an earlier draft invented this and was corrected before landing). - `continuity.MarkdownChanges` (zero callers, zero tests despite being listed as implemented in an earlier snapshot) was deleted rather than half-wired. §6.3's actual requirement ("notice to agents whose task is adjacent") was rebuilt independently: `continuity.ConventionsHash(root)` hashes `AGENTS.md`/`CLAUDE.md`/`VOCAB.md`; `Coordinator.checkConventions` runs every `Monitor` tick, recomputes the project base repo's hash for every leased session, and on drift calls the optional `herdr.ConventionsNotifier` capability (in-pane prompt) once per drift. - **Handoff production, the item that most of B6 hinged on:** `Coordinator.rotate` checks the adapter's optional `herdr.HandoffRequester` capability; if `.orchestra-handoff.json` is missing, it prompts the agent once (`CLIAdapter.RequestHandoff`, naming the exact §6.1 JSON shape and explicitly telling the agent not to fabricate SHA/hashes) and skips `Release` that tick, retrying every subsequent tick — mirrors the `.orchestra-report.md`/B3 convention exactly. `Session.HandoffRequested` avoids re-prompting every tick. Covered by `TestGitWorktreesCommitsTaskFile`, `TestStartBlocksOnInvalidPickup`, `TestReleaseScratchCommitsDirtyFilesBeforeUpload`, `TestReleaseRefusesOnStaleDirtyFile`, `TestConventionsDriftNotifiesActiveSession`, `TestRotationRequestsHandoffBeforeReleasing` (internal/herdr, internal/orchestrator). The coordinator no longer supports a herdr-hosted `WorktreeCreator` path. It always creates the local, committed `TASK.md` before leasing a local pane; remote worktrees are exclusively worker-owned, so coordinator pickup validation never runs against a remote filesystem path. ### B7 — Quota projection had no producer (§7.2) — closed (post-hoc only) `POST /v1/harness/complete` now appends a `QuotaReported` event (`consumed` from the same `usage.Numerator()` used for the receipt), so the router's 5h/weekly filter and the brief's `quota_consumed` stop evaluating against a permanent zero. **Design gap recorded, not yet built** — a live push producer, since a harness that never completes a task cleanly (e.g. the stuck `wA` pane, see below) currently under-counts its consumption forever: - **Claude**: the statusline stdin JSON already carries real `.rate_limits.five_hour.used_percentage` / `.seven_day.used_percentage` — confirmed by reading `~/.claude/statusline.sh` on this machine. Prefer this over `claude.ai/api/.../usage`, which needs browser session cookies, not an API key. - **Codex**: every `token_count` event in the rollout carries a `rate_limits` object with `used_percent`/`window_minutes`/`resets_at` — confirmed directly from a real rollout file. No `codex usage` subcommand; the rollout tail (or `codex app-server`, same events live) is the only transport. - **opencode**: no first-class quota surface. `opencode stats` is historical only. Zen's free-tier daily quota arrives as `x-ratelimit-*` response headers, not a queryable endpoint — would need an opencode plugin to intercept. - Structural consequence if this is ever built: `sumSince`'s *additive* model is wrong for a used-*percentage* feed (need a second `Availability` reading the latest report per harness, not summing); static `quota_limit_5h/weekly` become unnecessary for Claude/Codex once real fractions are reported; `QuotaWindowLimits{FiveHour,Weekly}` is too narrow for Codex's self-describing `window_minutes` or opencode's daily Zen window. ### B8 — `Surface: system` unauthenticated bypass (§7.1) — closed `X-Orchestra-Surface: system` was reachable from any HTTP request header in both `authz.HTTP` and `main.go`'s `surface` closure — since no deployment sets `ORCHESTRA_SYSTEM_TOKEN`, this was an unauthenticated full-control bypass reachable from any LAN caller. Both call sites now downgrade `system` to `web` before doing anything else with it. `System` is only constructible in-process (router leases/failures, coordinator releases/blocks, standup advisory/apply) via the bus-level `authz.AuthorizeEvent` check now enforced inside `store.Append` itself. ### S1 — duplicate JSON struct tags — closed `Brief.From`/`To` and `GitSync.Branch`/`Head`/`Status` each shared one JSON tag (Go only honors the first `json:"..."` tag on a combined field declaration), making `go vet ./...` fail and the brief's git state unparseable. Fixed; `go vet ./...` passes clean. ### S2 + S3 — brief git state and completion receipts — closed `Brief.Git` used to read from `ORCHESTRA_DATA` (the event-log dir, never a git checkout — always "git unavailable") and completions were counted but never surfaced with proof. `operations.Brief.Git` is now `map[string]GitSync` keyed by project ID, built from `registry.Project.Repo` (falling back to a single `"default"` entry off `ORCHESTRA_REPO`), with `Ahead`/`Behind` vs upstream added. `Brief.Receipts []CompletionReceipt` pulls `report_ref`/ `receipt` straight out of each `TaskCompleted` event's existing payload. ### S4 — notification goroutine died on first send error — closed `delivery.Fanout.Run` used to `return` on the first sender error, permanently killing notifications for the rest of the process's lifetime. Failed sends now go through an `OnError` hook instead of aborting the loop. Cursor is persisted (`SaveCursor` → a `delivery-cursor` file next to `ORCHESTRA_DATA`), so a restart resumes from the last delivered event instead of re-notifying the entire log from seq 0. ### S5 — colliding event IDs on lease — closed `Store.Lease`/`ExpireLeases` set `Event.ID` to the task id, so every lease of a task produced colliding event IDs. Now uses `domain.NewID()`. ### S6 — ingest dedup returned the wrong event with 200 — closed Dedup path returned `nil` (success) without appending; the HTTP handler then returned an unrelated event with `201`. Added `domain.ErrDuplicate` and `Store.TaskBySource`; `POST /v1/tasks` now returns the existing task with `200` on a duplicate. Every other `Append` caller (Gitea poll/webhook, JSONL ingest) now treats `ErrDuplicate` as expected. ### S7 — `TaskAmended` dropped most fields — closed Only `title` was ever applied from an amendment payload; `due`/ `description`/`inherent_priority` were accepted, logged, and silently dropped by the projection. Also added the missing `Task.Description` field entirely (it didn't exist, so `TaskCreated` dropped it too). Both `TaskCreated` and `TaskAmended` now populate all four fields. ### S8 — no compensating-event mechanism (§3.1) — closed Added `TaskCorrected`: payload requires `corrects` (the id of the event it repairs) plus at least one change (`state`, or the existing amend-style fields). `Store.Append` rejects a `corrects` that doesn't name a real prior event on the same task; `apply` applies the changes and clears `Lease` like every other terminal-state branch. Covered by a mistaken `TaskFailed` reverted to `queued`, an unknown-`corrects` rejection, and both events surviving snapshot+replay. ### S9 — duplicate lease-expiry tickers — closed `Coordinator.Monitor`'s 30s ticker and `main.go`'s own 1s reclaim ticker both called `Store.ExpireLeases` independently. Previously filed as "harmless — CAS rejects the loser," but the real effect was worse: the coordinator's `expire()` is the *only* place that kills the herdr session/pane for an expired lease, and the 1s ticker running 30x more often almost always won the race, leaving the coordinator's own call with nothing left to expire — silently orphaning herdr panes past TTL. Fixed: `main.go`'s ticker skips `ExpireLeases` entirely when a coordinator is configured (deferring reclaim to the coordinator's loop), keeping only `AssignPending` as periodic retry. ### S10 — federation worker registration had no admission control — closed Any caller could self-declare a worker `id` and self-choose a `token`, and a second caller could silently re-register an existing worker id with a *different* token, hijacking its identity/capacity. Added `Registry.AdmitToken` (pre-shared secret via `ORCHESTRA_FEDERATION_ADMIT_TOKEN`, checked against the registration request's bearer header); same-ID re-registration now requires presenting the existing worker's own token (legitimate restarts still succeed; different-token same-id is rejected as a hijack). ### S11 — soft threshold, milestone, thrash, agent-initiated ROTATE (§5.3) — closed All four of §5.3's rotation triggers now land: - **Soft threshold**: `Coordinator.Soft` (default 0.55, `ORCHESTRA_OCCUPANCY_SOFT`) — both `rotate()` and `TurnDecision` request a handoff once occupancy crosses `Soft`, before `Hard` forces one; `TurnDecision` returns `prepare_handoff` advisory (task stays leased, no turn boundary required). - **Agent-initiated ROTATE**: `handoffReason(worktree)` reads a written `.orchestra-handoff.json`; if `reason == "manual"`, both `rotate()` and `TurnDecision` skip occupancy and the turn-boundary probe entirely and release immediately — the agent's own handoff *is* the boundary signal. Shared release-and-certify tail extracted into `Coordinator.finishRelease` so this path gets the same anchor-safety guarantee as the threshold path. - **Milestone + thrash**: needed a transcript/tool-call introspection source this repo didn't have — built new, `internal/herdr/activity.go`: - `ToolCall{Name, Kind, Key, Success, IsTest}` normalizes one tool/function call across harnesses. - `ClaudeActivity` pairs `tool_use`/`tool_result` blocks by `tool_use_id` from the transcript already opened for occupancy (an unresolved tool_use — mid-turn — is dropped, not reported). - `CodexActivity` — **verified against a real live rollout, 2026-07-28**, after the original guessed `function_call`/`function_call_output` shape turned out not to exist anywhere in `~/.codex/sessions`. Real shape: file edits arrive as `event_msg`/`patch_apply_end` (has `changes` + top-level `success` directly, no pairing needed); shell commands arrive as a freeform `response_item`/`custom_tool_call` named `"exec"` whose `input` is a JS snippet — `codexExecCommand` regex-extracts the first embedded `cmd:"..."`; failure is signaled by the literal output prefix `"Script error:"` (confirmed for both a JS syntax error and an `apply_patch` verification failure on this machine's real transcripts). Manually re-ran the rewritten parser against a real multi-hundred-line rollout end-to-end and spot-checked the output by eye, in addition to `TestCodexActivityParsesRealRolloutShape` / `TestCodexActivityMarksScriptErrorAsFailure`. - `OpenCodeActivity` **refuses outright** — opencode's on-disk message storage is only confirmed to carry aggregate token counts, not per-tool-call records; fabricating a parser against an unconfirmed shape would repeat the exact mistake this audit exists to catch. - `DetectThrash(calls, ThrashConfig)` implements all three rules: N consecutive failed test runs (regex-matched build/test commands), the same file edited M times (edit tools only, explicitly excluding `Read` — caught by an initially-failing test), and an identical tool call repeated K times back-to-back (excluding test re-runs and file reads — also caught by an initially-failing test). Defaults 3/5/4, overridable via `Coordinator.Thrash`. - `DetectMilestone(calls)` — deliberately narrow: only "the most recent call was a successful `git commit`." Fuzzier definitions (passing test suite, finished subtask) were not guessed at. - `CLIAdapter.Activity` resolves the session file the same way `Occupancy` does; `ActivityReader` is an optional Face-B capability like the others. - New `ReasonedHandoffRequester`/`CLIAdapter.RequestHandoffReason` names *why* (thrash's dead ends, milestone reasoning) instead of the generic threshold framing. - `rotate()`/`TurnDecision` generalize "reason=manual bypasses occupancy" to `manual`/`milestone`/`thrash` alike: `checkActivityTriggers` runs before falling through to occupancy/soft/hard (thrash takes priority over milestone), and a hit calls `requestReasonedHandoff` — request only, never release, same as the soft-threshold path. Covered by `internal/herdr/activity_test.go` and `internal/orchestrator/rotation_test.go`'s `TestActivityTriggersRequestReasonedHandoffWithoutReleasing`, `TestTurnDecision` subtests for soft-threshold and manual-reason, and `TestRotationRequestsHandoffBeforeReleasing`. **Known remaining limitation:** `DetectMilestone`'s single-command extraction only sees the *first* `cmd:"..."` in a chained Codex exec script, so a `git commit` issued later in the same script isn't recognized as the "last call" even though it executed last. Opencode still has no verified per-tool-call source at all. ### Also closed this pass (not separately numbered in the original audit) - **Codex/opencode Stop-hook-equivalent scripts.** Neither harness has a native Stop hook, so the server-side `/v1/harness/turn` and `/v1/harness/complete` (harness dispatch) existed with no caller for either. Added `deploy/hooks/orchestra-codex-poll.sh` and `orchestra-opencode-poll.sh` — background poll loops (default 60s, `ORCHESTRA_POLL_INTERVAL`) that find the newest session-state file (codex: newest `rollout-*.jsonl`; opencode: newest file under `~/.local/share/opencode/storage/message/`), POST to `/complete` when `.orchestra-report.md` exists, otherwise POST to `/turn` and log (not act on) `refuse`/`rotate_now` — advisory-only, since there's no real turn boundary to refuse *at* from outside either harness process without deeper app-server/SSE integration. - **Bus-level authorization.** `authz.AuthorizeEvent` enforced inside `store.Append` itself (the single choke point every event passes through), not just at HTTP handlers. Event schema bumped to v2, requiring every event to declare a `Surface`; schema v1 events on disk still replay (tolerant reader). - **Dual quota windows.** `router.QuotaAvailability` tracks a 5-hour rolling window and a 7-day weekly window independently per harness, applying the conservative 80% rule to each separately. - **Turn-boundary detection made observable.** An adapter that fails to answer `TurnBoundary` now blocks that tick's release rather than treating the failure as "safe to proceed," and increments `MonitorHealth.TurnBoundaryDegraded`. - **Cross-machine lease correctness has a primitive-level test.** `TestCrossMachineLeaseAnchorAndQuotaArePerHost` exercises a lease claimed through the federation worker HTTP API, validates the anchor against that worker's own local checkout, and asserts quota is accounted per-host — proof for the primitives that exist today; does not yet run against two real physical machines (see federation fork, below). - **Fuzz coverage** (`internal/domain/fuzz_test.go`, `FuzzValidatePayload`/`FuzzValidateEvent`) for all event types including malformed nested payloads — no panic, always a typed error. - **Multi-repo Gitea ingestion.** `provider.Gitea` gained a `Project` field and namespaced `SourceName()`; `provider.MultiGitea` dispatches by `task.Source`; `LoadGiteaConfigs` loads a JSON array of per-project sources. Legacy single-repo env vars still work unchanged. Previously zero tests existed for the Gitea provider at all (an earlier progress.md claim of coverage was inaccurate) — `internal/provider/gitea_test.go` added. - **Per-project repos.** `registry.Project` gained optional `repo`/ `worktree_root`; `main.go` builds a `PerProjectGitWorktrees`, falling back to the global default for any project that omits these fields. - **Rotation's `TaskReleased` payload validity.** `Coordinator.rotate` used to build `{"handoff_ref","reason"}`, omitting the `anchor_sha` the spec and `domain.ValidatePayload` require whenever `handoff_ref` is present — `store.Append` would reject it, the error was discarded (`if c.Store.Append(e) == nil`), and rotation silently never happened, no visible failure. Fixed: `herdr.HeadSHA(worktree)` populates `anchor_sha` from the real worktree HEAD before appending; if the anchor can't be read, rotation now skips that tick instead of emitting a payload guaranteed to fail validation. The federation worker release endpoint (`/v1/federation/workers/{id}/release`) had the identical gap and now requires/forwards a 40-hex-char `anchor_sha`, rejecting with 400 otherwise. --- ## The federation fork — decided 2026-07-27, still the deferred half Two incompatible federation designs coexist in the tree. **Design A — "drive the remote socket" (`clients/herdr-bridge.go`)** remains as a legacy byte proxy but is no longer a coordinator execution path. A multi-machine registry now requires `ORCHESTRA_MACHINE_ID`; the coordinator rejects every non-local herdr before leasing, capture, approval, rotation, release, expiry cleanup, or worktree creation. It always creates the local committed `TASK.md`; remote panes/checkouts are worker-owned. This prevents the old wrong-host `git rev-parse`, anchor validation, and cleanup failures. **Design B — "workers pull tasks" (`/v1/federation/*`)** is the sole remote execution path. `cmd/orchestra-worker` registers, heartbeats, polls/acks leases, and performs Git/herdr operations on the owning machine; coordinator state for captures and pending approvals is durable across restart. Worker offline detection is ticked by the API process rather than depending on a human health request. **Decision, now enforced:** federation workers are the sole remote execution path. The coordinator-side Design A operations are fail-closed rather than guarded piecemeal; `clients/herdr-bridge.go` should be retired from deployment once no other consumer needs it. If the worker binary is ever abandoned, delete `/v1/federation/*` and record the deviation — leaving both designs in place unmarked is explicitly not acceptable; the repo would read as though the spec-conformant path is implemented when nothing can reach it. --- ## Live deployment facts (as of 2026-07-28) - Runs as `orchestra.service` on **homesrv** via this machine's own systemd. `homesrv` has no local herdr running (connection refused on 9245) — only `workpc`'s herdr (`192.168.1.105:9245`) is live and reachable. `main.go` only logs herdr connection *failures* at startup, never successes, so "no log line" for a herdr does not mean it's down. - **Stuck task, deliberately left untouched:** workspace `wA`, task `06FT6CKD9Y98AZRX6X8K3QXFZG`, opencode harness, pane `wA:p1`. From Orchestra's own point of view it is no longer "stuck" — it now reads `state: "failed"` (retries exhausted, `MaxAttempts` hit before B4's fix landed). But the underlying herdr pane is still live and `agent_status: "blocked"`, confirmed via a direct `agent.get` probe — the router gave up and moved on, but nothing ever released or killed the actual agent, confirming the orphaned-pane prediction from B2/B5. Left untouched on purpose: user was asked and chose to leave it rather than have it cleaned up mid-audit. Do not call `pane.close`/`pane.release_agent` against it without asking again first. - First live end-to-end task run (2026-07-28, after rebuilding/redeploying — the running service had been on stale pre-audit commit `325c684`) is what surfaced **B12** above, since fixed and confirmed live; re-verifying it surfaced **B13**, still open. - **Three more live orphaned panes from this pass, left untouched:** `wD:p1` (task `06FTAKSJZTB73FZQE3QT7XQ1J0`, worktree `/tmp/test-e2e-worktrees/06FTAKSJZTB73FZQE3QT7XQ1J0` — has a real attached `claude` session but the task itself is stuck `blocked` from before B12's fix landed), `wE:p1` and `wF:p1` (tasks `06FTAMFKVEPGPKR0H86C08ZZNG` / `06FTANAYZPA55BABR2J4MWQ050` — empty shells, no agent ever attached, see B13). Same rule as `wA:p1`: don't `pane.close`/`pane.release_agent` any of these without asking first. --- ## Known open gaps (as of 2026-07-28) Numbered defects are not repeated here — B19, B20, B21, S12 and S13 are in "Found while implementing B18" above, and the ordering across all of them is in "What's next". This list is the unnumbered residue: conditions that are known, accepted, or not actionable as a single fix. - **Vikunja must become a first-class automatic task source.** The intended path is `Vikunja task → Orchestra task → agent work → Vikunja update`, not manual re-entry through the UI. Its provider needs stable external-ID deduplication, explicit list/project and status/label eligibility mapping, and guarded completion/blocker write-back that cannot create an ingestion loop. Treat this alongside Gitea and JSONL ingestion when building the automatic task-source surface. - **B18's env change is applied repo-side only.** `.orchestra-config/ orchestra.env` now sets `ORCHESTRA_WEB_TOKEN`, but the unit loads `/etc/orchestra/orchestra.env`, which is not readable or writable from this sandbox. See "What's next" item 1. - **The listener still binds all interfaces**; loopback-by-default was considered and not taken (B18). - ~~**`TestAssignsByAffinityCapabilityAndConcurrency` is flaky**~~ — diagnosed and fixed 2026-07-28. The flake was in the test, not in assignment. `Store.Tasks()` ranges a map, so its order is randomized per call, and the assertion indexed **two separate `Tasks()` calls** (`s.Tasks()[0] ... && s.Tasks()[1] ...`); it failed whenever the two orderings disagreed. Instrumenting the failure showed a valid `TaskLeased` event and a genuinely leased task on every "failing" run. It now snapshots once and asserts the real invariant — concurrency 1 means exactly one of the two tasks is leased — and passes at `-count=60`. Worth recording that *which* of two equal-priority tasks wins is still nondeterministic, since `sort.SliceStable` is applied to a randomly ordered slice; that is a real property of the router, not a test artifact. - **B14/B15/B16 are code-fixed but not re-verified under their original live races**, and B17 is closed only for tasks that run through a worker. Each was found live, so deterministic coverage is weaker evidence than the failure that produced it; B16's two-same-harness naming contract is now covered by fake-herdr tests. - **B15's reconciliation is operator-mediated only.** Blocked tasks keep their session and are correctable through the UI, but nothing promotes them automatically and the router still never retries a blocked task. - **`web/` build output and `internal/webui/assets` can silently diverge**; no documented rebuild step ties them together. - **Cross-machine lease correctness proven at the primitive level only** — needs an actual homesrv/workpc pair over the real mesh; this repo cannot exercise that by itself. - **Turn-boundary Face B degrades to occupancy-only** for adapters that don't implement it, by design — degradation is observable (`MonitorHealth.TurnBoundaryDegraded`) and blocks-on-failure, but whether Claude/Codex/opencode's native hooks are wired in a live deployment is a deployment-config fact, not provable from source alone. - **Quota has no live push producer** — only the post-hoc `/v1/harness/complete` producer exists; see B7's "design consequences" for the (unbuilt) Claude statusline / Codex rollout-tail feeds. - **Federation guardrails' landed-status is unverified** — see federation fork section above. - **opencode has no verified per-tool-call activity source** and no first-class quota surface (Zen headers only, would need a plugin) — both named, not attempted, in S11/B7. - **`DetectMilestone`'s single-command extraction** can miss a Codex commit issued later in a chained exec script. Everything else audited (provider layer, continuity schema/validation, router matching, delivery, federation registration primitives) was spot-checked against the code and its tests and matched described behavior. --- ## Handoff provenance correction (2026-07-28) The previous rotation path had a **primacy inversion**: the harness wrote a free-form Markdown “semantic report”, while `canonicalHandoff` fabricated the canonical fields around it (`goal`, `done_when`, a circular action and a `cat` command) and placed the entire report in one `remaining` element. That made the apparent schema a wrapper around prose rather than an authoritative handoff. The release path now asks the harness for only six labelled, bounded answers: `NEXT`, `WHY`, `REMAINING`, `DEAD ENDS`, `OPEN Q`, and `LEARNED`, each with a `NONE` escape. `canonicalHandoff` parses those answers and derives only worker-owned facts (Git anchor, dirty state, metadata, and last observed harness command). It never invents task intent. `goal` and `done_when` were removed from `continuity.Handoff`; pickup must obtain task scope and success criteria from immutable `TASK.md`. `continuity.Handoff.Validate` is the shared semantic gate for both release and pickup. Strict decoding rejects removed/unknown fields, and validation rejects circular handoff actions, commands that point at report/handoff files, oversize or Markdown-smuggled authored list items, and malformed dead ends. A failed release remains refused and is retried by the existing rotation loop; a bad artifact that somehow reaches CAS is also refused at pickup. The fuzzy “empty dead ends after a non-trivial later rotation” signal is intentionally not yet enforced: no reliable diff-size/rotation-index evidence is available at this validation boundary, so inventing a hard rule would create false refusals. Verified after the change with `go test ./...`, `go build ./...`, `go vet ./...`, and `git diff --check`.