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# 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 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.
- A real browser loaded the deployed SPA with a valid Web session and crashed
before painting: `overview.sessions` is JSON `null`, while the bundle calls
`sessions.length`. Task detail has the same fault for `events: null`.
Source now emits empty arrays and the frontend is defensive; the current
local build renders the live board and task record. **The deployment still
needs a rebuild/redeploy.**
- 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.
- The live image predates the source session/logout work: `DELETE
/v1/ui/session` returns `405`. Do not treat token rotation as session
revocation until that endpoint is deployed.
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.** Project the structured blocking
reason/error into the task read model. Group the board by reason and age
(for example: lease failure, worker offline, expired lease, approval,
handoff validation, operator block) rather than rendering a giant generic
“Blocked” lane.
2. **Persist last-session and pane evidence.** Before a worker/coordinator
drops a terminal session mapping, retain harness, pane ID, last successful
capture/check, and a pane status of `open`, `closed`, `unreachable`, or
`unknown`. The UI must show the source and timestamp. For old records that
lack this evidence, say **unknown — legacy record has no retained
blocker/pane evidence**, never imply a live or closed pane.
3. **Make the task page lead with the diagnosis.** Put reason, last activity,
pane state, and next safe action first. Hide unavailable lifecycle forms
behind an “Unavailable actions” disclosure; an empty session must not
consume most of the page with disabled controls.
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 in code; live success still unproven
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. A successful live worker handoff,
release, and pickup remains the required operational proof.
**QA attempt (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
successful handoff or a release-path regression. The worker must be given a
fresh fixture whose combined `NEXT`/`WHY` action does not mention a handoff
(for example, `WHY: verify canonical artifact construction`), then the
release and successor pickup must be observed. The coordinator is token-gated
and this host cannot read the protected worker credential, so this session
could not enqueue that replacement task. The failed disposable pane was left
untouched; no destructive herdr calls were issued.
### 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/<task-id>` 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 B1B11
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. **Prove a successful B17 worker handoff.** Use a bounded disposable task
with a concrete next action and verify canonical report upload, release,
follow-up pickup, and cleanup. The rejection path is proven; success is
not.
2. **Fix health semantics and ntfy.** Report worker/local-herdr health
separately from legacy TCP registry probes, and correct the ntfy server
credential causing `403 Forbidden`.
3. **Address the Web UI backlog above**, starting with queue explanations,
actionable worker health, and a usable approval/recovery workflow.
4. **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/<ref>` 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`.