Not my work. These nine files sat uncommitted in the shared checkout while another session worked on them, and the UI redesign that follows rewrites web/src/main.tsx and web/src/style.css. Committing first means that work is recoverable rather than overwritten. Contents, by inspection rather than by authorship: whitespace normalisation and edits across main.tsx, 568 added lines of style.css, client and client test changes, the orchestra-user line in build.sh, and docs updates to AGENTS.md, AUDIT.md, DEPLOYMENT.md and the env example. Committed at the operator's explicit instruction.
8.7 KiB
Orchestra
A Go implementation of orchestra-spec (1).md — an unattended multi-agent
task orchestrator that leases coding tasks to CLI harnesses (Claude Code,
Codex, opencode) running inside herdr-managed panes, rotates them across
context-window limits, and hands off work via a git-anchored continuity
protocol.
Layout: internal/{domain,store,provider,registry,router,herdr,orchestrator, continuity,federation,delivery,authz,operations,admin} + cmd/orchestra/main.go.
Ground truth over documentation
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 (bare continue on error, discarded return values). See AUDIT.md
for the full audit; it is also the running log (there is no separate log
file). Before trusting a claim in AUDIT.md that something "works"
or "is fixed," check the actual call site — the file is written by past
sessions of this same assistant and has previously overstated completion.
The single most reliable way to verify herdr-adapter code is right: don't
read internal/herdr/adapter.go and assume the method names are real. Ping
the live herdr instance and check.
herdr protocol — verified against a live instance, 2026-07-27
- herdr speaks JSON-RPC over a raw TCP (or unix-socket) connection — not
HTTP.
internal/herdr/herdr.go'sClient.Callis the only correct way to talk to it; a barecurlto the port returns nothing. - Request shape:
{"id":"<n>","method":"<name>","params":<object>}. Herdr's Rust JSON-RPC decoder requiresparamsto be present and rejects a barenull— always send{}for parameterless calls (the client does this automatically). - Full real method list is committed at
deploy/herdr-schema.json, captured live from192.168.1.105:9245(theworkpcherdr) since no localherdrCLI is available in this sandbox — the schema was reconstructed by sending an unknown method name and reading theunknown variant ... expected one of ...error, then probing each method of interest withparams:{}/params:{pane_id:"nonexistent"}to read Rust serde'smissing field <x>errors for its param shape. - Confirmed invented (do not use, they don't exist):
pane.release,pane.kill,pane.rotation_signal,pane.status. If you see these anywhere, it's a bug, not a valid call. - Real replacements:
pane.close({pane_id})for kill;pane.release_agent({pane_id, source, agent})for release (structurally different — does not return ahandoff_ref, see below). No replacement exists forrotation_signal— herdr has no concept of Orchestra rotation. - Architectural point that's easy to get wrong: herdr never produces a
handoff. The agent writes the handoff artifact (§6.1 of the spec); herdr's
role in "release" is only to drop its own claim on the pane/agent binding.
Any adapter code that expects herdr to hand back a
handoff_refis wrong by construction, independent of whether the method name is right. - Protocol version is returned as a JSON number (
17), not a string, even thoughconfig.jsoncdeclares"protocol": "17"as a string.CheckProtocol's raw-bytes fallback happens to make this compare correctly today — don't "clean up" that code without checking this note first, or it might start doing a real numeric-vs-string comparison and break.
Deployment topology (as of 2026-07-31)
- Runs under Docker Compose, not systemd.
docker compose -f compose.yaml -f compose.live.yamlin/home/kami/docker-apps/orchestra-web-ui, building both images from this repo:orchestra-api(bound0.0.0.0:9145, which is intentional — ufw restricts the port to one other LAN machine) andorchestra-web-ui(nginx proxy,127.0.0.1:19145). Logs aredocker logs orchestra-api. Deploying a code change means rebuilding the compose images (up -d --build) — the running image can silently predate recent commits, so compare its build time againstgit log. orchestra.servicewas the previous deployment; its unit file andredeploy.shwere deleted fromdeploy/on 2026-07-31. A stale installed copy must stay stopped — it binds the same port and data dir as the container.orchestra-worker.serviceis a different, still-current unit.- Config: env vars come from
.envin the compose directory viaenv_file:; onlyconfig.jsoncis bind-mounted into/etc/orchestra/. There is no container entrypoint script —Dockerfile.apiexecs/app/orchestradirectly. Neither deployed file is the repo'sdeploy/config.example.jsonc. - Browser operator accounts live in
$ORCHESTRA_DATA/auth.db. Create or reset one withorchestra-user set -data /data -username NAMEwhile the API is stopped, or use the authenticated Settings screen. The oldORCHESTRA_WEB_USERNAME/ORCHESTRA_WEB_PASSWORD_HASHpair is accepted only for a one-time import into an empty database and should then be removed. - Two machines in the registry:
homesrv(192.168.1.104) andworkpc(192.168.1.105), each nominally running 3 herdrs (claude/codex/opencode). In practice homesrv has no local herdr running (connection refused on 9245) — only workpc's herdr is live and reachable.main.goonly logs herdr connection failures at startup, never successes, so "no log line" for a herdr does not mean it's down — check reachability directly. - There was a real, live, stuck task as of 2026-07-27: workspace
wA, task id06FT6CKD9Y98AZRX6X8K3QXFZG, opencode harness, panewA:p1,agent_status: "blocked". Likely stuck because rotation/release could never reach it (B2/B5). Check whether it's still stuck before assuming fixes here have taken effect operationally — code fixes don't retroactively unstick an already-orphaned pane; that needs a manual kill/restart once the release path is trustworthy.
Federation — Design B is the live design (as of 2026-07-30)
Design B ("workers pull tasks", /v1/federation/*) is the live design and
has a real client: cmd/orchestra-worker/main.go (~1,131 lines, with tests in
cmd/orchestra-worker/main_test.go) is the deployed worker — the workpc
OpenCode worker runs it. Build new cross-machine work on Design B.
The Design A guardrail has landed: Coordinator.adapterFor
(internal/orchestrator/orchestrator.go, the LocalHerdr check) refuses to
resolve an adapter for a session owned by a non-local herdr, returning
session %s is owned by non-local herdr %s instead of validating a git anchor
(git rev-parse HEAD) against the wrong machine's checkout. Rotation/cleanup
therefore no longer act on remote leases.
Design A is gone (deleted 2026-07-31). clients/herdr-bridge.go ("drive
the remote socket": homesrv calling worktree.create/agent.start directly on
workpc's herdr over TCP as if it were local) was deleted along with the whole
clients/ directory — the operator confirmed it is undeployed now that workers
carry cross-machine work, which superseded the 2026-07-27 "keep through Phase
5" decision. There is no bridge to preserve; do not reintroduce
coordinator-side calls to a remote herdr socket.
Completion is worker-owned. orchestra-worker watches for an
.orchestra/done marker, confirms via AgentStatus that the agent is no
longer busy, then posts through /v1/federation/* with the lease epoch and
expected version. The old harness-hook path — .orchestra-report.md plus
POST /v1/harness/complete — is deleted, endpoint, handler, and
deploy/hooks/ scripts alike. /v1/harness/turn remains for turn-boundary
decisions.
Working conventions
- workpc worker deployment target: copy the built worker binary to
workpc:~/orchestra-deploy/orchestra-worker(that is,/home/kami/orchestra-deploy/orchestra-worker), not directly to/usr/local/bin. The workpc deployment process installs from this staging path. Verify the remote checksum and Go build revision before restart. go build ./...,go vet ./..., andgo test ./...must all pass —go vetwas broken for a while (duplicate JSON struct tags) and nobody noticed because onlybuild/testwere being checked. Always run all three.- Silent
continue-on-error is the recurring bug pattern in this codebase (adapter lookups, rotation, expiry). When touchinginternal/orchestratororinternal/herdr, prefer a recorded/observable failure (MonitorHealthfields) over a barecontinue— that's literally what turned B1/B2 invisible for as long as they were. - Don't invoke destructive herdr calls (
pane.close,pane.release_agent) against a real pane from an investigative/audit session without asking first — there is live operator state on the other end (see the stuck-task note above).