THE BUG THAT PROMPTED THIS. tangled_pr.py judged success ONLY by an HX-Redirect header on the POST.
A create that SUCCEEDED but answered without that header read as a failure, so the caller retried
and Tangled grew duplicates — that is exactly how #397, #398 and #399 were filed for one branch. A
response header describes what the server meant to say; it is not the artifact.
Now it checks the artifact, in both directions:
* BEFORE posting, refuse if an open pull already exists for this source branch, naming it. A
retry cannot duplicate, whatever the response said. (--allow-duplicate to override.)
* AFTER posting, confirm against the pulls list: a new pull number that did not exist before,
whose page names this source branch, IS the success — with or without a redirect header.
* Failure is reported only when no such pull appeared. A false failure is worse than a loud
error here, because the caller's remedy is to retry.
Verified live: a dry-run against a branch that already has a pull refuses with rc=3, naming #417.
TWO REAL DEFECTS FOUND BY WRITING THE TESTS.
agents.py shelled out to `pgrep -P` and `ps -o comm=`. Neither is on the agent PATH on this host,
and a missing binary under shell=True returns rc=127 with EMPTY stdout — indistinguishable from
"this process has no children" and "no build is running". So _build_running was ALWAYS False and
the stall detector could reboot an agent mid-build. Both now read /proc directly: no PATH
dependency, and it cannot fail silently in that direction.
That shipped because the unit tests MOCKED pgrep and ps. The fakes stood in for the broken
dependency, so the suite passed on a host where neither tool was reachable and never exercised the
real path. The tests now patch _proc_descendants and _comms — the seams this repo owns. A test that
mocks a dependency proves the mock works.
Also fixed a monkeypatch leak those tests had: restoration used a name derivation that silently
matched nothing, so the patch escaped into another test class and failed an unrelated test — only
in a full run, never when that test ran alone. Now addCleanup, which cannot be ordered wrong.
NEW: tests/test_tools.py, 24 tests over tangled_pr, tangled_pr_close and gateway-domain, with every
HTTP boundary injected so they run offline. Mutation-checked: breaking classify(), the pull-number
regex, the branch match, or the scan bound each turns the suite red. Suite is 93 tests, green, and
order-stable across repeated runs.
README: a "PATH on a NixOS host" section. Every one of ps, pgrep, free, cmp, awk, curl, diff,
strings, nm, getent and ping is INSTALLED here and simply not on the agent PATH, so each reports
"command not found" and reads as a missing package. Documents how to check before concluding a tool
is absent, how to add the system profile, `nix shell` for what is genuinely missing, and the rule
that harness code should not shell out for what the kernel already exposes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V3LdmEL7CvCYTNpoBq1kce
Completes b73af35. That commit stopped the cap from killing a live build, but the OTHER branch still
rebooted past the stated deadline regardless of a running build — and an agent blocked on a shell cannot
re-emit a fresh marker to extend its estimate. So a cargo-mutants run that simply overran its guess would
still be killed at the guess, throwing the work away. The deadline is an ESTIMATE; a running build is a
FACT. Order is now: absolute cap (waiting_until_max) > live build > stated deadline. The cap is the one
bound that reboots even mid-build — which is exactly how a genuinely hung build gets caught, so a runaway
still cannot park forever. Tests: live-build-defers-past-deadline, past-deadline-no-build-reboots,
cap-is-absolute-and-reboots-a-hung-build. 68 pass.
Found in production: rust-mutation emitted WAITING-UNTIL 3h11m out for a cargo-mutants run over the whole
workspace (a genuinely multi-hour job, cargo running the whole time), but the marker branch skipped the
build-aware check entirely and went straight to the cap — so the 7200s cap would have killed a live run and
thrown away hours of work. The cap exists to catch a session that PARKED itself and is stuck; a build still
running under the session is proof it is not. Now the cap only fires when idle exceeds it AND no build is
running. The stated deadline remains the hard bound either way, so a runaway still cannot park forever.
Tests: cap-reboots-when-no-build, cap-yields-to-a-live-build, past-deadline-reboots-even-with-a-build. 68 pass.
_parse_waiting_until scanned only the pane's last non-empty line for footer_ui backends (claude/
opencode) — but their input-box footer always renders BELOW the agent's final message, so the marker
was never seen and WAITING-UNTIL was effectively dead for claude agents. It's only consulted once the
pane is already idle, so scan the whole capture and take the most-recent marker (the footer never
contains it). Add waiting_until_max (default 7200s) so an agent can't park its own reboot forever.
Tests: footer-honors-marker-above-footer, takes-most-recent, defer + cap in stall_check_one; make the
stall harness's patch() idempotent so a re-patched name doesn't leak into tearDown. 66 pass.
13 tests across 4 classes: the build-proc match set (build tools match; python/node/bash/claude and
substring look-alikes don't), _proc_descendants (real child tree, roots excluded), _build_running
(session-scoped, comm-matched, never the claude root, custom regex override), and stall_check_one's
defer/reboot/hard-cap behavior. Full suite 64 pass.
Unit tests (no agents/tmux): config load + defaults merge, kickoff-template
assembly, phase machine (advance/idempotent-complete/append-resumes), limit
reset-banner parsing, WAITING-UNTIL/stall parsing, claude+opencode activity
detectors. Live smokes bring a throwaway project up THROUGH agents.py on each
real backend in an isolated sandbox (unique prefix, opencode on a non-4096
port), verify attach + status + down, and clean up. tests/run.sh runs unit
always + smokes when backends present; README documents it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
notplantsandClaude Fable 5
autonomic-botandClaude Opus 4.8