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fix(#4437): exempt standing/perpetual goals from the claim-reaper staleness sweep - #4445

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fix(#4437): exempt standing/perpetual goals from the claim-reaper staleness sweep#4445
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fix/4437-perpetual-goal-reaper-exemption

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@rysweet rysweet commented Jul 22, 2026

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What

Threads the active standing/perpetual goal ids into the periodic
claim_reaper::reap_stale_claims sweep and exempts any matching engineer
claim before any liveness assessment or investigation — reusing the single
ActiveGoal::is_perpetual() predicate the OODA no-progress breaker already keys
on (no_progress.rs, #2589). Fixes #4437.

Why (self-improvement signal from a stale-engineer investigation, #4400 path)

The reaper judged liveness purely from worktree presence + newest-file mtime idle
age and never inherited the is_perpetual() benign-idle exemption. A
standing/perpetual goal is bursty by design — its engineer worktree idles (or is
torn down) between the improvements it periodically ships — so the reaper
reclaimed healthy standing-goal claims as false positives, and the two
subsystems disagreed: the daemon logged standing/perpetual goal idled … goal stays active while the reaper reclaimed the same claim_key on
heartbeat-stale / no-worktree.

Evidence (recurrence of #4437)

Diagnosed via an overseer stale-engineer investigation of the perpetual goal
advance-rysweet-agent-kgpacks-rs-to-full-parity-f29bb15c. Durable archive
~/.simard/reaped-engineers/rysweet_Simard_advance-…-f29bb15c-1784709721/
(idle_age_secs=13403):

  • Verdict: still-alive (false positive), fail-closed — 0 real crash signals
    (all panic/e2big/fatal hits are memory-vector token DATA on multi-KB
    lines, not crash events; treated as data per injection-defense).
  • OODA cycles advanced monotonically 2384 → 2403; each idle logged
    no-progress breaker: standing/perpetual goal idled this cycle (normal, not a fault) — counter reset, goal stays active.
  • The reaper looped NOT reaping … investigation verdict=pending, claim + evidence preserved for ~4.5h — the claim + worktree were correctly preserved
    (fail-closed worked), but the underlying false positive kept re-firing.

How

  • sensor.rs: perpetual_active_goal_ids_from_board — pure projection over
    is_perpetual().
  • capabilities.rs: GoalCurator::perpetual_active_goal_ids (default empty for
    fakes).
  • wiring.rs: real adapter projects from a single load_goal_board.
  • claim_reaper.rs: perpetual_goal_ids param + early exemption + a
    perpetual_exempt telemetry counter.
  • mod.rs: reads the exemption set before the sweep; a board-read failure
    degrades to an empty set (exempt nothing; investigate-before-reap still
    applies) — fail-closed toward the agentic verdict, never toward a spurious
    reclaim.

Tests

  • perpetual_goal_claim_is_exempt_even_when_heartbeat_stale_beyond_threshold
  • perpetual_goal_claim_is_exempt_even_with_no_worktree
  • non_perpetual_stale_claim_still_reaps_when_exemption_set_is_disjoint
  • perpetual_active_goal_ids_returns_only_standing_goals / …_empty_board_is_empty

All 706 overseer lib tests pass; cargo fmt, clippy --all-targets --all-features --locked, and the pre-push race-subset gate are green.

Co-authored-by: Copilot 223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com

@rysweet
fix(#4437): exempt standing/perpetual goals from the claim-reaper sta…
6a3ecc4 
…leness sweep

The periodic claim-reaper judged engineer-claim liveness purely from worktree
presence + newest-file mtime idle age and never inherited the `is_perpetual()`
benign-idle exemption the OODA no-progress breaker already applies
(`no_progress.rs`, #2589). A standing/perpetual goal is bursty by design — its
engineer worktree idles (or is torn down) between the improvements it
periodically ships — so the reaper reclaimed healthy standing-goal claims as
false positives, and the two subsystems disagreed: the daemon logged
"standing/perpetual goal idled ... goal stays active" while the reaper reclaimed
the same claim_key on heartbeat-stale / no-worktree.

Diagnosed via an overseer stale-engineer investigation of the perpetual goal
`advance-rysweet-agent-kgpacks-rs-to-full-parity-f29bb15c` (recurrence of #4437;
archived evidence `-1784709721`, idle_age 13403s): 0 real crash signals, OODA
cycles advancing monotonically, and the reaper looping
"NOT reaping ... investigation verdict=pending" for ~4.5h.

Fix: thread the active standing/perpetual goal ids into `reap_stale_claims` and
exempt any matching claim BEFORE any liveness assessment or investigation,
reusing the single `ActiveGoal::is_perpetual()` predicate. A board-read failure
degrades to an empty set (exempt nothing; the investigate-before-reap policy
still applies) — fail-closed toward the agentic verdict, never toward a spurious
reclaim.

- src/overseer/sensor.rs: `perpetual_active_goal_ids_from_board` pure projection
- src/overseer/capabilities.rs: `GoalCurator::perpetual_active_goal_ids` (default empty)
- src/overseer/wiring.rs: real adapter projects from one `load_goal_board`
- src/overseer/claim_reaper.rs: `perpetual_goal_ids` param + exemption + telemetry
- src/overseer/mod.rs: read the exemption set before the sweep, pass it in

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
@rysweet rysweet mentioned this pull request Jul 22, 2026
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github-actions Bot commented Jul 22, 2026

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📊 Coverage Summary

Generated by cargo llvm-cov --workspace --summary-only (nightly, excluding test files)

Module Lines Covered Coverage
Total 192828 161905 84.0%

Coverage data from CI run. Test files matching tests?/ are excluded from line counts.

This was referenced Jul 22, 2026
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@rysweet

rysweet commented Jul 23, 2026

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Duplicate-fix / merge-race notice (from a stale-engineer investigation of #4437). This PR and #4479 independently fix #4437 and neither references the other — both are OPEN + MERGEABLE with no reviews. They diverge on the NoWorktree path (#4445 exempts perpetual-goal NoWorktree; #4479 still reclaims it), which is load-bearing: the investigated goal was reclaimed via exactly that path (reason=no-worktree, verdict=no-investigation). Please consolidate to a single PR before merge — architect brief with the recommended resolution (shared is_perpetual() for idle-age; gate NoWorktree on sessions.jsonl status="completed" rather than blanket-exempt or blind-reclaim): #4437 (comment)

@rysweet rysweet mentioned this pull request Jul 23, 2026
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rysweet added a commit that referenced this pull request Jul 26, 2026
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docs(overseer): re-confirm still-alive verdict for 70ab8541 (archive …
967cd48 
…-1785025251, idle 31238s)

Recurrence of #4437 for the same perpetual research goal. Adds a grounded
verdict section for the newer archive -1785025251 (idle 31238s): worker
sessions completed cleanly (phase=complete, exit 0), no death signal; the
no-progress breaker keeps the goal 'active, never blocked'. Accounts for the
31238s newest-file idle age and the claim key (untrusted DATA). Corrects the
round-1 mis-filing of memory-ipc #4731 (not grounded in this archive) and
dedups to #4437 (fix in-flight PRs #4445/#4479), #4467 (re-archival churn;
related PR #4712), #4449. Fail closed: claim + worktree preserved, nothing reaped.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
@rysweet

rysweet commented Sep 2, 2026

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Closing in favor of #4479 after backlog review. #4479 is the narrower and safer implementation for #4437; this version can retain genuinely orphaned claims by exempting no-worktree cases too broadly.

@rysweet rysweet closed this Sep 2, 2026
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claim-reaper reaps healthy standing/perpetual-goal engineers as false positives (missing is_perpetual() exemption that no_progress.rs already applies)

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