Three points from the PR #41 Copilot review, each a robustness gap on a path
the happy case never takes:
- phases._mine() gated the beat on the assignee even when this checkout has
no git name — but agents.claim_for_launch() cannot gate a launch there and
lets it through, so a phase could start (branch cut, run recorded) and then
advance nowhere. _mine() now treats "no local identity" as the lone actor,
matching the launch it mirrors.
- phases._record() ignored whether the log line landed. The log is the
durable memory a restart reads to tell "already started" from "not reached
yet"; a launch or merge with no line behind it is what a restart repeats.
_record() now raises _Halt when the write fails — before the action it was
meant to precede — split from a best-effort _write_log() the halt path and
_start() use so recording a halt can never itself raise.
- github._pr_base() switched a member PR's base to the phase branch only when
it existed locally. A board that did not run the phase knows it only through
the remote (sync fetches origin/main and nothing else), so _pr_base() now
also honours a phase branch the remote carries, and _open_pr() only pushes
the base when it is a local branch.
Four new tests in tests/test_phase_runs.py cover each. Full suite green (740).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Starting a phase cuts phase/<stem> from the newest main it can see and
works the list into it: each member branched from the phase's tip, run
headless, merged back when its checks are green, the next one started.
At the end one PR into main, for a human. The human gate moves from
every card to the phase boundary, and the promise survives: the board
merges into a branch it created, inside a scope you opened.
The runner is a beat, not an agent — everything it decides is already
structured state, and an agent paid to poll would be the wrong tool at
the wrong price. It holds no registry of where a phase is. Two durable
things carry the memory, and the board already writes both: git, where
a member is finished when its branch is contained in the phase branch,
and the card, which grows a ## Phase log the runner adds one line to
per decision. The log is what tells "this member has run and it ended
badly" from "the phase has not reached it yet" — without it a
restarted board would relaunch a run that died.
Containment alone is not enough to call a member merged: a clean exit
that committed nothing leaves an empty branch that is contained. The
card has to have settled into review/ too, or a broken launch would
hide exactly where it always tries to.
Five conditions halt, each already a visible state on the card, and a
halt is written once and then held. Running the phase again is the
person's decision and is what clears it — the run is scoped to its own
log line, so a member whose run died is launchable again. A dependency
that has not landed is a wait, not a halt.
Merges are additive throughout: main into the phase branch on every
beat so a long run does not drift into one enormous conflict, members
into it as they go green, nothing rebased and nothing force-pushed. A
conflict aborts, leaves the branch as it was, and halts naming the
files that collided.
The actor rule decides who runs it, written where it already lives:
the phase card's assignee. A replica renders the phase and advances
nothing. Reachable through /api/phase/run and the ticker; the header
chip and the card actions are a separate card.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
