Smoke-5 root cause. Agents wrote 5 decisions / 8 reflections / 1 struggle
during the run — every single entry persisted with task_id=NULL. The C8
tracing gate then never saw them and PMs spiraled forever on
'missing: journal:decision' while their decisions sat orphaned.
Cause: ContentActions.note/say/dm/notify called
TaskService.get_active_task_for_agent for task_id auto-injection. That
helper filters to _DEV_ACTIVE_STATUSES = {claimed, in_progress,
verifying, awaiting_qa, awaiting_documentation}. BLOCKED, PAUSED, and
NEEDS_REVISION fall outside that set — so the moment an agent gets
stuck (which is exactly when they journal), auto-injection returns None
and the entry persists without task_id.
Fix:
- New TaskService.get_journal_context_task_for_agent — same shape as
get_active_task_for_agent but the status set
_JOURNAL_CONTEXT_STATUSES adds BLOCKED, PAUSED, NEEDS_REVISION.
- ContentActions.note/say/dm/notify use the new lookup.
- ContentActions.commit keeps the narrow get_active_task_for_agent —
can't commit from blocked, so the dev-active set is correct there.
Tests:
- tests/unit/services/test_journal_context_lookup.py — 5 tests pinning
the two queries: journal-context INCLUDES blocked/paused/needs_revision,
dev-active EXCLUDES them.
- Existing content-actions tests updated to stub the new method
alongside the old one.
This alone may be 70% of what was killing smoke runs end-to-end.
Smoke run 3 showed inconsistent return strings — main-pm got
status='sent', be-pm got status='posted' for the same verb.
Confirmed say() already returns 'posted' at its sole success exit.
Added test_say_status.py to pin the canonical past-tense pattern
(note->'noted', say->'posted', notify_ack->'acked') and prevent
regression. dm() and notify() retain 'sent' — different verbs,
different semantics.
Spec ref: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-12-post-smoke-3-fixes-design.md
section B3.
Renn F