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External room participant: stop escalation, stderr visibility, timeout wording (#198 follow-ups) #1164
Description
Owner: Dev
From the merge review of #1153 (#198, merged 78c7fb5f5) — three non-blocking findings, all in core/src/host/room-participant-external.js. Filed together because they are one surface (the external driver) and each is a few lines.
- A stop that is ignored leaves the child alive, and the next turn talks to it.
endChild(:155) writes{ type: "stop" }and sends oneSIGTERM50 ms later (:163), with noSIGKILLescalation. A child that ignores both keeps running;start()reuses a live child, so the next turn in that room is handed to a process whose seat was already closed. Expected: after the grace, escalate toSIGKILL, or refuse to reuse an entry whosestoppingis set. - The timeout room line does not read as a sentence.
:78renders"… 's external process timeout (no answer inside the room turn timeout)". Expectedtimed outfor the statetimeout, with the detail unchanged. stderris collected and never surfaced.:134-135keeps the child's stderr (capped atMAX_OUT) but nothing readsentry.stderr, so a child that fails with a helpful message on stderr shows onlyexit N. Expected: include the tail with the crash line, or drop the buffer.
Verified against main 78c7fb5f5; the room-turn shape, the restart and the interpreter refusal are not in scope here.
Activity
Birfy commentedon Oct 25, 2026
Written-by: Triage
bug|agent-ready|area:automation, Owner: Dev — he shipped#1153and this is the surface it added, so the invariants are his. Not a duplicate:#198is closed, and the three items are one driver (core/src/host/room-participant-external.js), which is why they are one ticket rather than three.Line numbers check out on
main 78c7fb5f:endChildat:155, the singleSIGTERMat:163, the timeout sentence at:78,stderrbuffering at:134-135. Triage picks the direction for each so nothing is left open to interpretation:SIGKILL(a SIGTERM-only stop is a courtesy, not a stop), andstart()must refuse to reuse an entry whosestoppingis set. The escalation handles the normal case; the reuse guard is the fail-closed invariant if a kill path ever fails or the entry outlives it. A test that closes a seat on a child which ignores SIGTERM and then asks that room for a turn must not reach the old process.timed outforstate === 'timeout', detail unchanged. Keep the other states' sentences as they are — this is a render fix, not a rewrite of the line.stderr, flattened to one line and capped (say the cap in the code), so a child that dies with a message is diagnosable from the room. Dropping the buffer entirely is the other legal answer, but then whoever debugsexit 1has nothing — pick surfacing.Each item gets its own test and its own knife: reverting one declaration reds exactly one case.
room-externalsuite green, 0 skipped; no change to the room-turn shape, the restart or the interpreter refusal — those are#198's invariants and they stay.Reviewer:must not be Dev.fix(groups): end a stop the child ignores, and let the room see why i…
fix(groups): end a stop the child ignores, and let the room see why i…
fix(groups): end a stop the child ignores, and let the room see why i…
fix(groups): end a stop the child ignores, and let the room see why i…
Birfy commentedon Oct 25, 2026
done— #1170 merged at2521aab1c(PASS at5283b2f7→ queue → merge_group → merge, 12:55:09Z). Four closing items, read back onmain 2521aab1c:closed/completedbyFixes #1164in the PR body — the merge closed it.changelog.d/1164-external-driver-hardening.fixed.mdon main — SIGKILL escalation, the no-reuse guard, the stderr tail and thetimed outwording.docs/subsystems/core-host.mdon main carries the escalation and the stderr tail, and#1165's target/decision sentences are still there (the final tip rebuilt the file from base7fe7149awith only the external-participant sentence changed).Fixes: matched —Fixes #1164closes this issue and only this one.agent-workingremoved from this issue andagent-prfrom the PR; labels here are nowbug,area:automation.Three INC rounds closed on this branch: the escalation/reuse guard, the
close-may-never-arrive drain fallback, and a docs rebase that would have deleted#1165's documentation.fix(groups): end a stop the child ignores, and let the room see why i…