A process that finishes while the child is alive needs no handoff, but if the child never
polls/waits/logs it, the result vanished: the completion notice is suppressed in the parent
and the child's summary never mentions it. Finalization now attaches exit code + output
tail as unread_completions, rendered in the parent's delegation notice.
A child's background processes are killed at its teardown and their
notify_on_complete notices are suppressed in the parent, yet the child's
terminal result still said `notify_on_complete: true` and the parent's
delegation notice said nothing about processes left behind. Orchestrators
believed "CI watcher running" and waited on a completion that could never
arrive (recurring in the Sep 7 campaign sessions).
- process_manage(action="handoff", session_id, data="<purpose>"), children
only: process_registry.transfer_ownership flips owner_task_id/task_id/
session_key to the parent under the registry lock, so the completion is
stamped with the parent's owner at exit, passes the parent's sa- filter,
and is reaped by the parent, not the child. Cap 3 per child; an exited,
foreign, or non-child request is a tool error. The purpose rides the
event as handoff_note and renders in the parent's notice.
- Child terminal(background=True, notify=True) now returns
notify_on_complete=false plus a note: wait, kill, or hand off.
- _ChildRun.account_background_processes records handed_off_processes and
orphaned_processes on the result before cleanup kills the leftovers; the
parent's delegation block renders both.
Three orchestrator failures traced through the Sep 7 gpt-6-astra campaign sessions:
1. delegation.independent_completions (new, default false). #104299 made every
ungrouped task its own completion message, so a 15-task call woke the
orchestrator up to 15 times; one chain received 132 notices and answered
130 of them with "already incorporated". A multi-task call now returns as
ONE consolidated message unless the flag is on; `group` is inert until then.
2. Queued units were killed before they started. Units of one call share a
pool slot but the executor was still sized by slots, so with 15 units live
a new unit queued behind a full pool; the stale monitor's clock ran from
dispatch, interrupted it at 450 s, and the child exited `interrupted 0.02s`
when its thread finally came up (13 such lanes in one session). The
executor now grows to the number of live units and the stall clock arms
when the runner actually starts.
3. The tool text said "do not wait or poll — just continue" without saying
that completions are delivered only BETWEEN turns. A model that never ends
its turn (one 203-minute turn, 717 API calls) never received 40 finished
results. Tool description, dispatch note and completion header now say to
finish independent work, give a one-line status, and end the turn.
A background delegate_task call used to be ONE async unit: the runner joined on
every child and a single consolidated message re-entered the conversation when
the SLOWEST finished. Fifteen independent PR reviews therefore waited on the
fifteenth before the parent could act on the first.
Each task now carries an optional `group`. `_units_of` partitions the call's
children into units — one per distinct group, one per ungrouped task — and each
unit is dispatched to the async registry on its own, so its results re-enter the
conversation as soon as THAT unit is done. Tasks that must be compared or merged
share a group and still return together.
Capacity is unchanged: every unit of one call joins the first unit's pool slot
(`slot_key` in `async_delegation._dispatch`), so splitting never consumes more of
`delegation.max_concurrent_children` than the call did. Unit ids suffix the
call's id (`deleg_xxxx-1`, `-2`, …) so live transcripts stay under one dir; the
completion block names the group and notes that sibling units report separately;
`active_task_count` counts a unit's own tasks.
Root AGENTS.md 100,797 → 29,295 chars: what applies everywhere (invariants, rubric, footprint ladder, layout + shape rules, commit/PR, testing) plus a routing table. Area rules move to agent/, hermes_cli/, gateway/, tools/, plugins/, tui_gateway/, web/, skills/, cron/, apps/desktop/src/ AGENTS.md (3–9k each; ceiling is now 32k after d61cff60e3, target ~8k). Long-form process-identity and skin key tables go to website/docs/developer-guide/cli-internals.md. Zero rule loss; map in /tmp/rf/agents_md_zero_loss.md. Stale Bot Mode test paths corrected to apps/desktop/src/plugins/hermes-bots/*.test.ts.
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