A gate runs whatever command the operator configured, so its output is
arbitrary bytes. run_gate captured it with text=True and no encoding, which
decodes with locale.getpreferredencoding() under errors="strict".
One byte the decoder rejects — a test runner's checkmarks or CJK on a
non-UTF-8 Windows console, a stray binary byte anywhere in the stream — kills
subprocess's reader thread. proc.stdout comes back None, the `or ""` fallback
turns that into an empty tail, and an unhandled traceback is dumped to stderr.
The gate's pass/fail verdict still lands on the exit code, but the output tail
is exactly what the retry prompt feeds back so the agent can fix the failure.
With it empty the agent is told a gate failed and given nothing to act on, so
it burns every retry and the goal auto-pauses.
workspace_fingerprint has the same two calls; there a non-ASCII path in
`git status --porcelain` empties the fingerprint, silently disabling the
unchanged-gate skip that exists to stop a stalled agent re-running the same
red suite.
Decode as UTF-8 with errors="replace" — what git and modern toolchains emit,
and what 262 of the repo's 299 text-mode subprocess calls already do.
/goal gate add <command> attaches shell commands to the active goal.
Gates run at turn boundary BEFORE the LLM judge: a failing gate skips
the judge entirely and feeds its exit code + bounded output tail back
as the continuation prompt, so the agent iterates against concrete
evidence instead of a prose verdict.
- Unchanged-workspace skip: a gate that failed on an identical
workspace (git HEAD + status fingerprint) is not re-run — the
recorded failure replays and the attempt count advances.
- Bounded retries (default 3) + per-gate timeout (default 300s);
exhaustion auto-pauses the goal like the turn budget does.
- Gates persist in SessionDB.state_meta with the goal (survive
/resume and compression rotation); pre-gate goal rows load
unchanged.
- /goal gate [list|add|remove|clear] on CLI + gateway; 'gate' added
to the mid-run control-verb whitelist (gates only run at turn
boundary, so editing the list mid-run is safe).
Adapted from the quality-gate concept in Prime Intellect's Prime-Agent
(--autonomous-gate).
Drexuxux