fix(session): keep a tab working while Claude waits for its own workers

When Claude hands work to an ultracode workflow or background agents, it
ends its own turn and closes it with `✻ Waiting for 1 dynamic workflow to
finish` instead of `✻ Brewed for 1m 18s`, then resumes by itself when the
workers report back. The pane sits quiet with the composer up, so the idle
probe called the session idle for the whole wait. At phone width the
workflow's progress row also drops its ticking timer, so nothing on screen
changes for minutes.

A new optional registry field, `capabilities.workDetect.awaitingLine`,
names that closing row, and `_probePaneWorking()` counts it as work.
Claude renders the row once from a snapshot and never redraws it, so the
same words stay on screen after the workers finish. `isAwaitingWorkers()`
therefore tests only the newest column-0 row directly above the composer,
never the whole pane and never the PTY stream; a follow-up turn always
puts rows of its own there. The column-0 anchor also keeps an agent from
holding its own tab busy by printing the sentence.

Verified against the live Mac mini pane that reported the bug (2.1.283),
and end to end on an isolated instance: an ultracode session running a
90 s workflow at 46 columns stayed busy through the wait and the
follow-up turn, then went idle 6 s after that turn closed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Codeman maintainer
2026-09-28 16:18:27 +02:00
parent 45ea2e1d32
commit 7659ca8b44
10 changed files with 381 additions and 6 deletions
+16 -3
View File
@@ -46,8 +46,9 @@ interface CliEntry {
launch: CliLaunch; // the structured argv template
env: CliEnv; // exports, tmux setenv keys, the env-override allowlist
capabilities: CliCapabilities; // what every call site reads instead of the id
// .workDetect?: { promptGlyph, workingLine, watchingLine?, watchingLines? } — how
// this CLI's pane shows work, and how it shows work it started in the background
// .workDetect?: { promptGlyph, workingLine, watchingLine?, watchingLines?, awaitingLine? }
// — how this CLI's pane shows work, work it started in the background, and a turn
// that ended waiting for workers it will resume from
overlays: CliOverlays; // remote-SSH / Docker pane commands, credential store
}
```
@@ -56,7 +57,7 @@ interface CliEntry {
### Regexes that come from config
Three capability fields carry a regular expression an override file can set: `discovery.version.regex`, `capabilities.workDetect.workingLine` and `capabilities.workDetect.watchingLine`. All three go through `compileVersionRegex()`, which caps the source at 200 characters, refuses the nested-quantifier shapes that cause catastrophic backtracking, and returns `null` rather than throwing so every caller degrades instead of crashing.
Four capability fields carry a regular expression an override file can set: `discovery.version.regex`, `capabilities.workDetect.workingLine`, `capabilities.workDetect.watchingLine` and `capabilities.workDetect.awaitingLine`. All four go through `compileVersionRegex()`, which caps the source at 200 characters, refuses the nested-quantifier shapes that cause catastrophic backtracking, and returns `null` rather than throwing so every caller degrades instead of crashing.
`workingLine` is the one that matters most, because it is compiled once per session and then run against every accumulated PTY chunk and every pane capture. A nested quantifier there is a ReDoS against the event loop for the whole server, not just that session. The guard therefore runs in two places, and neither is redundant: `schema.ts` rejects the entry at LOAD time so a bad pattern never reaches a session, and `_workingLinePattern()` in `session.ts` compiles through the same helper so the runtime cannot end up with a pattern the schema would have refused.
@@ -76,6 +77,18 @@ entry declares `watchingLines: 3` and matches that row end to end. Both were mea
against live panes rather than read out of a binary, which is the standard for adding a
third.
`awaitingLine` covers the quiet pane that is neither idle nor watching: a turn that ENDED
to wait for workers the CLI will resume from by itself. When background agents or an
ultracode workflow are still running at turn end, Claude closes the turn with
`✻ Waiting for 1 dynamic workflow to finish` instead of `✻ Brewed for 1m 18s`, and a pane
showing that row counts as working. ⚠️ Claude renders the row once and never redraws it, so
the words are still on screen after the workers report back and the follow-up turn ends.
The pattern is therefore never run over the whole pane: `isAwaitingWorkers()`
(`session-activity.ts`) walks up from the composer past blank, framed and indented rows and
tests only the first row that starts in column 0, which is the newest transcript row. Claude
starts its own rows in column 0 and the agent's prose never does, so the anchor also keeps an
agent from holding its own session busy.
That label is the one value in the registry that an AGENT can influence, because it comes off
the agent's own screen. Two things keep it honest, and both belong to whoever adds a pattern
for a new CLI. `watchingLabel()` in `session-activity.ts` searches only the last few