AiCheckerBase spawned the check with `> out 2>&1`, so anything the Claude CLI
wrote to stderr landed inside the same file the verdict parser reads. A CLI that
failed to start (corrupt settings, missing auth) produced either an empty verdict
or an unparseable one, and the actual cause was destroyed on the way through —
the user saw only "Empty output from AI idle check".
stderr now goes to its own temp file. When output is empty or the verdict cannot
be parsed, the first 200 characters of stderr are appended to the error message.
The file is cleaned up alongside the existing temp files, including on the error
paths.
Two tests, both failing on master:
expected 'export PATH="…' to contain ' 2> "'
expected 'Empty output from AI idle check' to contain 'Claude CLI failed to load settings'
Replace the "Worked for Xm Xs" pattern as the sole primary idle
detection signal with a final AI-powered check. When pre-filter
conditions are met (output silence, no working patterns, tokens
stable), a fresh Claude CLI session is spawned in a screen to
analyze terminal output and provide a definitive IDLE/WORKING
verdict before proceeding with the respawn cycle.
New state in state machine: `ai_checking` (between pre-filter
confirmation and `sending_update`). WORKING verdict triggers a
3-minute cooldown. Errors auto-disable after 3 consecutive
failures, falling back to the existing noOutputTimeoutMs safety net.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
lior