A worker in a provisioned worktree was inheriting the primary's MCP servers by
two independent routes: the repo commits a .mcp.json declaring the IDE servers,
so a fresh checkout mounts them, and the default parity overlay then copied the
primary's own copy over the top.
Those servers are bound to the primary's IntelliJ project, so every path they
hand back points into the primary's checkout. A CB-523 worker made all 59 of its
edits there while running `mvn -f bridged/pom.xml` against its worktree — every
build it ran was of code that did not contain its changes, and it passed. The
worker's own `ls` of the file it had "edited" returned "No such file".
GitWorktrees now neutralizes .mcp.json at provisioning: an explicitly empty
server map, --skip-worktree'd when tracked so it never reads as pending work a
worker might commit. Unconditional, because the overlay was only half the leak.
The bridge itself is unaffected — it reaches a worker through the launcher's
--mcp-config flag, not the project file, so bridge_reply still works.
- BridgedConfig: .mcp.json out of the default parity overlay
- GitWorktrees: isolateToolSurface() on add(), with the rationale in javadoc
- GitWorktreesTest: 4 real-git acceptance tests (2 fail if the call is removed)
- implementer skill: work from $PWD, and quote a green unpiped `mvn clean
install` from the worktree as the acceptance criterion
mvn clean install: Tests run: 392, Failures: 0, Errors: 0 — BUILD SUCCESS
Caller identity resolved any loopback PID that mapped to a herdr pane as a
WORKER, and PaneLocator scans every pane -- not just bridged-spawned ones. A
primary running inside a herdr pane therefore classified itself as a worker and
was refused SPAWN/SEND/STOP, i.e. every orchestration verb it exists to call.
The failure is self-locking: PrimaryRegistry only learns the primary's terminal
from bridge_send/bridge_spawn, the exact calls being refused, so the learned
value can never bootstrap. Only an operator-set pin breaks the cycle.
CallerResolver now consults primary.terminal from config *before* the pane
lookup. Deliberately the pinned value only, never the learned one -- the learned
terminal is populated by the callers this method is itself classifying, so
trusting it would be circular. Config is operator input, never network input, so
this widens no attack surface; bridge_whoami and the authz gate still share one
resolution.
Fixing that exposed a second, older bug. BridgeMcp's context extractor forwards
the caller's terminal into markPresent on every MCP call, documented as "no-op
for the primary (null terminal)". WorkerPresence.markPresent honours that, but
PresenceBridge overrides it and forwards the same null into SessionManager.
onReady -> transitionByTerminal -> findByTerminal, which called
terminalId.equals(...) unguarded. It only reached the scan once the registry was
non-empty, so the primary's first spawn succeeded and every later call NPE'd
with an HTTP 500 -- and it would have fired for ANY primary not living in a
herdr pane, pinned or not.
findByTerminal is now total. That covers onReady, onDelivered, onTurnComplete
and onTurnFailed at once; a null id could never match a registered session
anyway, so "no match" is the honest answer rather than taking down an unrelated
tool call.
Also drops two dead pass-throughs on CallerResolver (cwdForPid, tokenMode) that
IDE inspections flagged -- callers use ConnectionIdentity and BridgedConfig.Auth
directly.
The example config now states that primary.terminal is REQUIRED, not just a
push-loop optimisation, when the primary shares a herdr pane.
mvn clean install: 360 tests, 0 failures. Verified live: daemon restarted on
this jar, bridge_whoami reports primary, and four concurrent worktree spawns --
the exact shape that NPE'd -- now all succeed.
A primary running INSIDE a herdr pane was resolved as a worker by the
pane-match rule and refused every orchestration tool — the exact lockout
bridge_whoami surfaced on this deployment. The CB-307 primary.terminal pin
always claimed to replace connection-derived identity but only fed the push
loop; it now short-circuits CallerResolver ahead of the pane→worker rule
(the pane mapping is as unforgeable as a worker's, so no credential needed,
even in token mode). bridged.example.yaml documents the block.
Also guard the presence bridge against the primary's null terminal: the MCP
context extractor marks presence on every request, and the first genuine
primary contact NPEd into the SPAWNING→READY transition.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SUTLvxtRPr2iT5u5g45BEs
Workers could not run `mvn` or `java`. Every delegated task that asked for a
build came back "mvn is not on PATH", and the worker was right.
Root cause: HerdrPeerLauncher seeded the worker environment with an EMPTY map,
so bridged passed only the vars it explicitly set (OPENCODE_CONFIG, GITEA_TOKEN,
ANTHROPIC_*) and never PATH. herdr merges that map into its own process env, so
a worker inherited whatever PATH the herdr SERVER was started with. On this host
that server (pid 79870, PPID 1) had been up since Jul 4 with a PATH containing
neither the JDK nor Maven. Confirmed on a live worker: its PATH was byte-identical
to herdr's, and the only var bridged had contributed was OPENCODE_CONFIG.
The failure was invisible and non-deterministic: the fleet's capabilities
depended on how a long-lived daemon happened to be launched weeks earlier. There
are three herdr processes on this box with three different PATHs; the one owning
the socket is the one without a toolchain. bridged itself HAD Maven on PATH the
whole time — it just never passed it on.
It also quietly contradicted the project's own principle that "a worker is a
full peer of the primary", and the implementer skill's instruction to build,
commit and open a PR. Every delegation so far has depended on the primary
running the build gate.
Fix: baseEnv(cfg) seeds each worker with the daemon's own PATH, then applies the
profile's new optional env: map. Adapter-specific vars are layered on top and
therefore win — that ordering is load-bearing, not incidental: it stops an env:
entry from overwriting ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL and slipping past SubscriptionGuard,
which is checked against the profile's baseUrl alone. Pinned by a test.
Because the default is now the daemon's PATH, both supervision units set PATH
explicitly — launchd and systemd do not source a login shell, so under CB-504
the daemon (and every worker) would otherwise get a bare /usr/bin:/bin and this
bug would silently return in production.
324 tests (was 321): daemon-PATH propagation, profile env: passthrough including
an explicit PATH override, and the guard-bypass ordering.
Verified live: daemon restarted, worker spawned, and asked to run the tools —
"Apache Maven 3.9.16", "java version 25.0.2". Previously both were absent.
Points an opencode worker at a local vLLM (or llama.cpp / LM Studio / TGI)
instead of opencode's own gateway. opencode has no ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL seam, so
this could not be a config-only change: setting baseUrl on a kind: opencode
profile now makes the launcher emit a custom `provider` block into the
generated opencode.json, using @ai-sdk/openai-compatible.
The provider id comes from the provider half of the model: selector, so one
field drives both the generated declaration and the -m flag and the two cannot
drift apart. A bare model name with a baseUrl set is rejected at spawn with a
message saying how to fix it — silently falling back to the default gateway
would leave a worker talking to the wrong LLM while looking perfectly healthy.
A bare host:port gets /v1 appended (where these servers mount the API); a URL
that already carries a path is used verbatim. tokenEnv, when set, becomes the
provider apiKey; local servers generally ignore it but the AI SDK requires a
non-empty value, so a placeholder is used otherwise.
Two supporting changes:
- writeConfig previously ran only when a bridge MCP url was set. A pinned
endpoint needs the config file too, so it now runs when either applies, and
the mcp/instructions half is emitted conditionally.
- The config is now built with Jackson instead of string concatenation. The
provider block is nested and interpolates operator-supplied values (URL,
model id, api key), so escaping has to be real rather than a hand-rolled
two-character replace.
No guard entry is required even with baseUrl set. SubscriptionGuard exists to
stop a worker borrowing the primary's Anthropic subscription, and an opencode
process has no Anthropic credential path at all — the asymmetry with the Claude
adapter reusing the same field is deliberate and documented at the call site.
Also fixes a brittle assertion in the existing MCP-mount test, which matched
the substring "\"type\": \"remote\"" and broke on Jackson's spacing. It now
parses the generated JSON and asserts on structure; whitespace is the
formatter's business, not the contract's.
318 tests (was 311): 5 new covering provider generation, /v1 normalisation,
path-preserving URLs, the missing-prefix rejection, MCP+provider coexistence,
and that no baseUrl still means no provider block.
Verified live end to end: daemon restarted on this build, worker spawned on the
opencode-local profile, generated config carries baseURL
http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1, and a blocking bridge_send returned
{"reply":"LOCAL-OK","replySource":"reply"} — a structured reply, not the
completion fallback. The worker pane reports
"Build · deepseek-v4-flash local-vllm (bridged)", confirming traffic reached
the local server rather than silently falling back.
The commented CB-402 block suggested google/gemini-2.5-pro, which needs
credentials. Replaced with the opencode/*-free gateway models proven during the
dogfood to work with no auth at all, and noted that the free model names change
so `opencode models` is the source of truth.
Closes out single-host before the cross-host work. Sequenced BEFORE CB-308
deliberately: federation's own gating concern is the trust model, and it
inherits whatever identity shape lands here.
The finding this stage is built around: bridged had exactly ONE security
control, the loopback bind. ConnectionIdentity resolves a worker from its
connection (unforgeable), but every caller that was not a recognised worker
pane fell through to being treated as the PRIMARY -- the most privileged role
on the bus. Latent today; load-bearing the moment a bind widens.
CB-501 auth:
- Role/Principal/CallerResolver: connection identity first, bearer token
second, ANONYMOUS third. Inverts the old default so absence of identity
means nothing, not everything.
- Worker identity is never token-gated, so enabling auth cannot lock the
fleet out of bridge_reply.
- Constant-time token compare (MessageDigest.isEqual).
- validateAuthExposure(): a non-loopback bind under loopback-trust now
REFUSES TO START. Makes the dangerous config unrepresentable rather than
merely documented.
- TLS terminates at a reverse proxy by design (D3), not in the JVM.
CB-505 authz + audit, enforced on BOTH entry paths:
- The docs describe MCP as "a thin adapter over the REST core"; at code level
it is not. BridgeMcp calls MessageService directly, and /mcp is a raw
servlet on Jetty's context handler that never traverses Javalin's before
filter. Enforcing only at REST would have left /mcp open.
- Load-bearing rule is own-session-only: a worker may reply/ask only as
itself. Structurally true over MCP already; over REST the session id in the
URL path had simply been trusted.
- Audit: JSON lines to a dedicated appender, additivity=false. Never records
message content -- this bus carries source and prompts.
CB-502 metrics: zero new dependencies. A ~150-line Prometheus text renderer
instead of the specced Micrometer, because this pom already hand-pins
jackson-annotations to reconcile Jackson 2/3, imports a Jetty BOM against
skew, and carries four accepted-CVE advisories -- and CLAUDE.md's mandated
dependency CVE gate could not be run (no JetBrains MCP server connected).
Instrumented at MessageService, the single funnel both surfaces share.
CB-503 CI: .gitea/workflows/ci.yml against the already-running Gitea runner.
Needs no contract-exclusion flag -- the pom's default-excludes profile
already sets excludedGroups=contract, so plain `mvn clean install` IS the
mock-socket surface. Provisions JDK 25 explicitly (runner default-jdk is older).
CB-504 supervision: launchd agent (the real target -- this host is macOS,
there is no systemd) plus a systemd unit for the Linux gateways CB-308 adds.
Ordering directives are advisory, so the actual fix is that startup now waits
up to 30s for the herdr socket and then serves degraded, instead of crashing
into a restart loop on a boot-order race.
Also fixes drift found while surveying:
- bridged.example.yaml documented spawn_ready_timeout_ms in snake_case; config
binds via plain Jackson with ignoreUnknown, so uncommenting it would have
been silently dropped and the default kept. Now camelCase, with a test that
loads the shipped example and one that pins every documented knob's
spelling -- no test had ever loaded that file.
- Added the 6 shipped-but-undocumented knobs (worktreeRoot, parityOverlay,
gitTokenEnv, gitHostEnv, configDir, primary:).
- README "Next" listed bridge_ask and session lifecycle as upcoming; both
shipped long ago.
- docs/CB-301-ext and docs/CB-402 status headers said "design"/"pre-
implementation" for work already merged.
307 unit/acceptance tests green (was 266), mvn clean install BUILD SUCCESS.
Note: CLAUDE.md's per-file ide_diagnostics gate and the pom Mend.io CVE check
could not be run -- no JetBrains/intellij-index MCP server is connected this
session. mvn clean install is the only gate that ran.
Add a `kind` field to BridgedConfig.Worker — "claude-code" (default) or
"opencode" — the discriminator the CompositePeerLauncher will route spawn/reap
by so each adapter drives only its own peer kind. Normalised to lower-case;
blank/absent ⇒ claude-code, so every existing config and call site is
unchanged. argv now defaults to the kind's own binary (claude vs opencode)
rather than always `claude`, so an opencode profile never inherits the Claude
command.
kind is appended at the record tail; a new 14-arg back-compat constructor
(git fields, no kind) keeps the CB-302 call sites working, and the existing
12-arg constructor is untouched. Also drop the never-used Primary(String)
legacy constructor to keep the file warning-clean.
example.yaml documents the key and carries a commented opencode-gemini
profile. Tests cover default/normalisation/argv-defaulting. 245 tests green,
config files 0 IDE problems.
Behind the existing ReplyInbox port, add an AMQP-backed adapter selected by a
`broker:` block in config (absent → the in-memory soft-state inbox; present →
AMQP). Mapping is consume-and-hold with deferred manual ack: each target owns a
durable queue `agent.<target>.inbox`; a manual-ack consumer pulls persistent
messages into an in-memory held map (dedup by msgId) but does not ack; peek
returns the snapshot; ack acks the broker delivery-tag and drops it. A crash
before caller-ack leaves messages unacked, so the broker redelivers on
reconnect — genuine durability with the port contract preserved. bridged still
owns no persistence; the broker does.
- msg/AmqpReplyInbox: the adapter (single synchronized channel; recovery
listener clears held on reconnect so fresh delivery-tags repopulate).
- config/BridgedConfig: nullable Broker(uri) record; isConfigured() gates it.
- Bridged.main: select adapter; close the AMQP connection in the ordered
shutdown hook (no-op for the in-memory inbox).
- deps: com.rabbitmq:amqp-client (main); testcontainers rabbitmq/junit-jupiter
(test). Pinned commons-compress 1.27.1 + commons-lang3 3.18.0 to clear the
test-scope CVEs those pull. Production default LavinMQ; RabbitMQ URI-swap.
- tests: BridgedConfigTest broker-selection cases (hermetic); AmqpReplyInbox
contract test (@Tag("contract"), Testcontainers RabbitMQ) proving
publish/peek/ack, msgId dedup, and cross-restart redelivery. Excluded from
the default build so `mvn clean install` stays hermetic (210 green).
The launcher now polls AgentControl.status(paneId) after starting the pane.
It returns the handle only once the worker reports an injectable state
(IDLE/BLOCKED/DONE). If the timeout elapses while still UNKNOWN, the
pane is self-reaped and a PeerUnreachableException is thrown — no orphan
left behind. The gate is disabled when spawnReadyTimeoutMs == 0 (legacy
non-blocking spawn, the default for the 6-arg constructor).
Key changes:
- PeerUnreachableException (new) in dev.ltms.bridged.peer
- BridgedConfig: spawnReadyTimeoutMs (default 20000), spawnReadyPollMs (default 300)
- ClaudeCodeLauncher: 3 constructor overloads:
(a) 6-arg backward-compat: gate disabled (timeout=0)
(b) 8-arg production: gate with config knobs + real clock/sleep
(c) 10-arg testability: full seam (LongSupplier clock + Runnable sleeper)
- waitUntilInjectableOrThrow() loop in spawn(SpawnRequest)
- sleepUninterruptibly() helper for the production sleeper
- BridgeMcp.spawn + BridgedApp.spawnWorker catch PeerUnreachableException
→ clean tool error / 502 response (not an uncaught 500)
- SessionManager.acquire inherently registers nothing on throw (both
worktree and non-worktree paths) — confirmed by new test
Tests:
- ClaudeCodeLauncherTest: 4 new tests
- unknown→idle: returns handle, no pane.close
- always-unknown: throws PeerUnreachableException, pane closed,
clock advanced past timeout
- timeout=0 (6-arg ctor): no agent.get calls, returns handle
- timeout=0 (10-arg ctor): no orphan pane close
- SessionManagerTest: 1 new test
- acquire → PeerUnreachableException: roster remains empty
Total: 188 tests, all pass (no existing test changed semantics)
A worker now opens the same directory the primary is in, unless told otherwise.
Resolution: explicit spawn cwd → per-profile config cwd → the primary's cwd
(auto-detected from the bridge_spawn caller's PID via lsof -d cwd) → the daemon's
cwd. Never $HOME.
Mechanism (found by live probe, corrects the earlier assumption): an agent.start
pane does NOT inherit its tab's or workspace's cwd — it starts in $HOME. herdr's
agent.start honours an (undocumented) cwd param, so the resolved cwd is threaded
onto agent.start {cwd} (both tab and pane placement), not tab.create.
Surfaces: bridge_spawn {cwd?} + auto-detect via ConnectionIdentity.resolve (peer
PID) + ProcessCwdLookup (lsof); REST POST /workers ?cwd= / body cwd; per-profile
'cwd:' config. Validated live: explicit cwd → worker rooted there; no cwd over
REST → daemon cwd, not $HOME. Also clears the ccs folder-trust prompt when the
project dir is already trusted (see docs/Worker-Startup-and-Trust.md).
The bridge was hard-wired to one worker profile. Config now takes a 'workers'
map keyed by profile name plus 'defaultWorker'; WorkerService holds the map and
gains spawn(profile) (spawn() uses the default). Selection threads through the
surfaces: REST POST /workers ?profile= / {"profile":…} + GET /profiles; MCP
bridge_spawn {profile?} + new bridge_profiles. Each profile's base_url is
guard-checked independently, so gx10 and ollama can run side by side and you
address each worker by its returned sessionId. Backward-compatible: the legacy
singular 'worker:' block still loads as a one-entry profile map.
Spawn a real worker with 'ccs ltms-local' (profile sets CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR + off-sub base_url; auto mode preconfigured as defaultMode:auto). bridged appends the bridge MCP mount (--mcp-config, inline JSON) and the reply charter (--append-system-prompt) as launch FLAGS — non-invasive, nothing written to the worker's profile (safer than provisioning its config dir, which would clobber it). Identity is connection-based so the mount is shared. config: worker.mcpUrl. Default bind port 8080 -> 8765. The reply charter is guidance; the send timeout catches a non-cooperative worker. 60 tests green, IDE-clean.
Workers now land in their own herdr tab inside a dedicated, shared "worker
space" (workspace.create → tab.create → agent.start{tab_id} → close seed shell
→ rename), instead of splitting the user's currently-focused tab. Placement is
configurable (worker.placement tab|pane, worker.workspace, worker.tabLabel);
a future per-session space is just a distinct label.
New: Workspace/Tab records, WorkspaceControl over workspace.*/tab.*,
AgentControl.start tab_id overload, Agent.tabId.
Lifecycle carefulness:
- ensureWorkspace is a synchronized find-or-create (never double-creates)
- teardown closes the tab ONLY when the worker is its sole pane (never a
shared user tab), resolving the tab via pane.get before closing
- tolerance is precise: only *_not_found is swallowed; real failures surface
- spawn failure closes the orphan tab; post-start cosmetic steps can't orphan
a live worker or fail the spawn
- unique per-worker names (claude-<profile>-<nonce>-<seq>) with retry: herdr
rejects duplicate agent names, and the per-process nonce survives a restart
with lingering workers
herdr facts pinned: agent.start honors tab_id; agent name must be unique;
kind/status are detected from terminal output, not the name.
Reviewed at high effort (multi-agent); all findings addressed. 34 tests green
(29 unit/acceptance + 5 contract vs live herdr 0.7.0). Also bumps wiki.
Maven/Java 25 module under bridged/. End-to-end verified against live
herdr 0.7.0 (protocol 14): GET /healthz and GET /sessions serve real
workspace data through the socket client.
- herdr client (CB-101): Unix-socket JSON-RPC via UnixDomainSocketAddress.
Two contract facts pinned by tests against the real daemon:
ids MUST be strings, and herdr is one-shot per connection
(connection-per-call, which also makes the client lock-free).
- subscription guard: worker base_url must be on the off-subscription
allowlist (gx00.gw, ollama.ltms.dev); primary env must carry no base_url.
- config (CB-106): Jackson YAML + Logback; example grounded in ltms-local.
- REST app (CB-104 start): injectable HerdrClient so acceptance tests run
on an ephemeral port with a fake herdr, no daemon/Claude in the loop.
- tests: 17 unit/acceptance (mvn test) + 3 contract (mvn test -Pcontract).
Dai Ha
kevin