DEFAULT_TTL_MS was 6h, measured from marker.startedAt rather than last
activity, and `claude --resume` keeps the same session_id - so a run that
died holding its marker handed the resumed session the remainder of that
window, denying every WebSearch/WebFetch/Task including work unrelated to
research. The header's design goal ("An unrelated session must never be
denied") held across sessions and read as broader than it was: by this
scope key a resume IS the same session.
Three changes, none of which pretends to close it:
- The tombstone boundary (32e20fc) already removed the common case. A run
that crashed MID-loop leaves no denial record, so the resume is allowed;
only a crash AFTER the cap denied a turn opens a window at all. Pinned by
a test with a part-spent ledger and no tombstone.
- TTL 6h -> 2h. A 24-turn loop at a couple of minutes per turn is under an
hour, so nothing needed six, and debris no longer owns the rest of the
working day.
- Every denial now prints the marker path with "if this loop is not
running, delete it", plus the auto-reset horizon. The window existed
before with no stated remedy, which is what made it expensive.
A liveness check would close it properly. This hook has nothing
trustworthy to check liveness against - the marker's writer is a shell
snippet whose $$ is a subshell, not the session - so the limit is written
into the header as a limit instead of being papered over.
Review finding d913d1b655012fe206ea925b9fc77b401566a39e (MINOR).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
allowTurn() appends BEFORE the turn runs, so during granted turn N the
ledger holds N records. The hook denied at `used >= budget`, which blocked
every tool call of the FINAL granted turn: the primitive granted B turns
and the harness permitted B-1. Worse, an exhausted run therefore always
terminated through an exit-2 tool denial instead of the graceful "cap
exhausted" exit at commands/trekresearch.md - and the prose says in as
many words that exit 2 is not exit 1, so the model was pushed out through
the one exit it is told NOT to treat as a cap.
The review recommended denying at `used > budget`. Taken alone that fixes
the count and breaks the hook: once the O_EXCL claim (previous commit)
makes a breached ledger impossible, `granted > budget` can no longer fire,
and the case this hook exists for - the loop consults the gate, is denied,
and issues the tool call anyway - would be allowed. A deny branch that
cannot be reached is a dead security claim, which is the same thing S82
removed two of rather than leave standing.
So the denial itself became a record. allowTurn() appends a tombstone
{runId, exhausted: true} when it denies for budget, and the hook denies on
the tombstone. Both properties now hold at once:
granted == budget, no tombstone -> turn B is in flight -> ALLOW
tombstone present -> the gate already said no -> DENY
granted > budget -> breached, any cause -> DENY
A tombstone is not a turn: readLedger reports {granted, exhausted}
separately so it can never consume budget. allowTurn short-circuits on an
existing tombstone, so a hammered gate neither re-walks every slot nor
grows the ledger. The tombstone write is best effort on purpose - the
denial is already the correct answer, so a ledger that cannot take the
record must not turn a denial into a grant.
The parallel-boundary test now asserts GRANTED turns rather than raw
ledger lines, because the denied callers legitimately add tombstones.
Review finding 8eb53458ac3efec778094f9f03b09e1cc1077a09 (MINOR).
Operator decision: tombstone over the literal recommended_action.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
An unreadable ledger returned 0 from countTurns in BOTH the primitive and
the hook, so a run whose ledger existed but could not be read (EISDIR,
EACCES, EIO) was handed the full budget again on every call - unbounded.
research-loop-cap.mjs argues against exactly that three lines above the
code that did it, and its missing-DIRECTORY case already failed closed.
The unreadable-FILE case now agrees with it.
Only ENOENT still counts as zero turns spent: that is the legitimate
first-turn state, and the reason this cannot just throw on any read
failure.
The hook no longer carries its own countTurns. It imports the primitive's
exported readLedger(), the same way it already resolves the data root
through resolveDataRoot() - a reader and a writer with private copies of
the counting rule is how a hook ends up enforcing a different bound than
the gate it backs. In scope + cannot count now exits 2 with a message
that says counting failed, not that the budget is spent.
Fail-closed stays scoped to the loop: a test pins that an unreadable
ledger in an OUT-of-scope session still exits 0, because a PreToolUse
hook that over-blocks bricks every session on the box.
Also dropped the existsSync pre-check before the read - readFileSync's
own ENOENT carries the same information without a second syscall that
can disagree with the read that follows it.
Review finding 5e1c6230f48ead38fa77cd8f4b06bfdc2b5b7bbf (MINOR).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA is empty in the Bash tool's process env, and the Phase 5
bash snippet is the cap's only caller. resolveLedgerPath() returned null there
and allowTurn() failed closed, so the budget gate denied turn 1 of every real
run: the loop this delivery exists to bound could never spend a turn, and the
pre-registered measurement could not be run at all.
resolveDataRoot() is now the single root for everything the loop writes --
CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA when the harness sets it, ~/.claude/voyage when it does
not. Three consumers resolve through it, which is the point: the cap ledger,
the PreToolUse hook's scope-marker lookup, and the command's bash snippets.
A writer and a reader that resolved the root separately are what made the
enforcement hook allow unconditionally in every real run while CLAUDE.md and
docs/architecture.md called it enforcing.
Same root cause, same commit:
- Marker write and remove now share ONE absolute-path guard and one root; the
write requires a non-empty CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID before composing the path
(unset, the marker was named `.json`, which no lookup matches and no TTL
sweep cleans up).
- The per-turn gates resolve VOYAGE_ROOT with a plugin-cache fallback and
reserve exit 2 for "gate could not run". Interpolating an empty
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} ran `node /lib/...` -> exit 1, which the contract read
as "privacy gate says no" -- an unsatisfiable rewrite loop no query could
clear.
Two now-unreachable deny branches are removed rather than left as dead safety
claims (allowTurn's no_plugin_data_dir; the hook's uncountable-ledger deny).
The fail-closed stance stays where it is still real: a ledger that cannot be
WRITTEN denies the turn.
Verified end-to-end through the real bash snippets and the real hook with both
variables stripped and HOME sandboxed: marker written under the fallback root,
8 turns spent, 9th denied, hook exits 2, and exits 0 again after removal.
Note: the fallback exit-2 branch fires against the installed v5.9.1 cache,
which predates lib/util/research-loop-cap.mjs -- correct behaviour, and it
clears when the plugin is reinstalled.
Review findings 2670c10a, fbd6d534, 93550dfb.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011vPSXe88qp5aqWUqbDNWoF
