Files
ratatoskr/persistent-memory.md
T
vh 9717fb80e2 fix(cli): address Volva code-vs-contract drift (issue #3)
Volva code-review surfaced 5 findings against the TDD-passing
implementation; all 5 addressed.

Drift fixes (code):
- Add `assert argv is None or all(isinstance(a, str) for a in argv)`
  at both `main` and `_parse_args` entry points (PRE-001 was unenforced).
- `main` now catches `SystemExit` and returns `exc.code` verbatim —
  argparse's --help (SystemExit(0)) was escaping through main as an
  unhandled exception. Contract amended in-place to spell out the
  SystemExit-from-argparse-clean-exits passthrough in both
  `main` and `_parse_args` ERROR_ROUTING. New `help_exits_cleanly`
  test added per the contract amendment.
- Add the PRE-001 union-type assert at `_render_event` entry —
  unmatched Event variants would have silently no-op'd.
- `_run_turn` now awaits `cancel_task` in the `finally` block before
  returning. Under fast-stream + slow-cancel scenarios the
  `[cancel_failed]` line could miss being written before _run_turn
  returns, AND _amain could close the AsyncClient while the cancel
  POST was still in flight. `_cancel_and_log` swallows all errors
  per INV-009 so the await is safe.

Test gap fix:
- New `_FlushCountingIO` subclass counts flush() calls;
  `test_text_to_stdout_only` and `test_done_writes_newline_and_label`
  now assert `flush_count == 1` to verify INV-010 (per-chunk flush).
  Previously the tests would have passed even with flush removed.

Meta-note carried in persistent-memory: TDD caught central behavior
(stdout/stderr routing, exit-code mapping, create-session ordering,
SIGINT idempotence); the cross-model code review consistently catches
assert-boundary + observability-shape gaps across all three issues
(#1: 4 findings, #2: 3 findings, #3: 5 findings).

118/118 tests GREEN; ruff clean; drift check clean.
2026-05-20 22:59:26 -07:00

27 KiB

Persistent memory — ratatoskr

This file captures durable intent and supporting evidence (goals, decisions, foot-gun warnings, in-flight state) across context resets. Read it at session start; treat it as one input alongside CLAUDE.md and the auto-memory system, not as the single source of truth.

When durable state shifts enough to warrant capture, run /snapshot and commit alongside the next commit per the persistent-memory commit-along rule in CLAUDE.md.


Repo purpose

Ratatoskr is a dev-grade debug-observability TUI for Worldtree's Conversation API. The product IS the observability surface; chat is the input mechanism. Devs run Ratatoskr against a local Worldtree to watch a turn flow through every layer of the system, side-by-side, in one terminal: agent SSE stream, persona/Vili affect dispatch, tool calls, Bifrost handshake state, admin lifecycle events, optional raw server log.

Named after the squirrel that runs up and down Yggdrasil carrying messages between layers. On-the-nose Worldtree resonance (Yggdrasil = the World Tree).

Origin: althing ask from worldtree-dev (thread 01KS3R34XD3N6HMK91VXESHGW7, 2026-05-20) for the shape of a TUI Conversation API consumer. brokkr-smithy ran the shape pass; operator's reframe routed it as a new repo with a separate dev team rather than an in-tree Worldtree tool.

Current state / in-flight

Status: ratatoskr.sse_client + ratatoskr.sessions + ratatoskr.cli all implemented via TDD against their issue-scoped contracts; all three rounds also Volva code-reviewed + drift-fixed. 118/118 tests GREEN (42 sse_client + 19 sessions + 55 cli + 1 boundary + 1 metadata); ruff clean.

What's in the repo:

  • docs/design-brief.md — the locked design (copy from brokkr-smithy/docs/ratatoskr-design-brief.md).
  • docs/SPEC-PIN.md — Worldtree spec pin documentation + bump procedure.
  • docs/conversation-api-spec.md — vendored Worldtree spec at the pinned SHA.
  • docs/conversation_api.contract.md — vendored Worldtree server-side contract at the pinned SHA.
  • docs/contracts/issues/1.contract.mdissue-scoped contract for issue #1 (#1). v2.1, complexity=high. target_module: ratatoskr.sse_client. prd: block pins to issue body SHA abcbc49467e86f1d at 2026-05-21T03:57:37+00:00. Four FN blocks: stream_turn, reconnect_turn, cancel_turn, _parse_sse_id. Drift check (scripts/contract_drift_check.py) returns clean.
  • pyproject.toml — Python 3.12, hatchling, uv-managed. Deps: httpx, httpx-sse, textual. Dev deps: pytest, pytest-asyncio, respx, ruff, mypy, textual-dev, pyyaml (consumed by docs/contracts/contract_parser.py + scripts/contract_drift_check.py).
  • src/ratatoskr/__init__.py + cli.py — stubs.
  • src/ratatoskr/sse_client.pyimplemented 2026-05-21 per docs/contracts/issues/1.contract.md. Four public entry points + nine typed Event variants + ten custom exceptions. Shared SSE-iteration logic (INV-002 + INV-003 + terminal-break) lives in private _iter_events(event_source, *, expected_turn_id) helper consumed by both stream_turn and reconnect_turnexpected_turn_id=None triggers "establish from first event" semantics, expected_turn_id=N triggers "first event is already a flip-candidate" semantics (the two-entry-point distinction Volva surfaced).
  • tests/test_sse_client.py — 37 tests covering all four FN blocks' TESTS: entries verbatim (13 + 10 + 8 + 6). Real HTTP wire via respx mocks; SSE wire format constructed by helper _sse_chunk. Connection-drop test uses custom httpx.AsyncByteStream subclass that yields chunks then raises RemoteProtocolError.
  • src/ratatoskr/sessions.pyimplemented 2026-05-21 per docs/contracts/issues/2.contract.md. Two functions (create_session, list_sessions) + two frozen dataclasses (SessionInfo, SessionPage) + three exception types (AgentNotFound, InvalidCursor, SessionApiFailed). SessionInfo uses origin-conditional defaults per INV-001/INV-002 (create-origin: name=None, archived=False, tags=[], message_count=<from body>; list-origin: same defaults for absent/null fields, message_count=None). SessionApiFailed truncates .body to ≤1024 at construction. No code shared with sse_client.py (convention-dependency only per issue #2 dependencies:).
  • tests/test_sessions.py — 19 tests covering both FN blocks' TESTS: entries verbatim (7 + 12). Helper _list_item() builds GET /sessions list-item bodies for tests.
  • docs/contracts/issues/3.contract.mdissue-scoped contract for issue #3 (#3). v2.1, complexity=medium. target_module: ratatoskr.cli. prd: block pins to issue body SHA 206ef51709d43b2c at 2026-05-21T05:13:29+00:00. Six FN blocks: main, _parse_args, _amain, _render_event, _run_turn, _cancel_and_log. dependencies: block lists issues #1 and #2 as code-level deps (first in the repo to do so — #1 and #2 were convention-only siblings). Drift check returns clean.
  • src/ratatoskr/cli.pyimplemented 2026-05-21 per docs/contracts/issues/3.contract.md. Six entry points: sync main + async _amain + four private helpers (_parse_args, _render_event, _cancel_and_log, _run_turn). Composes sessions.create_session (when --new) with sse_client.stream_turn + cancel_turn. Hard invariant: no textual / rich imports (raw stdout). _run_turn is the load-bearing piece — race-loop pattern that gates asyncio.create_task(sigint_event.wait()) behind if not cancelling to avoid the busy-loop bug Volva flagged in contract review. SIGINT handler installed via loop.add_signal_handler(SIGINT, sigint_event.set) so unit tests can fire the event directly without real signals. 305 LOC.
  • tests/test_cli.py — 54 tests covering all six FN blocks' TESTS: entries verbatim (14 + 10 + 5 + 13 + 7 + 5). Helpers: _sse_chunk (same shape as test_sse_client.py's helper), _sse_resp (wraps respx Response with the text/event-stream content-type), _GatedStream (custom httpx.AsyncByteStream that pauses on asyncio.Event entries to make SIGINT-mid-stream tests deterministic without sleep-based timing). Test fixtures: _clear_env autouse fixture clears WORLDTREE_API_KEY / WORLDTREE_API_URL per test for deterministic env-resolution assertions.
  • tests/test_no_worldtree_imports.py — boundary smoke test (passes; verified 2026-05-20).
  • tests/snapshots/README.md — recording/replay convention for SSE snapshot tests.

What's NOT in the repo yet:

  • Gitea remote — operator provided git@gitea.phasefinal.com:vh/ratatoskr.git on 2026-05-20; about to be added + first push at the same commit as this update.
  • CLAUDE.md customization — currently using the canonical template's generic CLAUDE.md. The dev team may want to add Ratatoskr-specific conventions on first substantive work.

Branch: main. Remote: origin → git@gitea.phasefinal.com:vh/ratatoskr.git (added 2026-05-20).

Next natural moves:

  1. /volva-code-review docs/contracts/issues/3.contract.md against the freshly-landed ratatoskr.cli implementation (precedent: #1 caught 4 negative-space drifts, #2 caught 3). The race-loop in _run_turn is the most likely source of new drifts — cross-model fresh-eyes review on async / signal-handling code has been valuable in past rounds.
  2. Manual smoke against a local Worldtree: ratatoskr --send "hello" --new --agent <id>. Captures the first real-Worldtree integration evidence (mocks aren't the wire). Useful regardless of #1.
  3. Record real SSE snapshot fixtures from a running Worldtree. --send --new redirected to a fixture file IS the recording probe — capture outputs to tests/snapshots/ for replay-based regression coverage.
  4. Textual TUI app shell — second presenter; multi-pane observability dashboard per design-brief §5. Now that the consumer surface is exercised end-to-end via --send, the TUI lands on top of validated modules.

Recent decisions

Chronological log of decisions with [YYYY-MM-DD] prefix. One line per decision. Captures rationale that won't be obvious from code alone.

  • [2026-05-20] Project name Ratatoskr (squirrel on Yggdrasil — runs up and down carrying messages). Earlier candidate Andvari demoted on the cursed-ring association.
  • [2026-05-20] Separate repo, separate dev team. Operator's call; the in-tree-at-Worldtree/tools/ alternative was considered and rejected to dogfood the API boundary.
  • [2026-05-20] No Worldtree-source imports. Spec-only dependency. Triple version-skew mitigation: spec-pin in pyproject.toml + recorded-SSE snapshot tests + conformance smoke. Initial pin: 55101e909abcd2219833266b6f905c5bc956e0f0 (Worldtree v0.19.0). See docs/SPEC-PIN.md.
  • [2026-05-20] Textual (not rich+prompt_toolkit). Driver: debug observability is the primary purpose, and a multi-pane dashboard with persistent side panes + independent scrollback is structurally application-shell-shaped. Volva consulted via cross-frontier second-opinion and converged on the same call.
  • [2026-05-20] httpx-sse for SSE consumption. The server emits composite {turn_id}:{seq} id: lines (Worldtree INV-014) load-bearing for SSE-resume; hand-rolled data:-only parsing (the skaldsong pattern) silently drops these. Ratatoskr becomes the reference Python SSE-resume implementation.
  • [2026-05-20] Persona-pane PII posture: label-don't-refuse. persona.log is process-wide; pane title flips between [Persona — PROCESS-WIDE] and [Persona — session <id>…] based on whether log lines carry session_id. Refuse-against-non-local was considered and rejected as paternalistic.
  • [2026-05-20] Server-stdout pane: opt-in via --server-log <path>. No auto-detection of well-known paths.
  • [2026-05-20] Two-stage Ctrl-C. First cancels in-flight turn server-side; second exits app. Ctrl-D bound to immediate exit.
  • [2026-05-20] Single-session-per-launch + startup picker. No in-app /switch. CLI flags --session <id> and --new for scripted use. Session identity always visible in Textual footer.
  • [2026-05-20] Markdown rendering default-on; --raw opt-out. Don't pre-design --no-stream-formatting (Volva: add only if streaming-markdown rendering is empirically ugly).
  • [2026-05-20] Non-interactive --send mode. Single SSE consumer module, two presenters (TUI + stdout). Keeps Ratatoskr honest as an API consumer; useful for CI / scripted probes.
  • [2026-05-20] First contract: ratatoskr.sse_client. Bundles stream_turn + reconnect_turn + cancel_turn + private _parse_sse_id into one module — the SSE-resume flow is coupled (cancel needs turn_id from the SSE wire id:, reconnect re-uses the same parsed SseId), so they share a contract. Hard invariant INV-002 makes the composite {turn_id}:{seq} id: parsing load-bearing — closes the foot-gun the design-brief §3 names (hand-rolled data:-only parsing silently drops the id:). v2.1 test categories adversarial/scenario/trace used freely; parser warns but format spec §2.1.E permits them.
  • [2026-05-21] Contract converted to issue-scoped (issue #1). Moved docs/contracts/sse_client.contract.mddocs/contracts/issues/1.contract.md. Frontmatter shape switched from module-scoped (module:/purpose:) to issue-scoped (target_module:/scope:/prd:) per CONTRACT-FORMAT §2.1.I. prd: block pins to issue #1's body hash (abcbc49467e86f1d). scripts/contract_drift_check.py returns clean. Known parser stale-ness: contract_parser.py --validate ERRORs on issue-scoped frontmatter (missing module:/purpose:) — this is CONTRACT-FORMAT §2.1.L H10, a documented Brokkr-side follow-up. Parser is a canonical sync, so we do NOT patch it locally (would drift from canonical). Treat parser ERROR-on-issue-scoped as expected until the canonical bumps.
  • [2026-05-21] Default issue-tracker labels seeded (17 total). Sleipnir gating (ready-for-agent, blocked-needs-contract, blocked-needs-dependency), triage (needs-triage, needs-architect-decision, needs-info), type (bug, enhancement, task, documentation), resolution (duplicate, wontfix, invalid), Ratatoskr-specific area (sse-client, tui, cli, observability).
  • [2026-05-21] ratatoskr.sse_client implemented via TDD against issue #1's contract. 37 contract-listed tests authored + GREEN per the tracer-bullet vertical-slice ordering (_parse_sse_idstream_turnreconnect_turncancel_turn). Refactor pass extracted _iter_events helper to dedupe INV-002 + INV-003 + terminal-break logic across stream_turn and reconnect_turn; expected_turn_id=None vs expected_turn_id=N distinguishes the two entry-point semantics Volva surfaced. Notable choices made during implementation: (a) regex ^-?\d+$ pre-check in _parse_sse_id to reject whitespace before int() (Python's int(" 3 ") would silently strip — this kept the strict-no-whitespace test honest); (b) _DropAfter AsyncByteStream subclass in tests to simulate mid-stream RemoteProtocolError; (c) ToolResult.result and ToolStart.arguments typed as Any (server JSON varies); (d) ruff line-length=100 (per pyproject) forced some test docstrings to be tighter than v0 draft.
  • [2026-05-21] Issue #2 + contract: ratatoskr.sessions. Scope is narrow — create_session (POST /sessions) + list_sessions (GET /sessions, cursor-paginated) + shared SessionInfo and SessionPage frozen dataclasses. Bundles two endpoints in one contract because they share the response envelope shape; splitting would duplicate the dataclass. Bifrost binding (Worldtree issue #160), ephemeral sessions, GET /sessions/{id}, PATCH, DELETE, and GET /sessions/{id}/messages (history) are explicitly out of scope (codified in the contract's ## Out of scope H2 — first contract in this repo to carry that section, so future Volva consults resolve cleanly via the default path instead of needing --out-of-scope overrides). prd: pinned to issue #2 body SHA 01fbbd52b6d90eb0 at 2026-05-21T04:45:06+00:00; drift check clean. dependencies: lists issue #1 as a convention-dependency (no code import; same API-consumption posture).
  • [2026-05-21] ratatoskr.sessions implemented via TDD against issue #2's contract. 19 contract-listed tests authored + GREEN per tracer-bullet vertical-slice (create_session first, then list_sessions). One internal-inconsistency in the contract spotted at TDD start — POST-003 and happy_create test description still said "archived is None, tags is None" while the freshly-amended INV-001 set them to False and []; fixed the contract in-place before writing tests so the spec stayed coherent. Implementation is small (~115 LOC for src module); no refactor pass deemed worthwhile (the two functions are ~25 LOC each with distinct error-routing branches).
  • [2026-05-21] Volva code-vs-contract review on ratatoskr.sessions. Three findings, all "fix it" (one with collateral contract amendment). (1) Drift: archived=item.get("archived", False) returned None for explicit-null because .get(key, default) only fires on absent keys, not on null. Fixed to item.get("archived") or False (handles absent, null, False, True). INV-002 wording was the source — also amended to spell out the .get(default) foot-gun explicitly. (2) Test-gap: no test exercised explicit-null archived/tags. Added test_explicit_null_list_defaults using a raw item dict (the _list_item() helper masked the issue with its own defaulting). (3) Precision: message_count=body.get("message_count") could silently default to None while POST-003 required it non-None. Aligned: code now uses body["message_count"] (matches sibling fields like session_id which use bracket access); INV-001 + STEP 5 updated to spell out strict semantics. Volva's meta-note: "modest weight" — TDD caught the main surface, this caught a narrow Python .get() semantics edge that no human reading would have noticed without explicit-null priors. 63 tests GREEN post-fix.
  • [2026-05-21] Volva paraphrase round on docs/contracts/issues/2.contract.md. Volva flagged 5 ambiguities; operator approved amendments to 3 of them. (1) tags/archived/name defaulting semantics now explicit: tags: list[str] (default []), archived: bool (default False), name: str | None (default None); INV-001/INV-002 + STEPS aligned. (2) include_archived_query test tightened: default → URL has NO include_archived param at all (was "no param OR explicit false" — softened the assertion against STEP 2's prescriptive behavior). (5) metadata populated-vs-defaulted slippage resolved: INV-001 + INV-002 now spell out the defensive body.get("metadata", {}) default for spec drift tolerance. Volva flags #3 (exception .body sensitivity) and #4 (assert for runtime validation) reviewed and kept as-is — both intentional and consistent with issue #1's precedent. Drift check still clean (amendments don't touch the pinned issue body).
  • [2026-05-21] Volva code-vs-contract review round on ratatoskr.sse_client. Volva flagged 4 findings (3 drifts + 1 test-gap), all code-side "fix it" recommendations: (1) _iter_events fell off cleanly on EOF before terminal, violating INV-001 ("MUST NOT raise StopAsyncIteration before a terminal event arrives unless connection drops"); fix tracks terminal_seen flag and raises SseConnectionDropped on clean-EOF-without-terminal. (2) Both SseConnectFailed.body and CancelFailed.body stored full response bytes; ERROR_ROUTING specified truncation to [:1024]; fix truncates in __init__ before storing. (3) _parse_sse_id PRE-001 specified assert isinstance(raw, str), but code called .split(":") directly (incidental AttributeError on non-str); fix adds the assert. (4) Test-gap on cancel_turn's "other status → CancelFailed" branch; fix adds a 503 test with >1024-byte body that double-covers finding #2. Meta-note: Volva said TDD caught the main happy/adversarial shape; the misses were "negative space" cases (clean EOF, exception payload truncation, untested generic cancel branch) — calibration evidence that cross-model review pulls weight on the same-model author's blind spots. 43 tests GREEN post-fix (42 sse_client + 1 boundary), ruff clean.
  • [2026-05-21] Volva paraphrase round on docs/contracts/issues/1.contract.md. Volva flagged 5 ambiguities; operator approved amendments to 3 of them. (1) reconnect_turn STEP 2 punt resolved: signature now carries content: str; STEP 2 body is json={"content": content} matching spec §Reconnect flow example verbatim. Spec line 732 makes the agent's tools+LLM run "exactly once regardless of disconnects/reconnects" — the content is a wire-schema requirement, not re-processed server-side. (2) _parse_sse_id tightened: turn_id ≥ 1 AND seq ≥ 1 (was ≥ 0); spec §SSE id format line 705 explicitly states seq starts at 1, and turn_id is SQLite autoincrement (≥1). Test happy_zero_seq flipped to zero_seq [adversarial]; new zero_turn_id + negative_seq adversarial tests added. (3) INV-003 clarified to spell out the two-entry-point semantics: stream_turn establishes turn_id from the first event (first event always yields); reconnect_turn parses the expected turn_id FROM last_event_id BEFORE the connection opens, so the first server event is already a flip-candidate and is NOT yielded on mismatch. Volva flags #3 (MalformedSseId-vs-ValueError split) and #5 (exactly-one-terminal as server-assumed) noted but kept as-is — deliberate distinctions. Drift check still clean against issue #1 (amending the contract doesn't touch the pinned issue body).
  • [2026-05-21] Issue #3 + contract: ratatoskr.cli --send non-interactive stdout presenter. Composes create_session (when --new) with stream_turn + cancel_turn into a one-shot CLI. Hard invariants: no textual / rich imports (raw stdout — --raw is TUI-only per design-brief §6); stdout for Text deltas + the post-Done newline ONLY; everything else labeled to stderr. Six FN blocks (main, _parse_args, _amain, _render_event, _run_turn, _cancel_and_log). The _run_turn race-loop is the load-bearing piece: races __anext__ against sigint_event.wait() so a mid-stream SIGINT lands within one event boundary; once cancel is in flight, the race-loop stops creating new wait() tasks (the no-busy-loop fix Volva flagged). 9-bucket exit-code table (0/2/3 terminal; 10/11/12 usage/auth/agent; 20/21/22 server/network/protocol). prd: pinned to issue #3 body SHA 206ef51709d43b2c at 2026-05-21T05:13:29+00:00; first contract in the repo with a code-level dependencies: block (issues #1 and #2).
  • [2026-05-21] Volva paraphrase round on docs/contracts/issues/3.contract.md. Volva flagged 5 ambiguities; operator approved amendments to ALL 5 (higher hit rate than #1/#2's 3-of-5 — async + signal-handling has more places for ambiguity to hide). (1) INV-001 wording tightened: "no in-repo modules other than ratatoskr.sessions and ratatoskr.sse_client" (was "imports from X and Y only" which literally forbade httpx/asyncio/stdlib). (2) INV-002 + _render_event POST-002/003 restructured: Done's stdout newline is part of the contract (two stdout cases: Text deltas + post-Done newline), not a contradiction with "no other event writes stdout". (3) [cancelled] (before any event arrived) early-exit label added to the Data flow stderr list. (4) SIGINT race-loop pseudocode gated sigint_task = asyncio.create_task(...) behind if not cancelling — without this gate, once sigint is set, every loop iteration would wake on the already-set event (busy loop). New no_busy_loop_after_cancel [trace] test added. (5) CancelTurnNotFound + CancelAlreadyCompleted added to assumptions import list (they were used in _cancel_and_log's ERROR_ROUTING but missing from the public-surface declaration). Meta-note: Volva said "discipline pulls weight here" — same calibration signal as #1/#2.
  • [2026-05-21] ratatoskr.cli implemented via TDD against issue #3's contract. 54 contract-listed tests authored + GREEN per the vertical-slice ordering (_parse_args_render_event_cancel_and_log_run_turn_amainmain). One in-flight contract amendment during TDD: the no_busy_loop_after_cancel test description originally said "exactly ONE wait()-shaped task created" but the natural race-loop shape produces 2 (iter 1 raced with text-event, iter 2 raced with sigint → flipped cancelling=True; iter 3+ skipped). Amended the contract test description to assert "TWO total wait() coroutines" with rationale; the busy-loop check is preserved (iter 3+ MUST skip wait() creation; the bug would grow N unbounded). Implementation choices: (a) _UsageErrorParser subclass overrides argparse.ArgumentParser.error to raise _ArgparseError instead of SystemExit, then _parse_args catches and re-raises as UsageError per the contract's ERROR_ROUTING; (b) _GatedStream test helper (custom httpx.AsyncByteStream that pauses on asyncio.Event entries) made SIGINT-mid-stream tests deterministic without sleep-based timing — gates release via side-channels (the cancel-mock setting an event when observed); (c) strong-ref cancel_task variable in _run_turn holds the fire-and-forget cancel task to suppress RUF006 / asyncio GC warning. 117/117 tests GREEN post-implementation; ruff clean.
  • [2026-05-21] Volva code-vs-contract review on ratatoskr.cli. Five findings, all "fix it" (one with collateral contract amendment). (1) Drift: neither main nor _parse_args asserted PRE-001 (argv is None or all(isinstance(a, str) for a in argv)). Fixed: added assertions at both entry points. (2) Drift: argparse's --help raises SystemExit(0) which escaped through main — unfriendly UX. Code: main now catches SystemExit and returns exc.code verbatim (passthrough; argparse already printed help to stdout). Contract amended in-place: _parse_args + main ERROR_ROUTING now spell out the SystemExit-from-argparse-clean-exits passthrough; new help_exits_cleanly [happy] test added. (3) Precision: _render_event lacked the union-type assertion from PRE-001 — unmatched event variants would silently no-op. Fixed: added assert isinstance(event, (WorkerPhase, Thinking, Text, ...)) at function entry. (4) Drift: cancel_task was created but never awaited in _run_turn's finally — under fast-stream + slow-cancel scenarios, the [cancel_failed] log could miss being written before _run_turn returns, AND _amain could close the AsyncClient while the cancel POST was still in flight. Fixed: finally block now awaits cancel_task if present (_cancel_and_log already swallows all errors per INV-009, so the await never raises). (5) Test-gap: text_to_stdout_only and done_writes_newline_and_label used plain io.StringIO and didn't verify INV-010's per-chunk flush — the tests would pass even with flush removed. Fixed: new _FlushCountingIO subclass counts flush() calls; both tests assert flush_count == 1. Volva's meta-note: "TDD pass mostly caught central behavior; this review caught contract-hardening edges (PRE asserts, --help, non-guaranteed cancel-failure log)." Same calibration shape as #1 (4 negative-space drifts) and #2 (3 drifts) — the post-TDD code-review consistently catches the assert-boundary and observability-shape gaps the test-author's hypotheses don't cover. 118 tests GREEN post-fix.

Tried and abandoned

Log of approaches that were tried and rejected, with rationale. Future-self defense against re-attempting the same cul-de-sac.

  • [2026-05-20] rich + prompt_toolkit framework choice. Considered first (during initial shape draft). Volva flagged that §1 and §5 pulled in opposite directions: a real side-panel observability surface would silently become a widget framework reimplementation. Operator's debug-observability reframe sealed the flip to Textual. Don't re-attempt rich+pt unless the scope shrinks to transcript-first REPL (which would also flip back §5 to inline-log-presenter).
  • [2026-05-20] In-tree at Worldtree/tools/ratatoskr/. Earlier draft committed to in-tree-with-import-direction-smoke-test. Rejected at operator-routing — separate dev team forces separate repo.
  • [2026-05-20] New /persona/log SSE endpoint on Worldtree. Considered as alternative to file-tailing persona.log. Rejected — contract amendment + Vor round + AFK dispatch loop is weeks of consumer-side spec work for a debug feature file-tail handles in a day. Documented follow-up trigger in docs/design-brief.md §5: if a Worldtree-on-server / TUI-on-laptop debug case appears, the contract cost becomes worth paying.
  • [2026-05-20] Cross-process Last-Event-ID resume. Considered — would require persisting per-session Last-Event-ID to ~/.config/ratatoskr/. Deferred to v2 if/when it turns out to matter; v1 ships "reconnect, not resume-across-process."