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Brennan BensonandMerge Sim
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* feat(orchestration): orchestrate native-born structured chat sessions Orchestration resolves every worker through a terminal handle and a pane key backed by a live PTY. A session created directly as structured has neither, so it was not refused by orchestration — it was invisible. A coordinator could not start one, address one, or receive `worker_done` from one. Add a second authority source rather than a parameter channel. A registry maps a session id to the same three facts the PTY path supplies — a bearer handle, a pane key and a host scope — and the four runtime getters consult it before giving up on `ptysById`. `orchestration.send` and `verifyDispatchCapability` are untouched: authority stays host-derived and the CLI still cannot assert who it is. PTY handles short-circuit on the handle prefix, so the terminal path is unchanged. Mail travels as a session turn instead of as bytes, on a sibling lane that keeps the PTY lane's outstanding-run, waiter, reserved-type and batch rules. Orchestration's database stays the source of truth; the send is best-effort, exactly as the byte write is, and mail is consumed only on a proven-accepted dispatch. Delivery waits for the session to be between turns, because one provider refuses a mid-turn start outright and the other cannot acknowledge one inside the ack window. Security properties, each pinned by test: the pane key's leaf is random and persisted rather than derived, since `check` is identity-gated and accepts a caller-supplied pane key; the handle is a random bearer token; the child env carries no pane key, which would otherwise flow into hook pipelines that assume a PTY leaf; hook attestation stays closed for structured handles; and process continuity comes from record lineage, never the runtime fence, which the host bumps during its own crash recovery. Also remove the "Orchestration paused" notice, which gated only on dispatch status and rendered over bridge chat where orchestration always worked; refuse the implicit-sender fallback when a worktree has more than one candidate leaf instead of guessing; and collapse the archive kinds to one named type with a compile-time assertion that the capture set cannot drift ahead of the storable set. * fix(orchestration): answer the structured idle gate from the reduced timeline The structured pointer gate read a bounded 40-item tail page. A settled turn is tombstoned rather than rewritten, so an idle worker with any real history carries no turnLifecycle item at all and the "full page, no lifecycle item" guard read it as busy forever: every nudge after the worker's first substantial turn parked on a settle edge that had already passed, and the preamble tells workers not to poll. The attention gate had the mirror bug — a prompt older than the tail window was missed and the nudge was delivered into a session blocked on a human. Both facts now come from `journal.snapshot()`, the fully reduced timeline, via a new narrow `readGateFacts` host read; the policy module stays pure and still projects through the shared helpers the chat view reads. Also: - Park `session-not-attached` on the journal edge, so mail that arrives during a transient detach is redriven by the re-attach reset instead of sitting unread. - Resolve a structured worker's provider from the durable agent-session record when the registry entry was rehydrated, so a restarted Codex worker is no longer reported and archived as Claude. - Clear `structured_pointer_operations` in every `orchestration reset` scope. - Drop the per-chat-pane dispatch-status store subscription left behind by the removed paused notice, and re-pin the two terminal-pane ratchets it moves. - Hoist the identical pointer batch selection out of both delivery lanes into `selectOrchestrationPointerBatch`. - Refuse the pre-graph-ready focus-based guess for `requireUnambiguous` callers, matching the ready path. - Move the host teardown phase list into the teardown module it belongs to, which is what keeps the host inside its max-lines budget. * fix(orchestration): discard a structured worker session whose create settled unknown `commitStructuredAgentSessionCreate` answers `agent_session_operation_unknown` when `attach` SUCCEEDED and only the tab publish failed, so `created.ok === false` is not proof that nothing exists. The worker start read it that way and skipped `discardCreatedSession`, leaving a live provider child that took no hold, has no `bindingsByDispatchId` entry and no published tab — the outer `releaseStructuredWorkerSession` no-ops without a binding, and a session that never had a holder never starts the eviction clock, so nothing in the runtime ever retires it. A throw out of the commit half is past `attach` for the same reason; the pre-commit half refuses rather than throwing. Cleanup now asks whether the create MAY have committed, via the existing `isDefinitiveAgentSessionCreateRefusal` predicate. Also: - Strengthen the pre-ready `requireUnambiguous` test so it actually pins the guard: the snapshot now carries a focused terminal, so deleting the `? [] :` ternary turns the test red instead of leaving the refusal to the ambiguous `listTerminals` fallback. - Correct the guard's justification comment, which cited `orchestration check` as covered. `check` resolves through the `--terminal` scope and still guesses; the guard covers the implicit `--from` sender, and a structured worker is covered by the `ORCA_TERMINAL_HANDLE` baked into its child. * docs(orchestration): stop two structured-worker comments claiming guarantees the code does not give The send-time owner re-check reads `target.refusal`, the snapshot the resolver already admitted, so `decideStructuredPointerDelivery` can only agree with the resolve-time answer and `owner-not-settled-native` is unreachable from that call site. What actually fences an owner that moved is `expectedRuntimeFence`, which a handoff bumps. Say that, so nobody later drops the fence trusting a re-check that is structurally a tautology. `discardCreatedSession` was credited with retiring "a published background tab that no dispatch owns". It hides the DURABLE tab reference and closes the session; the live tab snapshot keeps the row, so the background tab this start published stays on screen until the app restarts. Same for stop and release. The comment now describes what the two calls do — including that both are no-ops on a session that was never attached, which is what makes the non-definitive-refusal path safe to reach unconditionally. * fix(orchestration): retire a structured worker's chat tab when the worker settles Starting a structured worker always publishes a real `agent-session:<id>` tab, but every settlement path only called `setSessionTabVisibility(sessionId, false)` plus `host.close(sessionId)`. That clears the DURABLE restore index and leaves the LIVE snapshot untouched, so stop, release and the half-started discard all left a dead "Claude Chat" / "Codex Chat" tab in the worktree's tab bar for the rest of the app session — five dispatches, five dead tabs — and opening one re-attached the released session, respawning a provider child outside orchestration's hold accounting. The snapshot-pruning half of `closeStructuredAgentSessionTab` is extracted into `structured-agent-session-tab-retirement.ts` and exposed on the runtime as `retireStructuredAgentSessionTabFromSnapshot`, so the user-initiated tab close and the three settlements share one implementation instead of a second copy. The settlement side is best-effort BY CONSTRUCTION: it runs only after the close is already proven, calls the runtime method optionally, and swallows any throw. It talks to no renderer, so the startup release reconciler can call it too. Nothing here can turn a proven stop into `release_unknown`. * fix(orchestration): stop a structured worker's nudges, archive and liveness from lying Five defects in the structured-worker lanes, each with the same shape: a check that answered from something other than what it claimed to measure. - The pointer lane gated a WORKER's `dispatch:` mailbox on its RUN's outstanding delivery. Delivery rows exist only for a `run:` address, so that row belongs to the coordinator — and a coordinator holds one for exactly as long as it is acting on received mail, which is when it replies to its workers. The gate is gone; there is no coordinator mailbox in this lane to protect. - `dispatch-rejected` now parks on the journal edge. A rejection consumes no mail and nothing else redrives the mailbox, so an unparked pointer left the worker idle on durable mail until unrelated mail happened to arrive. - The released journal archive bounded forward — keeping the HEAD — before capping newest-first, so a long worker's archive ended at its early exploration and dropped the answer it was released for, under a warning that said the oldest messages had gone. One newest-first pass now, and the warning is true. - The durable pointer operation id was reused on a matching BODY fingerprint, and the body names only the unread count. Two unrelated same-size batches collided, the host replayed its ledger answer as `accepted` with no turn sent, and the lane marked the new mail delivered. Reuse is keyed on the batch's message ids. - `worker-read` on a structured worker hardcoded `terminal: 'running'` and emitted no `liveness`, so a runtime that could not see the session reported the worker as alive. It now carries the observed verdict, as the PTY branch does. Also: the live journal cursor is an index into a re-derived tail window, so the page's oldest item joins its source identity — a slid window now answers `source_changed` instead of silently resuming past the items it skipped. And a stop that reached no host reports `processAction: 'none'`, after installing the host the way release already does. * fix(orchestration): stop a released structured archive claiming a close that never landed `worker-read` on a released structured worker hardcoded `liveness: 'exited'`. The archive is frozen BEFORE the close, so it proves nothing about the provider child, and the read is served for `release_state` in `releasing` / `unknown` too — the two states that exist precisely to record a close that did NOT land. A coordinator that read `exited` from a `release_unknown` worker would start a replacement over the same worktree while the original child was still attached, which is the outcome docs/reference/ssh-execution-boundary.md rule 2 exists to prevent, and it contradicts the release receipt's own "the structured session close was not proven" text. The verdict now comes from the resource row the read already holds: only a settled `released` row is `exited`, everything else is `unverifiable` — which the existing mapping renders as `terminal: 'unknown'`, the same way the live branch does. * fix(orchestration): stop a structured worker-start reporting a preamble it never delivered Two ways a structured `worker-start` handed the coordinator a receipt that did not describe the worker it got. `sendStructuredWorkerPreamble` threw only on a refusal and on `rejected`, so a submission that settled `unknown` fell through as success: the start pushed `dispatch_input: accepted` and marked the dispatch ready. `unknown` is not rare — `dispatchSafely` converts ANY thrown adapter call (provider child gone, transport dropped, ack window missed) into it, and `performSend` still returns ok. The worker then has no task spec while its coordinator blocks in `check --wait --types worker_done` until timeout. This PR's own mail lane already states the rule — "`pending` is not yet an acknowledgement; only `accepted` may consume mail" — so the preamble now applies it too, and raises `operation_unknown` for the states that prove neither delivery nor failure, which is the code `failWorkerStartWithReceipt` turns into the `outcome_unknown` receipt whose nextCommands send the coordinator to look. `rejected` stays a proven failure. `--structured` also accepted `--model` / `--effort` and dropped them: structured session creation takes no launch preferences, while `launch.receipt.effective` echoes whatever was requested either way, so `--model opus` ran on the workspace default and the receipt still said `opus`. Refused now, for the same reason `--terminal` refuses them, and the spec note records that refusal along with the new-child/new-top-level one it never mentioned. Tests: the refusal guard had no coverage at all, and `structured-mailbox-pointer-host` — where the full-timeline gate read lives — had none either; reinstating the bounded tail there left the whole repo green. Both are covered now, and the vacuous "never selects an exact provider session" case is re-pointed at the absent `ORCA_PANE_KEY` that actually keeps that selector shut. * fix(orchestration): let a structured worker actually reach the Orca CLI, and stop four settlements lying A structured worker's provider child runs `orca orchestration ...` exactly like a PTY worker's agent does, but it was handed the ambient PATH. On packaged Linux the CLI installs as `orca-ide` so it never claims GNOME Orca's /usr/bin/orca (#7904), so bare `orca` execs the screen reader and the worker can never read mail, reply or send worker_done; on packaged macOS/Windows the bundled launcher is only reachable from the app's own resources dir. The PTY lane already solves this inside `buildPtyHostEnv`; that block is now its own module and both lanes call it. Also: - a worker start that fails AFTER its session exists now discards the session, so a failed start stops stranding a dead chat tab that the durable restore index republishes on every launch; - a structured worker's resource reconciles to `released` after settlement forgot its identity, instead of answering `unverifiable` for the life of the DB; - `closeAttempted` is set only once a close is issued, so a tab-visibility failure can no longer report `closed_agent_terminal` for a running child; - `forgetSession` prunes only what the settled worker parked, not every sibling whose target momentarily fails to resolve; - release settles with an explicitly empty, warned archive when the journal is unreadable AND the session is proven exited — closing the chat tab is routine, and `archive_failed` there wedged release on evidence that could never arrive; - the new migration test uses mkdtemp and cleans up, so it stops failing Windows CI and leaking. * fix(orchestration): merge the duplicated release-receipts import The release-completion module imported ./orchestration-worker-release-receipts twice, which trips import/no-duplicates in audit:code-quality:native. The changed-file gate does not load that config, so only whole-tree CI saw it. * docs(runtime): note that a background structured tab re-publish is a no-op The activate:false branch for an already-published session returns without writing the snapshot or emitting, so it cannot re-surface a client whose mirror lost the tab. Orchestration is safe from this only incidentally. * feat(orchestration): make the worker mode the user's own default, not a flag `worker-start --structured` was an explicit opt-in that REFUSED --on, --terminal, --model/--effort and worktree-creating placements. The flag, its spec entry and the `structured` RPC param are gone: the mode now follows the user's setting for new agent tabs, so a local claude/codex worker is a structured chat session whenever the user's own default says agent tabs open as one. A setting is a preference, not a demand, so none of those combinations refuses any more. A dispatch that cannot be structured starts an ordinary PTY terminal worker and the receipt names the mode that ran and why, so the fallback is never silent: - a remote --on, an existing --terminal, a new-child/new-top-level worktree and --model/--effort are decided from the request; - the agent, TUI launch customization, Codex-on-Windows and the runtime capability are decided by the shared launch route; - WSL, remoteness and the Windows start-time gate are settled by the executing host's own agentSession.createSupport, asked once the worktree resolves and before anything is created, so a refusal is a terminal worker rather than a failed start. The decision is the renderer's, lifted rather than copied: `resolveAgentLaunchRoute`'s structured half and the settings predicate now live in shared/structured-native-chat-launch-route, which both surfaces call, and the TUI launch customization test moves to shared beside it. `getClientSettings` gains the two native-chat default booleans it was missing. No security invariant moves: the structured worker registry, bearer handle, persisted pane key, the absence of ORCA_PANE_KEY from the child env, hook attestation and lineage-derived process incarnation are untouched. * fix(orchestration): stop the worker mode leaking into the agent contract The mode a worker runs in is a runtime implementation detail. An agent should be taught the same verbs, run the same commands and read the same receipts whether it is a structured chat session or a PTY terminal — otherwise a settings-driven fallback silently changes what the agent can do. The real leak was `canDispatchSubWorkers`, which was forced false for a structured worker. That was not a wording choice: `worker-start` resolved `--from` through `showTerminal`, which needs a live PTY or renderer leaf, so a `structworker_` coordinator genuinely could not dispatch. Rather than withhold the capability, the one fact the command needs from `--from` — its worktree id — now comes from `getOrchestrationDispatchAuthority`, the same authority the pane-key and process-incarnation getters already answer structured handles from. Sub-dispatch is gated on depth alone, identically for both modes. `showTerminal` itself is deliberately NOT taught structured handles: it returns a ptyId, a leaf id and a pane runtime id, and synthesising those for a session with no PTY would hand every caller of a public terminal verb something that looks writable and is not. `inspectWorkerTerminal` already returns `terminal: null` for exactly that reason. Also neutralised three agent-visible refusals that named the worker's kind: a `worker-read --source terminal` on a worker with no terminal now names the sources that do work, and both archive refusals say "transcript output" rather than "structured chat output" (the PTY `transcript_pin` branch said "structured" too). New tests pin both properties: the two preambles are byte-identical once the handle and per-dispatch ids are normalised, and a structured coordinator starts a worker with `showTerminal` rejecting. * fix(orchestration): stop claiming a structured worker was checked for a prompt worker-show reported observation.agentWait: null for every structured worker. The field's own contract says null means Orca looked and found no wait, and absent means it never looked — and nothing looks here: a structured worker parks on a journal question item, which no terminal prompt scan can see. So null was a false negative on the one field a coordinator is explicitly told to read, and it was mode-dependent: the same worker as a PTY would have reported the wait. Absent is both the honest value and a state a PTY worker already reaches (an older host, an unreadable pane, a probe that did not answer), so it discloses nothing about which mode ran. * docs(cli): stop the worker-start spec pointing a caller at the worker kind The note said "the receipt mode field names the mode used and why", which is an instruction to read a field no verb behaves differently for — the one thing the mode was not supposed to become. It now says what a caller actually needs: the dispatch always starts, the options passed are the ones honoured, and every worker is driven the same way. The receipt still carries the mode for operators and telemetry; nothing tells an agent to look at it. * perf(orchestration): coalesce the structured redrive edge Every journal batch is a redrive candidate, because a settled turn is tombstoned rather than rewritten — there is no completed row to watch for. That is free while nothing is parked on the session, but once mail IS parked each batch re-resolved the dispatch, queried unread mail and read the host's gate facts, only to re-park because the turn was still running. A turn streaming tool calls paid that per batch. The edge now coalesces on a 300ms quiet window with a 2s starvation cap, so a streaming turn costs a handful of evaluations instead of one per batch and a settled turn still nudges promptly. Delivery semantics are untouched: the gate, the accepted/rejected/unknown handling and the retain rules all still run exactly as before, just fewer times. Nor is this the path fresh mail takes to an idle worker — that is `deliverForHandle` at enqueue time, which this does not touch — so the common case gains no latency. The mechanism is the session.tabs notify coalescer, generalised into `keyed-trailing-edge-coalescer` and called by both rather than duplicated; the session.tabs windows stay where they were, since 50ms is right for a spinner title and far too tight for a journal stream. Disposal drops the pending timer rather than flushing it, on the existing subscription disposer that every settlement already reaches, so a redrive can never fire for a session no dispatch owns. * fix(orchestration): deliver direct peer mail to a structured worker, and let a peer read it Two agent-to-agent verbs had no answer for a worker that IS a structured agent session, and both failed quietly. Mail addressed to a worker's own bearer handle — how agents mail each other outside a dispatch — fell between the lanes. The send stored durably and reported success, `getLiveTerminalPaneKey` resolved the recipient, and then neither lane claimed the mailbox: the structured resolver answered only `dispatch:` addresses, and the PTY lane refuses a structured handle outright. Nothing errored and nothing logged, so the worker never reacted and the peer waiting on a reply hung. The resolver now also answers a bare worker handle, preferring that worker's active dispatch so peer and coordinator nudges share one operation-ledger budget. A worker BETWEEN dispatches is still nudged, under a session-scoped key: a dispatch says nothing about whether delivery is safe — the idle gate and the lease fence do — and its own `check` reads exactly the direct mailbox the mail is sitting in. The dispatch caller key is left byte-identical, because the ledger is keyed on (callerKey, operationId) and reshaping it would re-mint nudges already in flight as second turns. `terminal read` had no structured branch, so the only peer-accessible read verb answered `terminal_handle_stale` for a live worker; `worker-read` is closed to a peer, which holds neither coordinator standing nor a dispatch id. It now serves the session's journal, projected to LINES and paged by the same reader the PTY tail uses, so the result stays a plain RuntimeTerminalRead and nothing an agent reads discloses which kind of worker answered. Bounding and dispatch-capability redaction are the archive path's, reused rather than rebuilt. A session that is not attached refuses with the existing not-attached code rather than returning an empty tail, which would read as "this worker has said nothing". `terminal.show` still refuses a structured handle. This is read-only on purpose: synthesising a ptyId/leafId/paneRuntimeId would hand every public terminal verb something that looks writable and is not. * fix(orchestration): stop three PTY-only probes answering for structured sessions Three defects, one shape: a probe that enumerates PTYs or resolves a pane was standing in for a question that is not about panes at all. `worktree rm` destroyed a live structured worker. `killAllProcessesForWorktree` sweeps the renderer graph, the provider session list and the local pty-registry, and a structured session is registered on none of them — so all three counted zero, nothing errored, and removal deleted the checkout out from under a running provider child, which kept running with its `cwd` gone while the dispatch still reported the worker live and exact. A fourth sweep now asks what the other three cannot: membership by `location.workspaceId`, which covers a plain chat session as well as a dispatched worker, and liveness by the same `live`/`unverifiable`/`exited` observation the rest of the structured surface uses. It REFUSES a destructive removal rather than auto-closing, on the same bargain and the same `--force` escape hatch as the unstopped-PTY gate — this is the verb that deletes a user's work, and a running agent is exactly what they would want to be told about. Force closes the sessions properly instead of orphaning a child. Best-effort reconciliation callers are excluded: they repair state, delete nothing, and must never be failed closed. Twelve coordinator verbs failed for a structured worker running as itself. `isLiveTerminalHandle` validated `ORCA_TERMINAL_HANDLE` with `terminal.show`, a PTY verb whose leaf lookup misses for a session that never had a pane; the pane remint that would have recovered it needs `ORCA_PANE_KEY`, which a structured child deliberately does not carry, so every one of them died on `no_active_sender_terminal` — including the ones the worker's own dispatch preamble tells it to run. The identity question gets its own probe, `terminal.resolveIdentity`: a handle and a boolean and nothing writable. `terminal.show` still refuses a structured handle, because synthesising ptyId/leafId/paneRuntimeId would hand every public terminal verb something that looks writable and is not. The PTY half is byte-for-byte today's check, `getLiveLeafForHandle` included, so its `rendererGraphEpoch` re-check still runs — that check is the whole reason the sender is validated at all, and a cheaper probe would have quietly started passing stale post-reload handles. A host that predates the method answers `method_not_found` and the client falls back to `terminal.show`, which is correct for that host: one without the identity probe has no structured workers to miss. `dispatch --inject` reported `no_agent_detected` for a structured worker, because `isTerminalRunningAgent` reaches `getLiveLeaf`, throws, and the catch returns false. A structured session IS the agent; there is no foreground process to recognise, so it answers before the PTY probes rather than through them. Also: a Run whose coordinator is structured now gets its `run:` mail. Both lanes declined and neither logged — the PTY lane because the owner is structured, the structured lane because the mailbox was not `dispatch:` — so each half believed the other owned it. The PTY lane's reasoning (a coordinator blocks in `check --wait`, where a waiter preempts pointer delivery) does not transfer: a structured coordinator is a chat session whose turn ends. Its `run:` deliveries take the `hasOutstandingRunDelivery` gate the PTY lane applies for exactly that mailbox, and only for that mailbox. The test that would have caught the twelve drives the CLI with `ORCA_TERMINAL_HANDLE=structworker_…` and no `--from`. Every existing orchestration CLI test passes `--from` explicitly, so the resolver a real worker goes through was never exercised — which is why the suite stayed green while the preamble failed on its first line. Two files crossed their line ceiling and are split rather than waived: `worktree-teardown.ts` sheds its two PTY-surface sweeps and the deadline arithmetic they share, and `orchestration.test.ts` — which sat exactly on 800 — sheds the two caller-identity suites this change rewrote. * fix(orchestration): arm the takeover signal for structured chat input `worker-release` closed a structured session a user had taken over, losing work mid-conversation, while `orchestration-worker-specs.ts:106` promised "Never closes … user-taken-over terminals". Every guard was already correct and simply never armed. `reportWorkerTerminalUserInput` has exactly one call site — the real-user-input signal on a PTY connection — so structured chat input never reached `orchestration.workerTerminalUserInput`, `markWorkerTerminalUserOwned` never ran, ownership stayed `owned` instead of `user_owned`, `retainedReason` never returned `user_takeover`, and `stopStructuredWorker` proceeded. The durable flag is reused as-is rather than given a parallel mechanism: it exists precisely so a restart, an SSH drop or a renderer remount cannot erase a takeover. Addressed by SESSION, never by pane key. A structured worker's pane key is a random identity credential — anyone holding it can read and consume that worker's mailbox, and session ids are embedded in tab ids in plain text — so it stays in main and the runtime resolves the session to it. Handing it to a renderer to echo back would make it learnable by anyone who can see a chat pane. The RPC gains an optional `sessionId` alongside `paneKey`; a host that predates it rejects the call, and the report is already best-effort with a catch, so that host degrades to exactly today's behaviour rather than failing a send. The signal fires from the composer send hook and only past `accepted`: the outbox dispatcher retries, and orchestration's own pointer nudges never pass through the composer at all — so neither can be mistaken for a user takeover. * fix(orchestration): reach structured workers through group addresses `orca orchestration send --to @all` — and `@idle`, `@claude`, `@codex`, `@worktree:<id>` — silently skipped every structured worker. Recipients came from `listTerminals`, which enumerates leaves and PTYs, and a structured session is on neither. The exclusion happened BEFORE per-recipient resolution, so the `SendRecipientWarning` machinery never ran: the caller got exit 0 and a receipt naming the workers that did resolve, and a broadcast "stop work" or "base moved" reached the PTY workers and nobody else. With every worker structured it degraded to `terminal_not_found`, which reads as "the group was empty". Fixed at the group-resolution site rather than inside `listTerminals`. That result is published to paired mobile and remote clients and to consumers that assume a summary carries a `ptyId` or is writable, so widening it is its own change under `docs/reference/remote-wire-compatibility.md`. Group addressing reads exactly three fields off a recipient, and `RuntimeTerminalSummary` already satisfies them structurally, so the resolver widens to that smaller shape and nothing here invents a `worktreePath` or a `branch`. Candidates are liveness- gated on the same observation the rest of the structured surface uses — mail addressed to a settled worker would be stored for a lane that will never deliver it — and once a worker IS a candidate, the existing per-recipient warnings cover it, so an unresolvable one is reported rather than dropped. `@idle` needed more than enumeration: `getAgentStatusForHandle` reaches a PTY probe that throws for a handle with no pane, so a structured worker would have been enumerated and then silently dropped from the one group address that selects on status. It now answers from the session's journal — and off the FULL reduced timeline, never a bounded tail. Settlement tombstones the running turn's lifecycle item rather than rewriting it, so on any page-sized read a long tool-calling turn looks identical to an idle session; `@idle` would then broadcast into a running turn, which Codex answers with `turn already running` and Claude queues behind. An unreadable session answers null, never idle. `terminal list` and `worktree ps` still omit structured workers; that is the wire-visible half and is deliberately not in this change. * fix(orchestration): refuse rather than guess when a chat session has no identity An ordinary structured chat session — not a dispatched worker — is spawned with no `ORCA_TERMINAL_HANDLE`, because `structuredWorkerChildIdentityEnv` early- returns for any session outside the worker registry. `orca orchestration check` then fell through to `terminal.resolveActive`, which picks the focused tab's active leaf or the first leaf in the worktree. It returned a valid handle, so nothing errored — and `check` is destructive by default, so it consumed another pane's oldest unacknowledged batch and marked it read. The rightful worker never saw that mail. `requireUnambiguous` does not fix this, only narrows it: it refuses when MULTIPLE leaves could be meant, and with exactly one terminal pane in the worktree the guess still resolves — to a sibling. "One terminal pane plus one chat tab" is a normal layout, so the common case stayed broken. The pinned test is that case. So the child now carries `ORCA_STRUCTURED_SESSION`, and every remaining route that would GUESS an implicit terminal refuses on it with an error naming the flag to pass. The marker names NOTHING — no handle, no pane key, no session id, no token — which is the whole reason it is safe: it cannot be replayed, cannot impersonate, and cannot flow into the hook-attestation, agent-row or mobile-projection pipelines the way a pane key would. That makes it a different decision from withholding `ORCA_PANE_KEY`, not a reversal of it. It also grants no CLI reachability, so packaged builds keep exactly today's exposure. The comment at `orca-runtime-adopt-terminal-orphans-from-inventory.ts` that justified the guess — "a structured worker is covered instead by the `ORCA_TERMINAL_HANDLE` its child is spawned with" — was true only for dispatched workers and false for every other structured session, a population this branch creates. It now says which case it covers and which case it does not. * fix(orchestration): stop two surfaces lying about a worker with no terminal `orca terminal <verb>` answered `terminal_handle_stale` for a structured worker's handle. Nothing went stale: the session is live and simply has no terminal, and it never had one — so callers acted on a false claim and went hunting for a remint that cannot exist. The refusal now carries its own code and names the structured equivalents (`orca terminal read`, `worker-read --source transcript`, `orca orchestration send`), so an agent that lands there learns what to run rather than what failed. A PTY handle that really did go stale keeps the old error, and so does a session this runtime no longer owns — that handle IS dead. `terminal.show` stays non-resolving: synthesising a ptyId/leafId/paneRuntimeId would hand every public terminal verb something that looks writable and is not. `orchestration-worker-specs.ts` promised "the same verbs, the same handle, and the same worker-read sources", and all three clauses were false for a worker with no terminal. A spec agents read must not carry a false promise, so it now states the limitation and the alternative that always works. Note this had to be reconciled with an invariant this branch already holds: the worker MODE must stay opaque, or a coordinator starts branching on something no verb it runs behaves differently for. So the note says "not every worker has a terminal" and points at `--source auto`/`--source transcript` WITHOUT naming a kind — the same mode-neutral wording `readStructuredWorkerOutput` already uses when it refuses `--source terminal`. Both properties are now pinned by tests, so neither can be restored by breaking the other. * fix(orchestration): close the review findings on the structured parity work Four defects and two follow-ups from the delta review. The `worktree rm` refusal was a dead end in the desktop UI. Its message matched no matcher in `classifyWorktreeForceDeleteReason`, and an ordinary desktop delete already passes `force=true` for the dirty-file skip, so classification returned null unconditionally: the toast showed raw CLI wording with no Force Delete button, and a user with a live chat session was stuck unless they knew to reach for the CLI. That is the #11960 shape `shared/worktree/removal.ts` documents, so the refusal now has its own prefix, matcher, `WorktreeForceDeleteReason` and toast copy, classified BEFORE the `force` guard and nulled once the waiver is spent — exactly how `unstopped-pty` is handled, with matcher and hint kept in the same file as that contract requires. The copy says Force Delete will close a running conversation rather than borrowing the "could not confirm" wording, because Orca watched these sessions stay attached; there is no doubt to waive. Structured `terminal read` cursors were unsound and are now refused. The PTY cursor indexes an append-only completed-line buffer with a monotone count; a session journal is a BOUNDED tail re-projected on every read, so a saved index addressed different lines as the journal grew — and `truncated` could never fire to say so, because it tests `cursor < oldestCursor` and `oldestCursor` was always 0. A poller got wrong or duplicated lines under `truncated:false`. Separately, a streaming turn's lines counted as completed with `partialLine` hardcoded empty, so a mid-turn cursor consumed a half-written line whose growth was never redelivered — the `"hel"`/`"hello"` hazard the PTY reader guards against. The journal does have stable item identity, but `terminal.read`'s cursor is a number on the wire and cannot carry it, so a cursor read now refuses and names `worker-read --source transcript`, which already has that contract including `source_changed`. No cursor space is advertised either: `nextCursor` is null and the cursor fields are absent, rather than claiming an index the next read cannot honour. The header claim that all four fields kept their meanings was true of the shape and false of the invariants; it now says which ones hold. Two fixes had no test at their real seam, which is the same failure that produced this whole set — the runtime tested directly, the seam tested by neither. The group-addressing test hand-composed the recipient list itself, so deleting the composition at the call site left it green; it now drives `sendGroupMessage` with no PTY terminals at all. Nothing referenced `isLiveStructuredAgent`, so the `dispatch --inject` fix had no red-then-green at all; it now has one driving `RuntimeTerminalAgentPresence.isRunning`. Both were ablated and confirmed red. Folder-workspace removals sweep and kill PTYs without `requirePhysicalStop`, so the structured sweep no-opped there and left a live session bound to a workspace about to be forgotten. They now close best-effort under an explicit `closeStructuredSessions` flag, kept separate from `requirePhysicalStop` because the two questions differ: that one asks whether a stop must be PROVEN before files are touched, and it is what licenses a refusal. These paths do not refuse — the root is shared so no checkout vanishes under the child, and one of them is a never-throw forget a refusal would wedge. Reconciliation sweeps set neither and still close nothing. Also: the force close is raced against the same sweep deadline every PTY surface is bounded by, so a wedged provider close reports the timeout instead of hanging `worktree rm --force` forever; and the refusal now prints a count and the providers instead of raw session ids, which our own marker rationale treats as one tab-id hop from a credential. * test: pin structured-session close on the folder-workspace removal path The folder and orphan removal callers now pass closeStructuredSessions so a live structured session is closed best-effort rather than left bound to a workspace Orca has forgotten. These three exact-args characterizations describe that call and had not been updated. * fix(orchestration): stop the structured worker-read cursor misdelivering silently `worker-read --source transcript` for a structured worker fingerprinted only the oldest item's id, so `source_changed` fired when the window slid off the front and could NOT fire when the page's contents changed under a stable oldest item — which is the normal case, because the journal is a reduced, mutable timeline. A `running` tool item gains its `[tool result]` at its original sequence once later items exist, the 60ms delta coalescer revises a message in place, settlement can rewrite an item smaller, and a pending approval projects to null until it resolves and then appears in the MIDDLE of the array. Two silent failures followed, both returning ok. Omission: a caller handed a coalesced `hel`, resuming past it, never received the revision to `hello world` — the same defect we refused to ship on the terminal read path, already shipped here. Duplication: a resolved approval inserted ahead of a saved index, which was still accepted, so the caller re-read content it already had. The blast radius is the coordinator polling loop, the verb's primary consumer. The anchor is now the oldest item PLUS every item whose projected message sits below the caller's position, by id and revision. `createWorkerOutputSourceIdentity` already takes an arbitrary string array and the cursor is already opaque base64url carrying its own position, so neither the wire shape nor the `source_changed` contract changes. Prefix-scoped rather than whole-page deliberately: fingerprinting every item on the page would flip the identity every 60ms with the coalescer window during an active turn, making the cursor unusable exactly while the worker is working — that trades a silent bug for a useless verb. Tail growth the caller has not read cannot invalidate; any change to what it already holds does. Position-dependence is safe because `p` rides in the same opaque payload as the identity, and the returned cursor is stamped with the identity of its own end, which is precisely what the next read recomputes. The frozen archive keeps a constant identity: no item can be revised under a caller there, so it has no prefix to fingerprint. Both silent shapes are pinned across a page boundary with the journal mutating between reads — a static-journal test passes either way. Two ablations at the real call site: reverting to the oldest-item-only anchor turns both red, and widening the prefix to the whole page turns the tail-growth case red, which is what proves the scoping is real in both directions. * docs(orchestration): stop the structured terminal-read refusal recommending a dead end The refusal told a peer to "page it with `orca orchestration worker-read --source transcript`", which is wrong three ways and this file said so itself: its own header explains that this verb exists BECAUSE `worker-read` demands a dispatch id and coordinator standing "a peer does not have" — and then the refusal sent that same peer there. The verb it named is also a window index over the same bounded page, so it is not a paging answer even for a caller who can reach it; under load it now answers `source_changed` on most polls, which is better than the silent hole it had before but still not what the sentence promised. The refusal now says what actually works — the tail is bounded and newest-last, so poll it and diff — and names no alternative, because there is none. That is the honest framing: a durable cursor is not achievable here at all, rather than blocked on the wire shape. The journal is a reduced, MUTABLE timeline: an item's projected text changes at its original sequence after later items exist, the delta coalescer revises repeatedly, settlement can rewrite an item smaller, a pending approval renders as nothing and then as something, and `sequence` resets on epoch rollover. No index, numeric or opaque, survives that. So the docstring's "pagination with a real anchor lives on `worker-read --source transcript`" is gone too — there is no real anchor there — and the file now records why no windowed alternative should be built later: a broken cursor fails UNSAFE, as a silent hole in a poller's output, while diffing a bounded tail fails safe as a harmless re-read, and a second paging-shaped verb would invite the PTY assumptions this one cannot honour. The test asserted the old advice, so it now pins the contract instead: the refusal explains the working approach and must never name `worker-read`. `worker-read --source transcript` remains a good bounded snapshot for a coordinator reading a worker it dispatched; only the "or page it with" clause was false. * fix(i18n): add the missing worktree-removal agent-session refusal string The structured-session removal refusal introduced a translate() key with no en.json entry. Nothing local catches that: typecheck passes, and the full suite passes, because a missing key falls back to its inline default at runtime. Only verify:localization-catalog fails on it, which is why CI's static analysis reddened on a branch that was green everywhere else. Fallback wording mirrors the sibling unstoppedPtyLive string, since the two refusals differ only in what is still running and what Force Delete does to it. * test(codex): expect the no-identity marker on an unregistered structured child The refuse-rather-than-guess marker landed after these expectations were written, and all three assert exact env equality on the unregistered path — the one branch that now carries ORCA_STRUCTURED_SESSION. One of the two files was added by this same branch, so this is a self-inflicted drift; the other predates the branch and was broken by it. The marker's presence is still pinned positively by structured-worker-child-identity-env.test.ts and the CLI's orchestration-structured-session-no-identity.test.ts, so relaxing these three exact-equality checks loses no coverage of the security property. * fix(orchestration): require exit evidence before settling structured close --------- Co-authored-by: Merge Sim <sim@local>
Orca
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The AI Orchestrator for 100x builders.
Run Codex, ClaudeCode, OpenCode or Pi side-by-side — each in its own worktree, tracked in one place.
Download Orca
Features
Mobile CompanionMonitor and steer your agents from your phone — get notified when an agent finishes and send follow-ups from anywhere. |
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Parallel WorktreesFan one prompt across five agents, each in its own isolated git worktree — compare the results and merge the winner. |
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Terminal SplitsGhostty-class terminals with WebGL rendering, infinite splits, and scrollback that survives restarts. |
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Design ModeClick any UI element in a real Chromium window to send its HTML, CSS, and a cropped screenshot straight into your agent's prompt. |
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GitHub & Linear, NativeBrowse PRs, issues, and project boards in-app — open a worktree from any task and review without a context switch. |
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SSH WorktreesRun agents on a beefy remote box with full file editing, git, and terminals — auto-reconnect and port forwarding included. |
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Annotate AI DiffsDrop comments on any diff line and ship them back to the agent — review, edit, and commit without leaving Orca. |
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Drag Files to AgentsVS Code's editor with autosave everywhere — drag files or images straight into an agent prompt. |
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Orca CLIAgents drive Orca too — script every workflow with |
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Also in the box:
- Quick open — Search across worktrees, files, agents, commands, and repo context without leaving your flow.
- Account switcher & usage tracking — See Claude and Codex usage and rate-limit resets, and hot-swap accounts without re-logging in.
- Rich repo previews — Preview Markdown, images, PDFs, and repo docs in the workspace.
- Computer Use — Let agents operate desktop apps and visible UI when a workflow needs real interaction.
- Notifications and unread state — Know when an agent finishes or needs attention, then mark threads unread to come back later.
- And many, many more — we ship daily, so this list is perpetually behind. The changelog is the real feature list.
Supported Agents
Works with any CLI agent — if it runs in a terminal, it runs in Orca.
Claude Code
Codex
Grok
Cursor
GitHub Copilot
OpenCode
MiMo Code
Amp
OpenClaude
Antigravity
Pi
oh-my-pi
Hermes Agent
Devin
Goose
Auggie
Autohand Code
Charm
Cline
Codebuff
Command Code
Continue
Droid
Kilocode
Kimi
Kiro
Mistral Vibe
Qwen Code
Rovo Dev
+ any CLI agent
Install
Desktop — macOS, Windows, Linux
- Download from onOrca.dev
- Or grab a build directly: macOS Apple Silicon · macOS Intel · Windows (.exe) · Linux AppImage · All builds
- Running
orca serveon a headless Linux server? See the headless Linux server guide.
Or via a package manager:
# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install --cask stablyai/orca/orca
# Arch Linux (AUR) — or stably-orca-git to build from source
yay -S stably-orca-bin
Mobile Companion — iOS, Android
Pair with your desktop app to monitor and steer your agents from your phone.
- iOS: Download on the App Store or join TestFlight
- Android: Download APK 0.0.48 · Install guide
Community & Support
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Discord: Join the community on Discord.
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Twitter / X: Follow @orca_build for updates and announcements.
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WeChat: Scan to join the Orca community WeChat group 8. Group 8 may be full; if so, scan the Group 9 QR code instead.
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Feedback & Ideas: We ship fast. Missing something? Request a new feature.
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Privacy: See the privacy & telemetry docs for what anonymous usage data Orca collects and how to opt out.
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Show Support: Star this repo to follow along with our daily ships.
Developing
Want to contribute or run locally? See our CONTRIBUTING.md guide.
The relay that pairs the mobile app with a desktop host is also in this repository under
cloud/, with a separate pnpm workspace and setup guide.
Signed Builds
Windows code signing sponored/provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.
License
Orca is free and open source under the MIT License.