Repair and prevent missing lifecycle metadata on worktrees

[chubes4]

Problem

A large share of registered worktrees have missing lifecycle metadata, which prevents cheap inventory cleanup from classifying them safely.

Observed locally on 2026-05-11:

• studio wp datamachine-code workspace worktree list --stale --format=json | jq 'group_by(.stale) | map({stale: .[0].stale, count: length}) | sort_by(.count) | reverse'
• Result included 285 worktrees with stale: missing_metadata.
• Liveness grouping included 334 rows with liveness_reason: metadata_missing.
• Cheap cleanup review reported 17 metadata_reconciliation_candidates, but the full reconcile-metadata --dry-run path timed out after 300 seconds.

Example stale record shape:

{
  "handle": "agents-api@agents-api-agent-identity-store",
  "repo": "agents-api",
  "branch": "agents-api/agent-identity-store",
  "dirty": 1,
  "state": null,
  "created_at": null,
  "liveness": "unknown",
  "liveness_reason": "metadata_missing",
  "owner_full": { "site": "unknown", "agent": "unknown", "user": "unknown" },
  "metadata": []
}

Why this matters

Without lifecycle metadata, DMC cannot distinguish abandoned worktrees from active work, cannot attribute ownership/session/task context, and cannot safely move rows into cleanup eligibility from cheap inventory alone.

Desired outcome

DMC should both repair existing missing metadata and make future worktree creation/finalization metadata durable enough that this class of drift does not recur.

Acceptance criteria

• Provide a bounded metadata reconciliation command/job that can repair missing metadata in batches.
• Reconciled rows get enough owner/session/task/lifecycle fields for future inventory cleanup classification.
• Worktree creation and adoption paths always persist lifecycle metadata or fail loudly.
• Reporting distinguishes unrepaired legacy rows from newly-created metadata regressions.

Related

• Track agent session lifecycle for dead worktree detection #221
• Add DB-backed worktree inventory table and repository #243
• Architecture: make WordPress DB the source of truth for DMC workspace state #245

AI assistance

• AI assistance: Yes
• Tool(s): OpenCode (GPT-5.5)
• Used for: Drafting the issue from local DMC command output reviewed by Chris.