scripts/agent-role.py claim operator fails outright when another worktree holds the repo-wide lock:
ERROR: the operator role is already held by session ppid:1527831 on mudler-ubuntu-box.
This session cannot be the operator; take the helper role instead
Why the exclusivity is wrong for how we work
The lock's stated rationale (scripts/agent-role.py:28-37) is that "the shared case is the operator's primary checkout, where one role is the correct answer anyway."
That premise does not hold. Every task takes its own worktree and lands by merge, so there is no shared checkout to protect. An operator is a coordinator: its maximum powers are merging PRs directly and dispatching sub-agents into separate worktrees. It never rewrites shared history — main is never force-pushed, so a plain git push refuses any non-fast-forward and git itself is the interlock. Several coordinators on one machine serialise naturally.
What the exclusivity costs
It blocks. LOCK_TTL_SECONDS is 2 hours, so when a session dies mid-flight — as one did today, killed by a disk cleanup, leaving a dead pid and a frozen heartbeat — no session can coordinate for up to two hours, with no way to proceed but hand-deleting a file in .git/.
Wanted
Keep the lock as a record, never a refusal: it should show who is coordinating where, across concurrent sessions. That visibility was genuinely useful today; the refusal was not.
claim operator records this worktree and succeeds even when other worktrees are recorded.show reports the other live coordinators rather than a single owner.- Ownership keys on the worktree, which
lock_is_ours already does.
- The 2-hour TTL and stale-record pruning stay — they are correct and already work; a refusal at 78 minutes is not evidence otherwise.
Docs and policy to follow: AGENTS.md:100 ("The operator coordinates, owns main integration and the GPU") should say plainly that the role is a coordinator, that several may run at once, and that main is never force-pushed.
scripts/agent-role.py claim operatorfails outright when another worktree holds the repo-wide lock:Why the exclusivity is wrong for how we work
The lock's stated rationale (
scripts/agent-role.py:28-37) is that "the shared case is the operator's primary checkout, where one role is the correct answer anyway."That premise does not hold. Every task takes its own worktree and lands by merge, so there is no shared checkout to protect. An operator is a coordinator: its maximum powers are merging PRs directly and dispatching sub-agents into separate worktrees. It never rewrites shared history —
mainis never force-pushed, so a plaingit pushrefuses any non-fast-forward and git itself is the interlock. Several coordinators on one machine serialise naturally.What the exclusivity costs
It blocks.
LOCK_TTL_SECONDSis 2 hours, so when a session dies mid-flight — as one did today, killed by a disk cleanup, leaving a dead pid and a frozen heartbeat — no session can coordinate for up to two hours, with no way to proceed but hand-deleting a file in.git/.Wanted
Keep the lock as a record, never a refusal: it should show who is coordinating where, across concurrent sessions. That visibility was genuinely useful today; the refusal was not.
claim operatorrecords this worktree and succeeds even when other worktrees are recorded.showreports the other live coordinators rather than a single owner.lock_is_oursalready does.Docs and policy to follow:
AGENTS.md:100("The operator coordinates, owns main integration and the GPU") should say plainly that the role is a coordinator, that several may run at once, and that main is never force-pushed.