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Respawn Controller State Machine

The respawn controller (src/respawn-controller.ts) manages autonomous session cycling. It detects idle sessions and restarts them through a configurable sequence of steps.

State Diagram

WATCHING → CONFIRMING_IDLE → AI_CHECKING → SENDING_UPDATE → WAITING_UPDATE → SENDING_CLEAR → WAITING_CLEAR
    ↑         │ (new output)      │ (WORKING)                                              │
    │         ↓                   ↓                                                        ▼
    │       (reset)           (cooldown)              SENDING_INIT → WAITING_INIT → MONITORING_INIT
    │                                                                                    │
    │                                                           (if no work triggered)   ▼
    └──────────────────────────────────────── SENDING_KICKSTART ← WAITING_KICKSTART ◄────┘

States

State Description
watching Monitoring session output for idle signals
confirming_idle Waiting to confirm session is truly idle (cancels if new output arrives)
ai_checking Running AI idle check to verify IDLE/WORKING status
sending_update About to send /update command
waiting_update Waiting for /update to complete (output silence)
sending_clear About to send /clear command
waiting_clear Waiting for /clear to complete
sending_init About to send /init command
waiting_init Waiting for /init to complete
monitoring_init Watching if /init triggered actual work
sending_kickstart About to send kickstart prompt
waiting_kickstart Waiting for kickstart to complete
stopped Controller is disabled

Configuration

Steps can be skipped via config:

  • sendClear: false - Skip the clear step
  • sendInit: false - Skip the init step
  • kickstartPrompt - Optional prompt if /init doesn't trigger work

Step Confirmation

After sending each step (update, clear, init, kickstart), the controller waits for completionConfirmMs (10s) of output silence before proceeding. This prevents sending commands while Claude is still processing.

Idle Detection (Multi-Layer)

  1. Completion message: Primary signal - detects "Worked for Xm Xs" time patterns (requires "Worked" prefix to avoid false positives)
  2. AI Idle Check (enabled by default): Spawns a fresh Claude session in a tmux session to analyze terminal output and provide IDLE/WORKING verdict. Uses claude-opus-4-5-20251101 by default, sends last 16k chars of terminal buffer. Timeout 90s, cooldown 3min after WORKING. Auto-disables after 3 consecutive errors. The AI prompt is conservative: when in doubt, it answers WORKING.
  3. Output silence: Confirms idle after completionConfirmMs (10s) of no new output
  4. Token stability: Tokens haven't changed
  5. Working patterns absent: No Thinking, Writing, spinner chars, etc. for at least 8 seconds
  6. Session.isWorking check: Final safety - if the Session class reports isWorking=true, idle confirmation is rejected

Working Pattern Detection:

  • Uses a rolling 300-character window to catch patterns split across PTY chunks
  • Patterns include: Thinking, Writing, Reading, Running, Searching, Editing, Creating, Deleting, Analyzing, Executing, Synthesizing, Compiling, Building, Processing, Loading, Generating, Testing, Checking, Validating, and spinner characters

Uses confirming_idle state to prevent false positives. Cancels idle confirmation if substantial output (>2 chars after ANSI stripping) arrives during the wait. Fallback: noOutputTimeoutMs (30s) if no output at all. AI check is triggered after the no-output fallback; if AI check is disabled/errored, falls back to direct idle confirmation.

Auto-Accept Plan Mode

Enabled by default. After autoAcceptDelayMs (8s) of silence with no completion message and no elicitation_dialog hook signal detected, sends Enter to accept the plan. Does NOT auto-accept AskUserQuestion prompts - those are blocked via the elicitation_dialog notification hook which signals the respawn controller to skip auto-accept.

AI Plan Checker

When auto-accept is about to trigger, the AI Plan Checker (src/ai-plan-checker.ts) can optionally verify the terminal is showing a plan mode approval prompt before sending Enter. This prevents false auto-accepts.

  • Model: claude-opus-4-5-20251101 (same as idle checker)
  • Max context: 8k chars (less than idle checker since plan prompts are visible at bottom)
  • Timeout: 60s
  • Verdicts: PLAN_MODE (safe to auto-accept) or NOT_PLAN_MODE (skip auto-accept)
  • Cooldown: 30s after NOT_PLAN_MODE verdict
  • Error handling: 3 consecutive errors disables the checker

Uses temp file for prompt to avoid E2BIG errors with large terminal buffers.

Test Documentation

  • test/respawn-scenarios.md - Comprehensive test scenarios for edge cases
  • test/respawn-test-plan.md - Test environment architecture and strategies
  • test/respawn-test-utils.ts - Mock utilities (MockSession, MockAiIdleChecker, MockAiPlanChecker)
  • test/respawn-analysis.md - Code coverage analysis and identified issues