Dwight (assistant agent) not created on startup in 0.2.4, Enrich button missing

[billrehm]

What happened?

On 0.2.4, the assistant agent (Dwight) is not created at startup and the global Enrich toggle button is not visible in the UI. This is consistent across two Windows machines and occurs regardless of whether the .exe wrapper workaround is used.

Per the 0.1.5 changelog, Dwight was added as "a persistent, visible assistant agent (Sonnet, 1M context) [that] spawns on startup" with "a global enrich toggle [that] routes Michael's queued prompts through Dwight first." The enrichMessage API is still present in the preload surface (src/preload/index.ts). No changelog entry between 0.1.5 and 0.1.8 (the last documented version) mentions removing Dwight or the Enrich feature. Version 0.2.4 is not documented in the changelog.

Root cause identified: Dwight's session died approximately 37 hours ago during an app restart (lastSeen: 1780882806746). The app did not respawn the assistant agent on subsequent launches. registry.json retained assistant.archived: false, so from the registry's perspective Dwight was still a live, non-archived agent, but no PTY session was ever re-created for him.

When the assistant agent's session dies during a restart, the app should either respawn it on next launch (since it's defined as a persistent agent that "spawns on startup") or archive the dead entry. Currently it does neither, leaving a ghost entry in the registry that the circuit breaker then targets (see separate breaker issue).

Workaround applied: Setting assistant.archived: true in registry.json causes fleet.json to drop the assistant entry on its next regeneration. This stops the breaker from targeting it (after an app restart, since the breaker caches the roster in memory). However, this does not bring Dwight back or restore the Enrich toggle.

Question for @chaitanyagiri: Is the assistant agent supposed to be respawned on every app launch (as the 0.1.5 changelog implies), or was it intentionally made non-persistent in a later version? If the former, the respawn logic is broken on Windows. If the latter, stale entries should be cleaned up.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install Munder Difflin 0.2.4 on Windows 11.
2. Launch the app (with or without the .exe wrapper).
3. Observe: Michael (GOD) is created and appears on the floor. Dwight does not appear.
4. Look for the Enrich toggle in the message queue / command bar area. It is not present.
5. Check fleet.json for the assistant entry from a prior version. It persists with stale data.

Logs / screenshots

registry.json assistant entry (session dead, not archived):
json{
  "id": "assistant",
  "isAssistant": true,
  "archived": false,
  "lastSeen": 1780882806746
}

fleet.json assistant entry (stale, generated from dead registry entry):
json{
  "id": "assistant",
  "isAssistant": true,
  "tokens": 0,
  "usd": 0,
  "lastTool": null,
  "lastActiveSecAgo": null,
  "inboxBacklog": 0,
  "breaker": "constrained"
}

The breaker: "constrained" status was set by the circuit breaker firing on this stale entry (documented in separate issue).

macOS version

Windows 11 (Azure Virtual Desktop, build 10.0.26200.8457) and Windows 11 (physical laptop). Reproduced on both.

Node version

v24.13.0

Claude Code version (if relevant)

v2.1.126

Pre-flight

• I re-ran npm install so node-pty is rebuilt for the current Electron ABI.
• I searched existing issues and this isn't a duplicate.

[chaitanyagiri]

Answering your direct question: Dwight was intentionally removed — this is by design, not a broken Windows respawn.

Commit acc13a3 feat(enrich): replace visible Dwight assistant with invisible headless Haiku enrichment (shipped in 0.2.4) replaced the visible Dwight agent + the Enrich toggle with a headless Haiku enrichment pass. So on a clean 0.2.4 install, no Dwight on the floor and no Enrich button is correct. The enrichMessage preload entry is a vestige of the old surface; the real documentation miss is that the 0.2.4 changelog doesn't record the swap (you correctly noted 0.2.4 isn't in the changelog at all).

The actual bug is the one you found underneath: upgrading from a pre-acc13a3 version leaves a stale assistant entry in registry.json with archived:false and no PTY. The current code neither respawns it (correct) nor migrates it away (the bug) → a ghost entry that then feeds the circuit-breaker loop (#57) and the cost-ledger duplication (#56).

Fix: a one-time startup migration that archives stale isAssistant entries (and any non-archived agent with no live PTY whose lastSeen predates this session) so the breaker + ledger never see them. That single lifecycle fix closes #56, #57, and #58 together.

cc @chaitanyagiri — and worth a CHANGELOG entry that Dwight went headless in 0.2.4 so this doesn't surprise the next upgrader.

[chaitanyagiri]

Addressed in v0.2.5 (commit 5fc2161) — recommend close.

Two parts, as discussed:

• The visible Dwight → headless Haiku enrichment swap (commit acc13a3, shipped earlier) was by design, which is why the on-floor Dwight + Enrich button are gone.
• The actual bug — a stale pre-swap assistant registry entry left archived:false with no PTY (the ghost that fed the Cost ledger writes identical rows every 30s for idle/ended agents (2,417 duplicates in 25h) #56/Circuit breaker fires on inert/send-only agents, creating an infinite escalation loop #57 symptoms) — is now cleaned up by the boot migration archiveOrphanedAgents() in 5fc2161.

Worth a one-line CHANGELOG/README note that the assistant became headless, since the swap was undocumented. Otherwise ok to close.

— @chaitanyagiri