tracking: Windows worker port orphaned after crash/update — ghost LISTEN socket blocks respawn, hooks fail loop

[thedotmack]

Root Cause

After a worker crash, plugin update, or version-mismatch recycle, the worker's port (37777/37891) remains in LISTEN state attributed to a dead PID because surviving chroma children inherited the socket handle. The port-reclaim logic only kills the listed PID owner, missing these children. The new worker cannot bind, fails to start, and the UserPromptSubmit hook escalates a consecutive-failure counter that eventually blocks every Claude Code prompt with no self-healing path.

Tracked Items

Issues

• Closes Worker never starts on Windows — port 37777 held by orphaned process; UserPromptSubmit hook fails in a loop and blocks prompts #2926 — Worker never starts on Windows — port 37777 held by orphaned process; UserPromptSubmit hook fails in a loop and blocks prompts #2926
• Closes [Windows] Plugin update orphans the worker port (ghost LISTENING socket), blocking all Claude Code prompts with no graceful recovery #2899 — [Windows] Plugin update orphans the worker port (ghost LISTENING socket), blocking all Claude Code prompts with no graceful recovery #2899
• Closes [Windows] Zombie-port killer (#1721) misses orphaned children holding the inherited socket — repro on 13.5.5 via version-mismatch recycle #2893 — [Windows] Zombie-port killer (#1721) misses orphaned children holding the inherited socket — repro on 13.5.5 via version-mismatch recycle #2893
• Closes claude-mem worker unreachable — hooks fail silently on every tool call after session start #2891 — claude-mem worker unreachable — hooks fail silently on every tool call after session start #2891

PRs

• Related PR fix(worker): detect real port occupation cross-platform and reclaim stale workers #2895 — fix(worker): detect real port occupation cross-platform and reclaim stale workers #2895
• Related PR fix: never block Claude Code harness on worker outages #2892 — fix: never block Claude Code harness on worker outages #2892
• Related PR fix: remove stale plugin/scripts/worker-cli.js (regressed #2747/#2891 "Process died during startup") #2937 — fix: remove stale plugin/scripts/worker-cli.js (regressed #2747/#2891 "Process died during startup") #2937

Resolution

This is the canonical tracking issue for this root cause. Individual issues and PRs listed above will be closed in favor of this one.