tracking: unreachable worker causes Stop hook exit-2 → infinite retry loop blocking all Claude Code prompts

[thedotmack]

Root Cause

When the worker is unreachable, hooks emit exit code 2 (Claude Code's blocking feedback contract). Claude Code treats this as a blocking error, generates a new model turn, which ends the session again, which fires the Stop hook again — still failing — creating a tight infinite retry loop. The consecutive-failure counter escalates without a circuit breaker, eventually blocking all prompt processing. Related: the hook emits no visible error to stderr while doing this, making the failure silent.

Tracked Items

Issues

• Closes Hook infinite retry loop on summarize event (Permission denied) #2846 — Hook infinite retry loop on summarize event (Permission denied) #2846
• 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(hooks): cap summarize Stop-hook retry loop with per-session disabled sentinel (closes #2846) #2885 — fix(hooks): cap summarize Stop-hook retry loop with per-session disabled sentinel (closes #2846) #2885
• 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(worker): emit fail-loud warning visibly and continue gracefully #2609 — fix(worker): emit fail-loud warning visibly and continue gracefully #2609

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.