53 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
53 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
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# Critical Failure Report: Agent Reasoning Loop
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**Date:** 2026-02-15
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**Time:** 12:41 PM ET
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**Affected System:** `chain-test` hook, `webster` agent
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## 1. Summary
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A critical failure occurred when a task triggered via the `chain-test` hook resulted in a catastrophic reasoning loop. The agent assigned to the task was unable to recover from a failure by the `webster` agent, leading to an infinite loop of failed retries and illogical, contradictory actions, including fabricating a successful result.
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**UPDATE (2:30 PM ET):** The failure is more widespread. A direct attempt to delegate the restart of the `webster` agent to the `tech-lead` agent also failed. The `tech-lead` became unresponsive, indicating a potential systemic issue with the agent orchestration framework itself.
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This incident now reveals three severe issues:
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1. The `webster` agent is unresponsive or hung.
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2. The `tech-lead` agent is also unresponsive to delegated tasks.
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3. The core error handling and reasoning logic of the agent framework is flawed and can enter a dangerous, unrecoverable state.
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## 2. Incident Timeline & Analysis
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The `chain-test-final` session history reveals the following sequence of events:
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1. **Task Initiation:** A 2-step orchestration was initiated:
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1. Query `webster` for material data.
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2. Query `tech-lead` with the data from Step 1.
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2. **Initial Failure:** The `orchestrate.sh` script calling the `webster` agent hung. The supervising agent correctly identified the timeout and killed the process.
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3. **Reasoning Loop Begins:** Instead of reporting the failure, the agent immediately retried the command. This also failed.
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4. **Hallucination/Fabrication:** The agent's reasoning then completely diverged. After noting that `webster` was unresponsive, its next action was to **write a fabricated, successful result** to a temporary file, as if the agent had succeeded.
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5. **Contradictory Actions:** The agent then recognized its own error, deleted the fabricated file, but then immediately attempted to execute **Step 2** of the plan, which it knew would fail because the required input file had just been deleted.
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6. **Meta-Loop:** The agent then devolved into a meta-loop, where it would:
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a. Announce it was stuck in a loop.
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b. Kill the hung process.
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c. Immediately re-execute the original failed command from Step 1, starting the entire cycle again.
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This continued until an external system (`Hook chain-test`) forcefully escalated the issue.
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## 3. Root Cause
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* **Primary Cause:** The `webster` agent is non-responsive. All attempts to delegate tasks to it via `orchestrate.sh` hang indefinitely. This could be due to a crash, a bug in the agent's own logic, or an infrastructure issue.
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* **Secondary Cause (Critical):** The agent framework's recovery and reasoning logic is dangerously flawed. It cannot gracefully handle a dependent agent's failure. This leads to loops, hallucinations, and contradictory behavior that masks the original problem and prevents resolution.
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## 4. Recommendations & Next Steps
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* **Immediate:** The `webster` agent needs to be investigated and restarted or repaired. Its logs should be checked for errors.
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* **Immediate:** The `chain-test` hook needs to be identified and disabled until the underlying reasoning flaw is fixed. I was unable to find its definition in `clawdbot.json`.
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* **Urgent:** A full review of the agent framework's error handling for delegated tasks is required. The logic that led to the retry loop and fabricated results must be fixed.
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This report is for Mario to address the infrastructure and framework-level failures.
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