Handoff: Release the idle shared-suite lock controller after verifying no work is active

Written: 2026-10-22 19:44 UTC

RE-VERIFY: PIDs and lock state are a write-time snapshot. Run lslocks -o PID,COMMAND,MODE,PATH and ps -eo pid,ppid,args -ww; confirm the controller's exact command and current child tree before acting. A fresh observation wins.

Design decisions in force

The lane brief requires full suites under /tmp/claude-501/complete-suite.lock and scopes BUG8d to its own code and verification. BUG8d judged that stopping another lane's controller needs explicit direction and asked the user; this is a scope judgment, not a quoted repository rule requiring confirmation. No approval was received and no foreign process was changed. Never stop a controller with an active test child. No merge, queue, publication, deployment, service restart or buildtest mutation is authorized.

Mission and current state

Release the machine-wide suite lock when the current holder has no active work, through its owner exiting the controller or explicit user approval to stop the idle controller. The blocked withdrawal verification is tracked at url://handoff/handoffs/hf-2026-10-22-establish-the-bug8-withdrawal-decoder-baseline-then-finish-peer-id-validation .

At19:43:33 UTC, flock38196 was held by Python71430 running out/BUG5b-lock-controller.py; there were no test descendants. That script retains flock while waiting for JSON commands on stdin, so the lock stays held between commands. It was idle18:35–19:03, ran BUG5b's full suite, then became idle again around19:30 and retained the lock. Two additional suites were still queued. BUG8d waited18:36–19:36 and exited its lock-acquisition request without executing any suite.

The user question is: may the idle BUG5b controller71430 be stopped so queued suites can proceed? Explicit approval is needed because this is another lane's process. Re-verify before any action; do not infer approval from elapsed time.

Evidence and unmerged state

BUG8d evidence contains BUG8d-lock-state-final.json, BUG8d-full-memory.jsonl, BUG8d-full-phase.json and BUG8.md. No code change, deployment, publication or restarted service belongs to this blocker. Only local coordination is pending.

Next steps

1. Re-verify the lock holder and exact command/children.
2. Have the owning lane exit its controller, or obtain explicit user approval before stopping an idle foreign controller. Preserve active work.
3. Confirm the lock is released and queued suites can run; complete this narrow blocker handoff so its dependent verification can continue.

Operational knowledge

BUG5b-lock-controller.py has a SIGTERM handler that cleans an active owned child and exits, but this record does not authorize interrupting that work. Its stdin loop can also accept an exit instruction from its owner. A reusable command controller should not reserve the suite lock while waiting for another command.