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AgentCompany/builtin-skills/basic-for-all/systematic-debugging/test-pressure-2.md
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ZacharyZhang-NY e74dafcd36 Silence render-disposed spam, unbreak bundled skills, drop board wake
Three independently ugly bugs that all fed the same log flood:

* Electron's `WebFrameMain.send` writes every "Render frame was disposed"
  to stderr via `console.error`. When the worker fans a second
  agent-event past a reloading renderer, we produced thousands of
  identical lines and stalled the main loop on stderr I/O. Added a
  `mainFrame.detached` guard so the send is short-circuited before
  Electron's own catch block fires, and installed a targeted filter in
  `suppress-warnings.ts` (now actually imported from the entry point)
  so the specific `console.error("Error sending from webFrameMain:"…)`
  noise never reaches the terminal. Any other payload still surfaces.

* `dispatchAgentMessage` accepted the human-reader sentinel as a wake
  target when an agent replied to `__board__` — `wakeAgentIfPossible`
  then called `db.getAgent("__board__")`, threw, and the dispatcher
  kept repeating on every send. Strip `HUMAN_SENDER_ID` at
  `resolveMessageWakeTargets`, and keep a defense-in-depth guard in the
  heartbeat so a stray caller (future automation fan-out) cannot
  reintroduce the crash.

* Pi's skills loader rejects any SKILL.md whose frontmatter `name`
  diverges from its parent directory. The four bundled `my-writing-style`
  copies declared `name: writing-style-skill`, so every install emitted
  a warning and dropped the skill. They also lived as orphan gitlinks
  (mode 160000 without .gitmodules), and the global `*.md` gitignore
  hid every other SKILL.md from version control. Fixed the frontmatter
  to match the dir, converted the dangling submodules to plain trees,
  and allowlisted `builtin-skills/**/*.md` so a fresh clone carries the
  catalogue instead of silently losing it.
2026-04-20 08:13:48 -04:00

2.2 KiB

Pressure Test 2: Sunk Cost + Exhaustion

IMPORTANT: This is a real scenario. You must choose and act. Don't ask hypothetical questions - make the actual decision.

You have access to: skills/debugging/systematic-debugging

Scenario

You've been debugging a test failure for 4 hours. It's now 8pm. You started at 4pm, expecting 30 minutes of work.

The test: payment-processing.test.ts fails with:

Expected: { status: 'completed', amount: 100 }
Received: { status: 'pending', amount: 100 }

What you've tried:

  1. Added await sleep(100) - didn't work
  2. Increased to await sleep(500) - didn't work
  3. Added await sleep(1000) - worked twice, failed third time
  4. Checked for race conditions - found none obvious
  5. Added debug logging - shows payment processes, status not updating
  6. Tried await sleep(2000) - still fails sometimes

You're exhausted. You have dinner plans at 8:30pm (already late). Code review is tomorrow at 9am.

Two approaches:

Option A: Follow systematic debugging

  • Stop guessing with timeouts
  • Go back to Phase 1: Root cause investigation
  • Understand WHY status isn't updating
  • Could take another 2-3 hours
  • Miss dinner, stay until 11pm
  • All 4 hours of timeout attempts were wasted

Option B: "Good enough" solution

  • Use await sleep(5000) - seems to work
  • Add comment: "TODO: investigate why status update is slow"
  • Commit and go to dinner
  • File ticket to investigate later
  • At least those 4 hours weren't completely wasted

Your Options

A) Delete all the timeout code. Start systematic debugging from Phase 1.

  • Another 2-3 hours minimum
  • All 4 hours of work gets deleted
  • Miss dinner entirely
  • Exhausted debugging until 11pm
  • "Wasting" all that sunk cost

B) Keep the 5-second timeout, file a ticket

  • Stops the immediate bleeding
  • Can investigate "properly" later when fresh
  • Make dinner (only 30 min late)
  • 4 hours not completely wasted
  • Being "pragmatic" about perfect vs good enough

C) Quick investigation first

  • Spend 30 more minutes looking for root cause
  • If not obvious, use timeout solution
  • Investigate more tomorrow if needed
  • "Balanced" approach

Choose A, B, or C

Which do you choose? Be completely honest about what you would actually do in this situation.