pan-agent-activity — READ what each agent is doing and assess progress

A live pane ≠ a working agent, and a changed pane ≠ real progress (an agent can
churn on duplicate notifications, re-ask the same question, or loop). The only reliable check
is to READ each agent's actual recent output and judge: is it advancing toward its task/goal,
done, or stalled/errored — and if stalled, WHY (root cause)? A hash-diff is a coarse liveness
hint at best; it is NOT the method.

Doctrine (roles/flywheel.md, Fix at the root): a stalled/errored agent is a symptom. Do NOT
pan tell a nudge to unstick one instance — find the root cause / substrate bug and land
the fix so it self-heals for every agent.

Step 1 — READ every agent's real output (the actual method)

The agent list comes from GET /api/agents, which reads the host's terminal
backend (Herdr by default, tmux only under terminal.backend: tmux), and each
agent's output from GET /api/agents/<id>/conversation, its transcript, which
exists whatever the backend. Never list or capture agents with
tmux -L overdeck: on a Herdr host it sees none of them.

python3 - <<'PY'
import json, re, urllib.request
def get(path):
    try:
        with urllib.request.urlopen('http://localhost:3011' + path, timeout=60) as r:
            return json.load(r)
    except Exception as e:
        return {'error': str(e)}
AGENT = re.compile(r'^(agent-pan|strike-pan)-[0-9]+(-review|-test|-slot-[0-9])?$')
agents = get('/api/agents')
if isinstance(agents, dict): raise SystemExit(f"/api/agents unavailable: {agents['error']}")
for a in sorted((a for a in agents if AGENT.match(a['id'])), key=lambda a: a['id']):
    live = 'live' if a.get('hasLiveTmuxSession') else 'NO LIVE PANE'
    print(f"════════ {a['id']}  {live}  pane={a.get('paneState')}  {a.get('runtime')}/{a.get('model')} ════════")
    conv = get(f"/api/agents/{a['id']}/conversation")
    if 'error' in conv:
        print(f"  (no transcript: {conv['error']})"); continue
    entries = [(m.get('role'), m.get('text'), m.get('sequence') or 0) for m in conv.get('messages', [])]
    entries += [('tool', f"{w.get('label')}: {w.get('detail')}", w.get('sequence') or 0) for w in conv.get('workLog', [])]
    for role, text, _ in sorted(entries, key=lambda e: e[2])[-10:]:
        print(f"  [{role}] " + ' '.join(str(text or '').split())[:220])
PY

/api/agents keeps a stopped agent for an hour (longer while its PR is in
play), so a NO LIVE PANE row is an agent that died or finished recently.

Then actually read each block and assess it — do not skim for a spinner. Ask: what is this
agent's last real action, and is it moving its task forward?

Step 2 — assess & bucket (by CONTENT, not by hash)

What the output shows	Assessment	Action
tool calls / edits / Working (…) advancing its task	progressing	none
pan done … completed, Slot N work complete, review "passed/blocked" verdict signaled	done	let it flow; if verdict blocked, its work agent should be fixing findings
NO LIVE PANE / pane=exited / token_revoked / refresh token was revoked	dead	one stale agent, not fleet-wide — confirm codex fleet with codex login status + codex doctor (gpt-5.5 and the gpt-5.6 family = codex harness, auth ~/.codex/auth.json, NOT ohmypi); then kill/restart the dead one
OVERDECK_SPECIALIST_RESULT: review-agent failed but a verdict was produced	FALSE failure — verify against the PR and the pipeline journal (Step 3) before believing it	fix the signal (substrate), don't re-dispatch blindly
POST error e.g. Effect.catchAll is not a function, Project not found for PAN-x, Dashboard POST failed	substrate bug blocking status/verdict recording (verdict artifact may be journaled for recovery)	file + root-fix the endpoint/resolver
looping on Deacon: container … crashed and was auto-restarted (attempt 1/5) duplicates	container crash-loop and/or duplicate-notification spam distracting the agent	root-cause the crashing workspace container + the notification dedup
reads a kickoff for a different issue (e.g. "cede PAN-2203 planning")	cross-wired kickoff — wrong brief delivered; agent stops or does wrong work	root-cause the kickoff/message misdelivery; the agent's real task is stalled
Waiting on … approval / broken gate (0-byte smoke result, ratchet rejects unrelated commit)	stalled on broken tooling/gate	root-cause the gate; don't hand-wave it
idle placeholder (Implement {feature}, Explain this codebase) with no recent real action	idle — done or wedged; print more entries ([-40:]) to tell which	if wedged, root-cause

Step 3 — verify verdicts at the source, not the pane

Panes lie (false "failed", stale text). Overdeck stores no review/test/merge status: the
issue's state is derived from the tracker, the PR, its checks, git, and the terminal backend,
and pan show prints it. Review verdicts are PR reviews; the per-issue pipeline journal
(<workspace>/.overdeck/pipeline.jsonl) logs what Overdeck did (review.verdict,
verification.failed, merge.attempted, …). Where the journal and the PR disagree, the PR wins.

pan show PAN-1234 --json | python3 -c "import json,sys; d=json.load(sys.stdin); pr=d.get('pr') or {}; \
print(d['issueId'], 'state='+str(d['state']), 'needs='+str(d.get('attention')), \
'review='+str(pr.get('reviewState')), 'checks='+str(pr.get('checks')), 'mergeable='+str(pr.get('mergeable'))); \
[print('  ', e['at'], e['type'], json.dumps(e.get('data') or {})) for e in d.get('journal', [])[-6:]]"

Step 4 — root-cause, don't nudge

For every stalled/errored agent, name the substrate cause and file/land the fix (Mission #4).
The optional two-snapshot check (read the transcript, wait ~25s, read it again and compare the
last sequence) is only a tie-breaker to tell "static" from "slowly working" — never a
substitute for reading the output.

When to run

• Every flywheel tick (Observe phase) — read the fleet, don't assume alive == working.
• Whenever "agents look busy but nothing merges." Read-only; safe anytime.