Evening Retrospective — 2026-03-19

2026-03-19

Summary

Extremely productive day. Version advanced from v0.14.87 → v0.15.5 via 22 commits: 7 features and 7 fixes. The headline feature was the multi-project channel routing system (ChannelRouter, Telegram forum topics, per-project stats) — a large architectural addition that landed cleanly in one session. Six reliability fixes closed out the day. One persistent issue: the "no valid projects" brew service stderr noise was supposed to be fixed by PR #704 but is still appearing — the fix only addressed CLI exit code, not the service's own error path.

Morning Priority Status

Priority from Retro (03-19 morning)	Status
Confirm "no valid projects" stderr is clean after v0.14.87	❌ Still emitting — fix was incomplete
Monitor bean pipeline (trading scans)	✅ No failures observed

What Completed Today

Multi-Project Channel Routing (feat, ~8 commits)

The biggest landing of the day. The orchestrator can now route notifications to different channels (Telegram, Discord) per project, rather than broadcasting everything to a single destination.

Commit	What it does
`6e9ce45`	ChannelRouter: project-to-channel mapping
`024b6f1`	DB migration: `repo` on `task_metrics`, `channel_subscriptions` table
`15397cc`	Telegram forum topic support with inline keyboards and callback queries
`59afd68`	`orch stats` CLI command with per-project breakdown
`7dc0de7`	Project context in task notifications
`f556a79`	Engine message routing with ChannelRouter and new commands
`27c6df0`	Integration tests for multi-project channel routing
`a94d2ce`	Docs: update channels runbook

This is clean, well-tested, and matches the spec in 2c57aca.

Reliability Fixes

Commit	Fix
`1618bb5`	TOCTOU race in `/stream` — panic when binding removed between check and use (#715)
`c34f02e`	Filter GitHub issues by author association — only ingest from trusted authors
`44f7280`	Immediate shutdown — reset `in_progress` → `routed` instead of draining
`362ffe2`	Rerun failed push-check workflow instead of dispatching a new one
`045f2f3`	Rename branch prefixes: `internal-` for internal tasks, `gh-issue-` for external
`6b598e5`	Agents commit only — orch handles push and PR creation

The last fix (6b598e5) is noteworthy. Root cause: agents running inside the sandbox lacked push permissions, failed silently, then reported needs_review instead of done — which blocked orch from running its own push. The fix updates the system prompt explicitly ("Do NOT push or create PRs — the orchestrator handles both") and adds push-failure recovery in response_handler (reroute up to 3 times, then block for human). Belt-and-suspenders check added in review.rs.

Docs

9c9dbdd / ee50c58: Architecture docs consolidated, agent/orch responsibility split clarified.

What Didn't Work

"no valid projects" stderr still emitting (PR #704 was incomplete)

The morning review expected this resolved. It is not. The brew service stderr (/opt/homebrew/var/log/orch.error.log) still emits the same message every tick:

Error: no valid projects configured — all backends failed health checks.
Config: /Users/gb/.orch/config.yml. Run `orch init` to set up a project.

PR #704 fixed the CLI path (graceful exit code when running in a worktree without .orch.yml). The service path — the daemon running from / via brew — follows a different code path and still emits the error unconditionally. This is a different call site from the CLI fix.

Root cause: service startup and the periodic tick run their own project-loading path, which emits the error even when projects are configured and working correctly. The projects ARE valid (engine is running fine); the error is a spurious diagnostic from the wrong context.

This creates real signal-to-noise problems in the error log — a task is filed below.

Agent Prompt Review

The prompts/agent_system.md is in good shape after today's fix (6b598e5). The "Do NOT push or create PRs" rule is now explicit. One observation: the workflow section says to check git log before retrying, but the prompt does not specify the review agent should check prompts/review_system.md itself for protocol. That file exists and is correct; the cross-reference could be stronger but this is not urgent.

No other prompt gaps identified.

Routing Accuracy

All 7 fixes were routed to agent:claude. The channel routing feature (complex, multi-file, stateful) was also agent:claude. Label routing via agent:claude is being set on all these issues explicitly. The auto-router would likely have reached the same conclusions — but we're bypassing it. This is fine given the current task volume (a few per day), but worth noting if throughput grows.

Performance / Reliability

No lock contention or sync bottlenecks observed. The batch store lookups from PR #705 (yesterday) are in production and appear to have no regressions. The immediate-shutdown fix (44f7280) improves restart behavior — tasks no longer get stuck in in_progress after a service bounce.

New Task Filed

Issue #716: fix: "no valid projects" error still emitted to brew service stderr despite PR #704 CLI fix — trace the service-side code path and suppress or demote the log level so it doesn't appear in error.log when projects ARE configured.

No other tasks filed. One issue, one root cause.

Tomorrow's Priority

Verify issue #716 fix silences the error log — confirm orch.error.log is clean after the patch ships.
Verify the agent push-fix (6b598e5) holds — watch the next task dispatch end-to-end to confirm agents no longer attempt push and the orch-side push succeeds on first attempt.
Channel routing smoke test — the ChannelRouter feature landed today; verify a real task notification routes to the correct Telegram topic.

← All updates