# Decision Gate: Stuck Daemon Detection

**Branch:** `colonyos/add_detection_when_the_daemon_is_stuck_a1a5e19963`
**PRD:** `cOS_prds/20260401_135527_prd_you_are_a_code_assistant_working_on_behalf_of_the_engineering_team_the_following.md`
**Date:** 2026-04-01

## Persona Verdicts

| Persona | Round | Verdict |
|---------|-------|---------|
| Andrej Karpathy | Round 3 | ✅ APPROVE |
| Linus Torvalds | Round 3 | ✅ APPROVE |
| Principal Systems Engineer | Round 3 | ✅ APPROVE |
| Staff Security Engineer | Round 3 | ✅ APPROVE |

**Tally: 4/4 APPROVE**

## Test Results

- **2956 tests pass, 0 failures** (full suite)
- 664 lines of new tests at ~4:1 test-to-production ratio
- All 7 functional requirements (FR-1 through FR-7) implemented and verified

## Findings Summary

### No CRITICAL findings.

### No HIGH findings.

### MEDIUM findings (all accepted for v1):
1. **Heartbeat file spoofing gap** — A malicious Claude subprocess could continuously touch the heartbeat file to mask a hang. Mitigated by dual-gate detection (elapsed AND heartbeat staleness). The 2-hour `pipeline_timeout_seconds` serves as a hard backstop. Documented in PRD Open Question #1 as intentionally deferred to v2.
2. **`_post_slack_message()` lacks explicit socket timeout** — Relies on Slack SDK's internal ~30s timeout + try/except wrapper. The watchdog thread is blocked during that window but recovery still completes. All 4 personas flagged this as non-blocking for v1.

### LOW findings:
3. **Benign race between watchdog recovery and main thread finally block** — Both paths converge on FAILED state. Cosmetic only; collision probability is negligible given the 1920s+ detection window.
4. **No persistent audit trail beyond queue item error field and Slack** — Adequate for v1; structured audit events suggested for v2.

---

```
VERDICT: GO
```

### Rationale
All 4 personas unanimously approve. The implementation delivers all 7 PRD requirements in 162 lines of production code across 4 files, with 664 lines of thorough tests. The core architectural decision — a watchdog thread that reads only GIL-safe primitives and filesystem stats, fully independent of the lock held by stuck pipelines — is correct and cannot deadlock. The dual-gate detection (elapsed time AND heartbeat staleness) prevents false positives. All 2956 tests pass with zero regressions.

### Unresolved Issues
(None blocking — all findings are accepted as v1 trade-offs with documented v2 follow-ups)

### Recommendation
Merge as-is. Track two v2 follow-ups: (1) hard wall-clock ceiling independent of heartbeat freshness to close the spoofing gap, (2) explicit socket timeout on the Slack alert call in `_watchdog_recover`.
