trail-boss/notes/tb-bctb.md

Bead Worker Starvation Alert - tb-bctb

Issue

Open beads existed but Pluck (bead-worker) found none - appeared to be a configuration error.

Investigation Summary

Bead Count

• Total beads: 45
• Open: 10
• In-progress: 0
• Actually claimable: 0

Root Cause

All 10 open beads have special labels that exclude them from bf claim:

With deferred label (3 beads):

• tb-1me: "Run tmux detector acceptance tests and gather metrics" (deferred, umbrella)
• tb-23i: "Record tmux detector viability verdict and resolve plan Open question 1" (deferred, split-child, umbrella)
• tb-5n9: "Prototype tmux-level fallback detector to validate the harness-agnostic adapter seam" (deferred, umbrella)

With split-child label only (7 beads):

• tb-163k: "Analyze test results and document findings in decisions.md"
• tb-1p2a: "Document findings in decisions.md"
• tb-2ir: "Record tmux detector viability verdict in decisions.md"
• tb-2lh: "Run first test iteration and establish measurement baseline"
• tb-3iu: "Resolve Open question 1 in plan.md"
• tb-5wj: "Document production enablement or alternatives for tmux detector"
• tb-62m: "Execute remaining test iterations (runs 2-5)"

Design Behavior

The bf claim command (bead-forge) internally filters beads with these labels:

• deferred - Beads that should be worked on later
• split-child - Sub-tasks that should be claimed together with their parent umbrella bead
• umbrella - Parent beads that manage their own children

This is working as designed, not a configuration error.

Verification

$ bf claim --assignee "test-worker" --dry-run
No beads available to claim

Resolution

False alarm - The starvation alert was triggered because the monitoring system saw open beads but didn't account for label-based filtering. The bead-worker system correctly identified that there are 0 beads available to claim after applying the intended filters.

Recommendations

1. Update starvation detection - Future alerts should check bf claim --dry-run output instead of just counting open beads
2. Label documentation - Ensure the bead-worker documentation clearly explains which labels cause beads to be filtered
3. Monitoring improvement - The alert should distinguish between:
   • Actual starvation (beads exist but can't be claimed due to a bug)
   • Expected filtering (all open beads have special labels and shouldn't be claimed)