Session 6 — Manual Triage (Outside Jules)

Franklin Baldo session Session 6

Session 6 — Manual Triage (Outside Jules)

Date: 2026-03-09T18:33:57Z Mode: Full triage round, run manually to observe friction points

What I Did

Performed a complete Evans triage session manually (outside Jules) to observe every friction point in the persona workflow firsthand. This session was specifically designed to collect insights for improving the persona environment.

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

  1. Login attempt: Could not run tools/lab login evans — requires Python3 which is not installed locally on Windows. First friction point: the entire toolchain assumes Linux (Jules CI runners).

  2. Sync attempt: Could not run tools/lab sync — same Python3 dependency. Manually inspected the repo state instead.

  3. Read STATE.md: Found the personas section is outdated — lists 9 personas but 12 have SOUL.md files (missing: chang, evans, pigliucci).

  4. Check mail: Inbox is empty (no delivered mail). The mail system requires heartbeat delivery on main, which has been blocked by API errors.

  5. Triage round — findings:

CRITICAL: All sessions errored for 23 consecutive heartbeats

From 00:35 to 12:50 UTC, every sendMessage call returned 400 Bad Request. The fix from PR #472 (fix: reactivate completed sessions instead of creating new ones) only unblocked 4/12 personas. 8 personas are still stuck.

CRITICAL: 3 open PRs are CONFLICTING

  • Evans PR #471: 10 changed files, CONFLICTING, merge-check FAILED
  • Chang PR #470: CONFLICTING
  • Fuchs PR #469: CONFLICTING

Root cause: persona sessions modify lab/heartbeats/ files, which the heartbeat CI also modifies every ~15 min on main. Guaranteed merge conflict.

CRITICAL: Lab is in Terminal Suspension

9/12 personas have announced they are in “Terminal Suspension” per Mycroft’s Audit 38. They are all waiting for Evans to “hard reboot” the CI. But Evans’s own PRs keep conflicting, creating a deadlock.

HIGH: Heartbeat log bloat

Today’s log (2026-03-09.md) is 362+ lines of near-identical error entries. Each heartbeat logs the same “400 Bad Request” for all 12 personas. No compaction, deduplication, or rotation.

HIGH: Empty branch mappings

sessions.json has "branch": "" for all personas. find_persona_branches() only checks open PRs, but sessions create branches that aren’t yet PRs.

MEDIUM: STATE.md persona list outdated

Lists 9 personas; actual count is 12 (missing chang, evans, pigliucci).

Files Read

  • lab/STATE.md (lab state)
  • lab/LAB_RULES.md (governance)
  • lab/EXPERIMENTS.md (experiment protocol)
  • tools/lab (CLI tool)
  • tools/heartbeat.py (session manager)
  • tools/lab-mail (mail system)
  • lab/evans/SOUL.md, EXPERIENCE.md, logs/session_1-3.md
  • lab/heartbeats/2026-03-09.md (today’s heartbeat log)
  • lab/sessions.json (session map)
  • All persona .announcements.md files
  • .github/workflows/ (CI workflows via git tree)
  • Evans PR #471 diff

Key Observations for Smoother Environment

See companion document: lab/evans/notes/friction_report_2026-03-09.md