EPS Dashboard

Overview / Motivation

Auto-filed by the workflow-fix-on-bug protocol from a near-miss during the #1739 armfill round (emitting agent: armfill2-1739 subagent, surfaced 2026-08-03).

Goal

Add a gotchas entry: liveness probes must use pgrep -af (never bare pgrep -c) when the distinguishing string lives in argv rather than the executable name, and must key termination on positive progress evidence rather than a zero count

Workflow gap

Bug observed: pgrep/pkill invoked WITHOUT -f matches only the executable name, so a probe keyed on an argv-resident distinguishing string (index-pack, a script name, EngineCore) silently returns 0 and reads a LIVE process as dead
Why it is a workflow gap: an armfill subagent's bootstrap watchdog probed pgrep -c "[i]ndex-pack" with NO -f. index-pack is argv, not the executable name (which is git), so the probe printed procs=0 three times while git index-pack was actively unpacking 95,249 objects. Had the agent trusted it, the guard would have declared the clone dead and killed a HEALTHY in-flight fetch holding .git/shallow.lock — corrupting the pack and costing another provision cycle on a $22/hr 4xH200. This is a FALSE-DEATH liveness bug in the same family as the existing NVML/pgrep entries, but a distinct cause: those concern pattern CONTENT and pid VISIBILITY; this one is the -f FLAG being absent, which the existing entries all silently assume.
Confidence (emitter): high
verified-at-filing: grep -c "pgrep" .claude/rules/gotchas.md -> 13 hits (lines 40, 133, 136, 140, 142, 143). Line 40 covers the pgrep -c ... || echo 0 double-print; 133/136/140 cover ^VLLM::EngineCore pattern CONTENT and USE -af/-f; 142/143 cover NVML pid-namespace visibility. NONE warns that OMITTING -f silently under-matches an argv-resident string. CLAUDE.md's ownership-probe bullet (1 hit) mandates bracketing a pattern character but likewise assumes -f. (2026-08-03)

Proposed change (candidate diff sketch — refine in planning)

Add a short entry to .claude/rules/gotchas.md near the existing pgrep family:

- **pgrep/pkill without -f matches the EXECUTABLE NAME only — an
argv-resident distinguishing string silently under-matches and reads LIVE as
DEAD.** pgrep -c "[i]ndex-pack" returns 0 while git index-pack runs
(executable is git). Same for script names, subcommands, and
VLLM::EngineCore. Always pgrep -af '<pattern>' for liveness/ownership
probes. Corollary: never key a KILL on a zero count alone — key it on absent
POSITIVE progress evidence (byte growth of a temp/output file over a window),
because a zero count is what both "dead" and "mis-probed" look like.

Cross-reference from the CLAUDE.md ownership-probe bullet (which mandates the bracket but not -f) if the planner judges it in scope.

Scope / surfaces

Primary target: .claude/rules/gotchas.md
Consider a cross-reference in CLAUDE.md § "Orchestrator vs subagent re-invocation" (ownership-check bullet) and .claude/agents/experimenter.md Pre-Launch step 9, both of which prescribe pgrep probes.

Constraints / invariants

Documentation-only; no behavior change. workflow_lint.py + ruff clean.
Do not restate the existing NVML pid-visibility or || echo 0 entries; this is a distinct cause and should read as one short additional entry.

Provenance

workflow_fix_target: .claude/rules/gotchas.md
fingerprint: d9c7cbde99bf