Eric Garcia e03499effc fix: remove run_in_background from Judge Protocol to prevent dialogue halts

The Judge spawned expert agents with run_in_background: true, which caused
the Judge's turn to end immediately after spawning. Users had to manually
type "proceed" to resume scoring and convergence. Removing the flag keeps
parallel execution (multiple Task calls in one message) while blocking
until all agents return summaries, so the Judge auto-proceeds through
rounds without intervention.

Also includes RFC 0033 round-scoped file architecture updates: coerce_bool
for MCP string booleans, mandatory agent return summaries, token budget
documentation, and write-artifacts workflow step.

Spike: alignment-dialogue-halts-after-expert-completion

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-01-26 16:30:59 -05:00

3.3 KiB

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Spike: Alignment Dialogue Halts After Expert Completion


Status	Complete
Date	2026-01-26
Time Box	30 minutes

Question

Why does the alignment dialogue halt after expert agents complete, requiring user to type "proceed"?

Root Cause

run_in_background: true in the Judge Protocol prompt at crates/blue-mcp/src/handlers/dialogue.rs:1013.

The mechanism

When the Judge spawns N expert agents, the prompt instructs it to use run_in_background: true on each Task call. This causes the following flow:

Judge sends ONE message with N Task tool calls, all with run_in_background: true
All N Task calls return immediately with output_file paths (not results)
The Judge's turn ends. It has produced output and is now waiting for user input.
The background agents run and complete asynchronously
The user sees completion notifications ("Agent Cupcake expert deliberation completed")
The Judge does not automatically wake up to process results
User must type "proceed" to give the Judge another turn to collect and score

The contradiction

Line 1013 says run_in_background: true, but line 1015 says:

"All {agent_count} results return when complete WITH SUMMARIES"

This is false when run_in_background: true. Background tasks return output_file paths immediately, not summaries. The prompt assumes blocking semantics but specifies non-blocking execution.

Why blocking works

If run_in_background is false (the default), multiple Task calls in a single message:

All start in parallel (same parallelism benefit)
All block until every agent completes
All results return in the same response with full summaries
The Judge immediately proceeds to scoring, artifact writing, and convergence checking
If not converged, the Judge spawns the next round in the same turn
The entire multi-round dialogue runs to completion without user intervention

Fix

Change dialogue.rs:1013 from:

- run_in_background: true

to:

- run_in_background: false

Or simply remove the line entirely (false is the default).

No other changes needed. The "spawn ALL in a SINGLE message" instruction already provides parallelism. The run_in_background flag is orthogonal to parallel execution and only controls whether the Judge blocks on results.

Evidence

crates/blue-mcp/src/handlers/dialogue.rs:1013 - the offending instruction
skills/alignment-play/SKILL.md:80-84 - SKILL.md does NOT mention run_in_background; it only says "Send ONE message with N Task tool invocations" (which is correct for parallelism)
User symptom: "the alignment game keeps halting and i need to explicitly tell claude to proceed"

Risk Assessment

Low risk. The only behavioral change is that the Judge's turn blocks until all agents complete instead of returning immediately. This is the desired behavior — the Judge needs results before it can score. Parallelism is preserved because multiple Task calls in one message always run concurrently regardless of the background flag.

One consideration: if agents take a long time, the Judge's turn will be longer. But this is preferable to halting and requiring manual intervention, which defeats the purpose of automated convergence.

3.3 KiB Raw Blame History