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MUL-6658 fix(agent): own the runtime process tree on every backend (#7522) (#7531)

* fix(agent): own the runtime process tree on every backend

Cancelling a task on Windows left the agent running. The daemon marked
the task cancelled, revoked its mat_ token, and killed what it thought
was the CLI — but on Windows the direct child is usually a cmd.exe shim
and the real CLI is already a grandchild, so it survived. One reporter's
orphan kept working for 40 minutes, read the daemon owner's profile PAT
after its own token started returning 401, and posted comments as the
member (GH #7522).

Whole-tree ownership already existed on both platforms. It was opt-in,
and opt-in rotted: 8 of the 27 places this package starts a process asked
for a Unix process group, and 3 of the 23 backends took Windows Job
Object ownership. Adding claude to that list would have left 19 backends
with the same hole, so the fix is structural instead.

- newRuntimeCmd, at the single point where a runtime process is built,
  now puts every command in its own process group and replaces os/exec's
  leader-only Cancel with a group-wide kill. A backend that wants a
  graceful shutdown still assigns its own cmd.Cancel and wins. This also
  covers the --version and model-discovery probes, which cmd.Output()
  runs without ever reaching a start helper.
- startOwnedProcessTree is now the only way this package starts a
  process, so Windows Job Object ownership is not something a backend
  can forget. Each start is paired with releaseProcessGroup after the
  reap, which drops the job handle and kills whatever outlived it.
- Two structural tests enforce both halves, the way
  TestOnlyLaunchGoSpawnsRuntimeProcesses already enforces the argv
  boundary: a new backend calling cmd.Start fails, and one that takes
  ownership without releasing it fails.

The Unix half is #5918 for the 20 backends the original fix did not
reach: their CLI was never in its own group at all, so no group-wide
signal could have reached it.

Co-authored-by: multica-agent <github@multica.ai>

* fix(agent): own the process tree for synchronous probes too

Review found the ownership boundary had a hole the PR claimed to cover.
os/exec's Run, Output and CombinedOutput call Start themselves, so a
probe written with cmd.Output() never reaches startOwnedProcessTree and
owns nothing on Windows — where the direct child of a `--version` probe
is typically the npm shim and the real CLI is already a grandchild. That
is the same escape #7522 was reported for, in 15 call sites nobody was
looking at; detectCLIVersion's own comment already describes a broken
CLI leaving grandchildren that hold the stdout pipe.

- runOwned / outputOwned / combinedOutputOwned give a synchronous probe
  the same start, reap and release a task launch gets. They keep the
  stdlib contract: stdout returned, stderr attached to the ExitError,
  combined output through a single writer so os/exec gives it one pipe.
  The stderr sample is bounded, as os/exec bounds its own.
- All 15 probe sites route through them, and the structural guard now
  rejects Run/Output/CombinedOutput alongside Start.

The release guard did not hold its invariant either: it only asked
whether a file contained any releaseProcessGroup, so a second unreleased
start in a file that already had a pair would pass — and models.go is
exactly that shape. It now works per function: one owned start each,
paired with at least one release. Equal counts would be the wrong rule,
since dsh's Execute legitimately releases on two exit paths.

Both guards are now pure functions over an AST, with tests that feed
them synthetic sources — including the second-unreleased-start case that
the file-level version missed — so the guards fail closed without
needing a real regression committed to find out.

Adds the Windows probe regression (descendant must be in the job and die
with a cancelled probe) plus unix equivalents, and names the consequence
in the degraded-ownership warning, which is the only signal an operator
gets that cancellation on that host is back to killing the leader alone.

Co-authored-by: multica-agent <github@multica.ai>

* fix(agent): bound a finished probe's wait on pipes its descendants hold

Review caught that runOwned could wait for its own cleanup and never
return, and it reproduces: a descendant that inherited the output pipes
holds them open after the leader exits, cmd.Wait blocks until the copy
goroutines see EOF, and what would close those pipes is the release that
runs after Wait.

Cancellation breaks the cycle, which is why every test in the last round
missed this — they all cancelled first, and they all set WaitDelay by
hand. Normal exit has nothing to break it, and checkOpenclawVersion runs
on the caller's context before runContext establishes any task timeout,
so a version wrapper that exits cleanly while leaving a pipe-holding
descendant would hang the task until a human cancelled it.

runOwned now fills in a bounded WaitDelay when the caller left it zero —
Go defines WaitDelay for precisely "a child process that exits but
leaves its I/O pipes unclosed" — and signals the group before dropping
ownership, so the descendant is reaped on Unix too, where releasing a
process group is a no-op. A caller with its own bound keeps it;
detectCLIVersion has set one by hand since MUL-3812 for this same shape.

Adds the normal-exit regression on both platforms: the leader exits
holding nothing, the descendant keeps the pipes, and outputOwned has to
return in bounded time with the descendant gone. The Windows descendant
spawner gains a spawn-and-exit mode and now hands its stdio to the
descendant, which is what makes it hold the pipes at all.

Co-authored-by: multica-agent <github@multica.ai>

---------

Co-authored-by: J <bohan@devv.ai>
Co-authored-by: multica-agent <github@multica.ai>
B
Bohan Jiang committed
46b5d9e6d1c011edfce459e73d3f0edf38833690
Parent: 39ddc82
Committed by GitHub <noreply@github.com> on 8/25/2026, 8:27:46 AM