A codex session declared the decision board dead while the user was
still reading it, then proceeded without their choice. The wait's
liveness probe was process.kill(pid, 0) with every error treated as
gone, but a sandboxed exec cannot signal a process outside its sandbox:
EPERM arrives for a living server. Liveness now leads with the page's
own heartbeat in the state file, falls back to the kill probe, and
reads EPERM specifically as exists-but-unsignalable. The exit-2 message
also stopped inviting the wrong recovery: it now states this is a
server failure, not a user decision, and orders a restart and reopen,
never an unattended proceed while the user's browser session is open.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Field-checked in a real browser, which surfaced three defects the DOM
tests could not: the generic .media img display rule defeated [hidden]
and floated an empty block over the shimmer and its sketching note; the
deal animation left every card at opacity zero in an unfocused tab,
because rAF throttling is real and decoration must never gate content;
and the sketch poll's cache-busting query missed the anchored /img
route, so a landed sketch kept shimmering forever.
The grid is now a snap-scrolling deck: one row in a wide viewport, one
column in a tall one, with edge arrows that appear only on overflow and
page one card at a time.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The decision page compared unlike things: the grounded direction was a
wall of text beside curated catalog art, the catalog art read as a
promise of the build, the weighing silently shrank the challenger set,
and the standing exit hid in the footer under the cards it must not
soften. Every card now shares one anatomy (thesis, palette chips,
material tags, first viewport, case, risk), every dealt challenger is
presented with the weighing written on it rather than applied to it,
the catalog image rides picture-in-picture as labeled inspiration with
the lightbox a click away, and canonCard renders the category standard
as one honest, subordinate card.
When image generation exists, each card declares a sketch slot the page
polls: serve first, generate after, through one shared deliberately
unfinished frame, so the comparison stays about direction instead of
rendering luck. The asset producer takes the batch when subagents
exist; the chosen sketch returns in ANSWER to seed at most one comp
probe, and the comp round still renders its full set.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The new self-detection ran before mode dispatch, so it also caught --wait,
--stop, and --schema. CI failed on the start/wait cycle test: --wait
returned 2 (no browser) where the documented poll loop expects 3
(WAITING). Under CI=1 the suite went 4 pass / 2 fail; it is 6 / 0 now.
Two of those modes were user-facing bugs, not just test breakage. --stop
exited 2 without killing the daemon it was asked to kill, leaking a
server process (verified: one daemon running, CI=1 --stop, still one).
--schema only prints a payload example, and new-work.md tells the agent
to read it before building a payload.
Detection can only tell whether this process can auto-open a browser, not
whether the user has one: SSH with a forwarded port and a harness with an
in-app browser both have a browser and no DISPLAY. The file already
treats serve-without-opening as first class, since --start spawns its own
daemon with --no-open. So the check now gates acquiring a session, not
managing or ending one. The blocking serve path still exits 2 on a
headless box, with a test pinning that.
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Paul's two concerns with the blocking design. --schema prints the exact
payload example so the model never guesses the shape (new-work.md points
at it). And harnesses that cannot leave a shell blocked (or cannot open
a browser while blocked) get a two-phase path: --start daemonizes the
server and returns the URL plus a key immediately, --wait polls for the
answer with exit 3 meaning ask again, exit 2 meaning the server died,
and --stop for cleanup. The browser open happens from the detached
server process, so it works even when the agent thread is short-lived.
State lives under .impeccable/questions/.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Paul's design, three pieces:
serve-question.mjs: the world decision presented as a themed page instead
of a text prompt. The script serves an impeccable-styled option board
(assigned direction leading with THE ROLL badge, dealt challengers as
alternates carrying their QUALITY BAR cards, re-roll and steer built in),
prints the URL, opens the browser, and blocks until the user chooses;
the answer lands on stdout as ANSWER JSON, so the shell call itself is
the wait and no harness machinery is needed. Local images are served by
the ephemeral server; nothing leaves the machine.
generate-image.mjs + context.mjs IMAGE_GEN_AVAILABLE: when an OpenAI key
is in the environment, context reports that image generation works even
without a harness-native tool (gpt-image-2, billed to the user's key,
stated before first use; Google skipped by decision). Harness-native
tools always win when present.
new-work.md: visualize-before-build is now the default whenever any
image generation exists, not a codex.md special case; the attended
presentation prefers the visual decision page and falls back to the
structured question tool. Evals keep the unattended path untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5