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status: a truncated ACTIVE_GOAL_STATE.md reports healthy with zero Todos #6870
Description
What happens
ACTIVE_GOAL_STATE.md truncated at a section boundary (e.g. everything from
## Agent Todo onward removed) is read as a goal with no Todos:
healthy: {"status_exit":0,"status_ok":true,"todo_index_total":2,"attention":"[P1] implement the thing","todo_total":2}
wounded: {"status_exit":0,"status_ok":true,"todo_index_total":0,"attention":"run the first read-only adapter tick and save a compact run record","todo_total":0}
Both loopx status --format json and loopx todo list --format json exit 0
with ok:true, and the attention line silently degrades from the real P1 item
to the generic first-tick advice. 5/5 runs.
Why this path is taken
parse_active_state_todos iterates only the regions it finds
(loopx/control_plane/todos/active_state_todo_parser.py:36), and a missing
section is legal — only unterminated frontmatter or malformed/orphan markers
raise (machine_region.py:53-58,86,103). A present-but-truncated file is
therefore indistinguishable from a goal that genuinely has no Todos.
Trigger honesty
The state writer is atomic (runtime/document_io.py, temp + fsync + replace),
so this is not a same-version torn write. It models disk corruption after a
crash, a partial backup/restore, or a bad manual/merge edit of a file that is
present.
Relationship to #6799
#6799 is about a missing state file letting the quota gate authorize turns.
This is the sibling case: the file exists, its earlier sections parse, and the
Todo section is simply gone — so a missing-file guard would not fire, and the
quota gate sees a goal with no open work.
Expected
A state file that parses but lost a section it used to have should not read as
"no open work". Options: require the ## Agent Todo region; compare a revision
or section inventory against the last known good state; or surface a
state_incomplete warning on status/todo list.
Reproduced
Snapshot 105c4bc1; unchanged on main at 1c7b258cb. Fixture: one goal with
exactly two Agent Todos; the wounded copy is the same fixture with the state
file cut at 377 → 235 bytes (before ## Agent Todo). The script asserts the
healthy control first (2 Todos, P1 attention) and fails if the wounded side does
not match.
Activity
JasonBuildAI commentedon Oct 19, 2026
Claiming this issue. I'll verify the truncated-state path on current main, implement the narrowest fail-closed/readback fix, and open a PR that references this issue. Any AI-assisted change will be disclosed in the PR.
JasonBuildAI commentedon Oct 19, 2026
Opened a fix in #6921: #6921
Final head:
fa29f297e50e3066376ef0d77516947a33240723; base isloopx-project/loopx:main.The change treats a readable legacy Markdown active state without the required
## Agent Todoheading (or an accepted alias) asstate_incompleteinstead of a healthy zero-Todo goal. On a synthetic truncated fixture:statusnow exits1withstate_incompleteand restore guidance instead of exit0with generic first-tick advice.todo listnow exits1witherror_code=state_incompleteinstead ofok:truewith zero Todos.quota should-runreturnsshould_run:false,state:blocked_health, and the same restore guidance.Validation on the final head:
tests/control_plane/test_truncated_active_state_todos.py: 6 passed, including direct CLI regression coverage forstatus,todo list, andquota should-run.tests/control_plane/test_canonical_status_todos.py: 156 passed; 4 pre-existing Windows GBK subprocess-decoding failures, and those same 4 cases pass withPYTHONUTF8=1.git diff --checkpassed; semantic inventory found no supported new vocabulary carriers.fa29f297e; truncation after the heading but before its items remains outside the selected heading-presence strategy and is documented as a residual boundary.AI disclosure: this change was drafted with AI assistance at my request, under my direction and review.