[Saksham Uboweja (SakshamUboweja)]

Fixes #131. With "verbose": true in Claude Code's user settings, claude -p --output-format json prints the whole event list (system, assistant, ..., result) instead of one result object. Every Claude Code side call then failed, and because the micro-skills proposer called its runner without a guard, the failure aborted the whole fold.

This builds on the approach in #134 by Dhruv Arora (@dhruv1220) and the follow-up commit pushed there: read the result event rather than pass --settings '{"verbose":false}', and let a failed proposer call skip its tick. Thanks to Raymond Manaloto (@sortakool) for the detailed report in #131.

What changed

• sidecall.claude_json(stdout) returns the result object from either shape: the plain object, or the last type == "result" event in a list, and {} for anything else. It is shared by claude_call and by the te toolprune measure probe (toolcheck._prompt_tokens), which had the same data.get on a list and would also have crashed with verbose on.
• claude_call treats an is_error result as no reply. Before this change, an error result such as "Invalid API key · Please run /login" has a non-empty result, so it came back as the proposer's or judge's text. It also skipped _no_reply, so the signed-out pause never triggered for Claude Code. It now goes through _no_reply like an empty reply.
• Distiller._maybe_propose catches a runner exception and skips the tick instead of the fold, as the loop guard's judge already does. The failed call still counts as the tick (last_propose = now), so a CLI that keeps failing is tried every PROPOSE_EVERY sessions, not at every fold.
• runner_for wraps each host's call so that one that raises leaves one line in errors.log before it propagates (sidecall claude: no reply (timed out after 180s), ... (exit 2), ... failed (RuntimeError: ...)). This covers the proposer and the judge on every host. It never logs the command or a traceback: most hosts take the prompt on argv, a TimeoutExpired prints its whole command, and te doctor shows this log's tail, which people paste into issues. It does not touch plugin/fold.py, so it does not conflict with microskills: add te microskills forget / unforget #160 (checked with git merge-tree).

Tests

tests/test_claude_verbose_reply.py:

• claude_json on the object, the verbose list, a list with no result, several results, non-dict JSON, invalid and empty output.
• claude_call with a verbose reply returns the text and its usage. With no result event it comes back empty and is noted.
• An is_error result, plain or verbose, is no reply and pauses a signed-out host.
• The measure probe reads a verbose reply.
• A failed proposer call skips the tick, charges nothing, and the next tick proposes as usual.
• A runner that raises (timeout, non-zero exit, other) leaves exactly one line in errors.log, without the prompt.

python -m pytest tests experiments/tests: everything passes except experiments/tests/test_fleet_budget.py::test_an_unwritable_cgroup_warns_and_never_fails_the_launch, which fails the same way on main in this environment (cgroup setup, unrelated).