rdmbair15m5-changelog-20260823-0347-fleet-state-reporter-and-patience-rule

Fleet state reporter deployed + Patience Budget rule proposed

Deployed an on-demand/hourly agent-state reporter to all six fleet Macs, ran a fleet-wide state probe, and proposed a fleet rule bounding how long any agent waits on its own work.

Host: rdmbair15m5 · Window: 2026-08-23 03:10 → 03:47 EDT · Operator: claude@rdmbair15m5

Delivered

#	Item	Location
1	`probe_host_state.sh` v2.1 — read-only state probe	`~/scripts/` on all 6 hosts
2	`fleet_state_report.zsh` — runs probe, delivers to hub	`~/scripts/` on all 6 hosts
3	LaunchAgent `com.eastcoastscience.fleetstate` — hourly, RunAtLoad, Nice 10, LowPriorityIO	loaded on all 6
4	Fleet-wide state report	bus `20260823-033224-95B80757`
5	Patience Budget rule proposal	`rdmsm4x:~/dev/RULE-agent-patience-budget-20260823.md`, bus `20260823-034531-631488F8`

Verified: 6/6 hosts delivering to rdmsm4x:~/dev/apps/fleetreg/state/ (10 files, 6 distinct hosts). jdmbair13m5 reached via the rdmsm4x inbound hop per FLEET.md.

Defects I introduced and fixed (all mine)

v1 _t() helper used ${@:2} — misexpands under zsh, fed timeout malformed args. Filled rdmsm4x's log with Try 'timeout --help'. Removed entirely.
v1 walked ~/Library/Mobile Documents unbounded on every hourly run. Minutes per run on hosts with ~17k zero-byte files. Now behind --deep.
Diagnosed the slowness twice by guessing, both wrong. Blamed the iCloud walk, then 7× zsh -lc login shells (measured: 0s). Profiling took 20s and found the real cause: brctl status = 70s (68 containers here, 106 on rdmsm4x). Moved behind --deep. Result: 80s → 11.5s.
First fleet tool probe reported zero CLI tools on 5 of 6 hosts. False — non-login SSH drops Homebrew from PATH (ISS-001, documented, and I walked into it). Re-probed via zsh -lc: claude + agy + codex are on ALL SIX.

Fleet findings

10 live agy conversations fleet-wide, presence-lock UUID→PID mapping reproduced on every host (rdmbair15m5: 6, rdmsm4x: 2). 25 stale locks with no live PID.
~17,200 zero-byte files in iCloud on every host, near-identical counts — same synced files, genuinely empty (0 .icloud stubs, caught-up, no ubiquity xattrs). Rich stated there should be none. Fleet-wide data-integrity issue, unowned.
rdmsm4x has 106 containers needing sync — worst in fleet; the lead host is least healthy.
8 Obsidian vaults per host — sprawl is fleet-wide, not local.
ToshLLM on BOTH Intel hosts (rdmsm4x's audit found only rdmpw3275m).
jdmbair13m5 on macOS 26.6.2 — a minor behind the Intel tier, two behind Apple Silicon.
nativ confirmed absent on all six.

Reversibility

LaunchAgent: launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/com.eastcoastscience.fleetstate then rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eastcoastscience.fleetstate.plist — per host.
Scripts: rm ~/scripts/{probe_host_state.sh,fleet_state_report.zsh}.
Reports are additive; nothing was modified on any host by the probe (read-only).

Outstanding

rdmsm4x to ratify the Patience Budget tiers and place fleet_budget.sh in ~/.agent-coordination/lib/, plus audit existing scheduled jobs for unbounded commands.
Zero-byte iCloud population fleet-wide needs an owner.
No secrets written. Probe is read-only.