plat 027

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PLAT-027 — an async todo-task turn falsely completes its parent

Coordination	Value
Assigned agent	Codex
Ticket state	implemented; runtime parent-gate verified
Last synchronized	2026-08-04

• Priority: P0
• Owner: workflow progress completion gating and terminal execution-tree projection
• Evidence: in the Social Media run, the route/orchestrator turn reported completion after dispatching execute-allocate, while the asynchronous child remained live. The execution tree knew about the child, but the terminal rail showed no active agent, making a live workflow appear stopped.
• Root cause (two layers): the rail was built only from retained terminal snapshots, so a child could register in the execution tree before its terminal/transcript snapshot existed. More importantly, the workshop progress bridge treated every successful orchestrator_agent_end as completion of a todo_task workflow step. For an asynchronous orchestrator that event is only the end of one LLM turn: the controller is still waiting for the child and will continue the same conversation after reconciliation. This produced the contradictory state state=completed, process_state=live, sent a false [AUTO-NOTIFICATION], and made the parent terminal appear settled while execute-allocate was still running.
• Implementation: TerminalCenter polls the session execution tree while the surrounding session expects activity and projects every visible live child into the rail. A projected row is an ephemeral running placeholder identified by the real execution ID. When the terminal snapshot arrives it enriches/replaces that identity rather than creating a second tab. Session roots, main agents, synthetic turns, and completed historical children are not projected. The workflow progress bridge now keeps a successful todo_task_orchestrator turn open and completes it only when the controller's existing todo_task_step_completed event arrives, after all owned children have settled and their results have been reconciled. Failed turn endings keep their existing failure path. A projected child is also treated as a loading navigation entry: the UI neither requests its unpublished /events endpoint nor lets the generic synthetic-transcript branch override its waiting view. This removes the misleading Conversation could not be loaded (404) screen while the real child terminal is still being published.
• Primary files: frontend/src/utils/terminalExecutionProjection.ts, frontend/src/components/TerminalCenter.tsx, frontend/src/hooks/useSessionExecutionTree.ts, and frontend/src/services/api-types.ts; backend completion gating is in agent_go/pkg/orchestrator/agents/workflow/step_based_workflow/planning_exports.go.
• Verification: frontend unit tests cover (1) a running asynchronous child with no terminal yet, (2) reconciliation with a later real terminal without a duplicate, and (3) suppression of completed historical children. Frontend typecheck, lint, and the full test suite passed during the first implementation. The backend regression sends a successful orchestrator_agent_end representing an asynchronous dispatch, proves no completion is emitted and the registry remains running, then sends todo_task_step_completed and proves exactly one completion reuses the original execution identity. The 2026-08-04 Social Media rerun supplied the runtime evidence for the completion gate: the dispatch turn ended without a false completion notification or workflow-progress completion while execute-allocate remained live. A new frontend regression proves an execution-tree placeholder cannot request terminal events; the focused tests and production build pass.
• Acceptance: when a parent turn ends after dispatch, its still-running child remains visible and the parent step remains running until the child settles and the controller reconciles its result. No workshop [AUTO-NOTIFICATION] may say that the step completed merely because the orchestrator ended its dispatch turn. The parent gate passed a real Social Media runtime recheck; the rebuilt placeholder UI still needs visual runtime confirmation.