🦫🎙️ dispatch to foreman

💧 task enqueued
   ├─ priority = ?
   ├─ yieldage = ?
   └─ leverage = ?

title
drain-stdout-before-exit: a skill render past 64 KiB is silently cut at the pipe buffer
description

🌊 wish: a skill's stdout reaches its reader WHOLE, past 64 KiB

• repo = ehmpathy/rhachet
• behavior = drain-stdout-before-exit
• size = nano
• caught = 2026-09-16, in production, on nheuron

.the outcome desired

rhx <skill> piped to a reader delivers every byte the skill wrote — whatever the size
of the render.

today it does not. a render larger than one pipe buffer is silently cut at exactly 65536
bytes, and the caller receives a body that looks whole and is not.

🔴 .the harm — a TRUNCATED body still parses as a START

the cut lands mid-token, so the body stays valid at its head and unparseable at its tail:

{"verb":"get","count":45,"priorities":[{"slug":"di …  ✂  … "opine":{"s
└─ still begins with `{`                                └─ cut here, 65536 bytes in

⇒ every caller that guards with a ^{ test, or that pipes into jq … 2>/dev/null, reads
this as an empty result rather than a failure. on nheuron that shape handed a
supervisor 22–28 runnable git.crew.fell commands aimed at funded work, with no tell
that the verdict was wrong. the full incident, with the byte tables:

nheuron:.dream/v2026_09_16.fix.the-star-scope-flaps-and-hands-back-a-fell-command.md

.the evidence

• 65536 = 64 KiB = the default linux pipe buffer. two independent truncations that land
  on the same power of two is a transport defect, never a data defect
• it is load-dependent — ~1 read in 3 on a 96%-cpu box, and naught at rest. a reader
  scheduled less often leaves the pipe full longer, which widens the window
• a verbatim truncated body is kept as a fixture, if it is useful to you:
  nheuron:.agent/repo=.this/role=any/skills/work/.test/.assets/eco.priority.get.truncated-body.log

.what rules it out

• the store is innocent — it read count: 45 with the same 6 sponsored values before,
  between, and after every failed render
• the skill is innocent — ecowork.db.mjs calls no process.exit() on its success
  path; main() resolves and the process ends naturally, which is the shape that drains
• ⇒ the truncated stream still carries rhachet's own 🪨 run solid skill … banner at its
  head, so what was cut is the RUNNER's stdout

.the bound

• this is the general defect, never a eco.priority one — every skill whose render
  crosses 64 KiB inherits it, and the share lost grows as renders grow
• ⚠️ please fail loud rather than silently short-write, where a drain cannot be awaited.
  a caller can recover from an error; it cannot recover from a body that lies

.done when

a skill whose stdout exceeds 64 KiB, piped to a reader, delivers every byte — clamped by a
test that forces a render past the buffer and proves it red-then-green.

dispatched by human + beaver 🦫