fix(e2e): retry transient OpenClaw TUI lookup

[senthilr-nv]

Summary

The live OpenClaw E2E verifier now retries when its single matching TUI process disappears while descriptor 0 is being resolved. Stable input errors remain fatal, and the regression test proves that input reaches only the replacement TUI.

Related Issue

Related to #9160. Ownership for main run 31892326555, job 95031519568, is recorded in the claim comment.

Changes

• Treat only ENOENT and ESRCH from the single matching TUI descriptor-0 lookup as pending; keep multiple processes, stable non-PTY input, permission or unknown lookup errors, terminal-mode errors, and fatal structured evidence fatal.
• Add a deterministic Linux regression in which one real matching TUI closes descriptor 0, the actual input-mode probe observes the retry boundary, and only a later replacement receives the prompt.
• Replace the cleanup poll's sleep-only Node child with a bounded in-process Atomics.wait while preserving its one-second liveness deadline.

Type of Change

• Code change (feature, bug fix, or refactor)
• Code change with doc updates
• Doc only (prose changes, no code sample modifications)
• Doc only (includes code sample changes)

Quality Gates

• Tests added or updated for changed behavior
• Existing tests cover changed behavior — justification:
• Tests not applicable — justification:
• Docs updated for user-facing behavior changes
• Docs not applicable — justification: this changes only the internal live E2E verifier and its support fixture; supported product behavior and user-visible surfaces are unchanged.
• Sensitive paths changed (security, policy, credentials, preflight, onboarding, inference, runner, sandbox, or messaging)
• Sensitive-path review completed or maintainer-approved waiver recorded — reviewer/approval link/justification: independent security review passed all nine categories for 9291e388d with no findings; retryable errors remain bounded and cannot qualify without structured session evidence.
• Non-success, skipped, or missing CI check accepted by maintainer — check name, approval link, and follow-up issue:

Documentation Writer Review

• Documentation writer subagent reviewed the completed changes
• Result: no-docs-needed
• Evidence: at commit under review 9291e388d, the complete diff changes only test/e2e/live/launch-agent-turn.ts and test/e2e/support/launch-agent-turn.test.ts; the follow-up replaces a test-only cleanup-poll child process with a bounded in-process wait and does not change supported product behavior or a user-visible surface.
• Agent: Codex Desktop (/root/openclaw_docs_review)

DGX Station Hardware Evidence

• Tested on DGX Station
• Tested commit:
• Station profile/scenario:
• Result:
• Supporting evidence:

Verification

• PR description includes a Signed-off-by: line and every commit appears as Verified in GitHub
• Normal pre-commit, commit-msg, and pre-push hooks passed, or npm run validate:pr passed after refreshing origin/main when hooks were skipped or unavailable
• Targeted behavior tests pass for the current change set, or tests are marked not applicable above — Linux e2e-support focused file: 19/19 passed; macOS: 6 passed and 13 Linux-only skipped. Archive SHA-256: 93a22b850fddca0eeea5ecaaf044893f002283c73a597ce23384dfdbf952a20b; Linux JSON SHA-256: e2ac8d5a739340fe39f3685fc5f6b58631eb5cfcc8d9b889f20f87b9d12a7658.
• Applicable broad gate passed — npm test for broad runtime/test-harness changes; npm run check for repo-wide validation/coverage changes — not applicable to this two-file E2E-support correction; CLI typecheck, Oxfmt, Oxlint, repository checks, git diff --check, and npm run validate:pr passed.
• Quality Gates section completed with required justifications or waivers
• No secrets, API keys, or credentials committed
• npm run docs builds without warnings (doc changes only)
• Doc pages follow the style guide (doc changes only)
• New doc pages include SPDX header and frontmatter (new pages only)

Independent code review passed with no findings for 9291e388d. Independent security review passed all nine categories with no findings.

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Signed-off-by: Senthil Ravichandran senthilr@nvidia.com

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Improved handling of transient TUI input closure during launch sessions.
  • Launches now retry with a replacement TUI process when the initial process exits unexpectedly.
  • Unrelated input-resolution failures continue to report an appropriate error.

• Tests

  • Added Linux coverage for retry behavior and confirmed that no orphan processes remain.

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[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: 6be619e8-e25f-45a3-9688-f1166c6d3e25

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 9c0ecba and 9291e38.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• test/e2e/live/launch-agent-turn.ts
• test/e2e/support/launch-agent-turn.test.ts

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Changes

TUI stdin retry

Layer / File(s)	Summary
TUI stdin qualification test/e2e/live/launch-agent-turn.ts	ENOENT and ESRCH now produce a non-match with exit code 1. Other lookup failures still produce tui_stdin_unavailable with exit code 2.
Transient fixture orchestration test/e2e/support/launch-agent-turn.test.ts	The fixture models stdin closure, retry signaling, replacement TUI startup, PTY input observation, process cleanup, and result reporting.
Retry and cleanup validation test/e2e/support/launch-agent-turn.test.ts	A Linux-only test verifies successful retry, replacement-process input, PTY operation, no orphan TUI processes, and baseline cleanup.

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 9291e

This localized E2E verifier change adds bounded retries for transient TUI disappearance while preserving fatal handling for stable errors; no actionable merge-blocking risk remains after normal checks and review.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant LaunchAgentTurn
  participant FakeOpenShell
  participant TransientTUI
  participant ReplacementTUI
  LaunchAgentTurn->>TransientTUI: Resolve stdin path
  TransientTUI-->>LaunchAgentTurn: Exit 1 after stdin closure
  LaunchAgentTurn->>FakeOpenShell: Report first command exit
  FakeOpenShell->>ReplacementTUI: Create retry marker and start replacement
  ReplacementTUI-->>FakeOpenShell: Accept retry command
  FakeOpenShell-->>LaunchAgentTurn: Return successful retry

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Possibly related PRs

• NVIDIA/NemoClaw#9181: Both changes extend the launch-agent-turn PTY fixtures for transient TUI process handling.
• NVIDIA/NemoClaw#9213: Both changes modify TUI stdin qualification and launch-agent-turn retry handling.

Suggested reviewers: cv, prekshivyas

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: retrying transient OpenClaw TUI lookup failures in E2E tests.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches 💡 1

🛠️ Fix failing CI checks 💡

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch codex/fix-openclaw-tui-stdin-race

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[github-code-quality]

Code Coverage Overview

Languages: TypeScript

TypeScript / code-coverage/plugin

The overall coverage in commit 9291e38 in the codex/fix-openclaw-t... branch remains at 96%, unchanged from commit 9c0ecba in the main branch.

[github-actions]

PR Review Advisor — No blocking findings reported

Advisor assessment: No blocking advisor findings reported
Next action: No advisor follow-up needed.
Findings: 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions

Model lanes

• GPT-5.6 Terra (primary): Completed · high confidence · 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions
• Nemotron 3 Ultra (second opinion): Failed after a partial review · low confidence · 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions

Second-opinion terminology and E2E selections are advisory. Live E2E does not run automatically for pull requests.

1 semantic terminology decision

Terminology decisions are advisory. They affect the assessment only when a separate finding identifies concrete semantic impact.

• justified — matching OpenClaw TUI process at test/e2e/support/launch-agent-turn.test.ts:505: Keep the term because the modifier identifies the process-selection criterion exercised by the test.

E2E guidance

Advisory only. A maintainer can dispatch the default E2E suite for the commit under review.

Recommended E2E: None

Manual-only E2E: cloud-onboard, security-posture, cloud-inference
The manual PR workflow does not run these selectors for the commit under review. Run them from reviewed code on main.

1 optional E2E recommendation

• openclaw-tui-chat-correlation

Workflow run details

This automated review informs maintainers. Warnings and suggestions do not require a response. A maintainer decides whether to merge.