fix(work): stop killing headless SDD dispatches at a 300s idle-timeout

[getappz]

Summary

• DEFAULT_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECS defaulted to 300s and was used unconditionally by WorkItemExecutor::execute (the daemon's own in-process SDD dispatch path), independent of the 21600s (6h) hard-cap timeout.
• Headless CLI agents (cursor-agent/claude in print mode) emit no incremental stdout — only one blob once the whole turn finishes — so "no new output for 300s" can't distinguish a hung process from one legitimately still computing (e.g. running cargo build/cargo test mid-turn).
• Confirmed live this session: items feat(review): multi-agent review consensus engine (verify + dedup + tag) #143, perf(memory): approximate nearest neighbor vector search (Phase 4) #150, Headless agent invocation: run a prompt non-interactively and capture the reply #151 in this project's own work-item queue failed identically 8 times in a row, each killed by this exact idle-timeout mid-turn, never a different error.
• Fix: DEFAULT_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECS now equals DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_SECS (6h) instead of a separate, much shorter value — the hard-cap timeout remains the real backstop against a genuinely runaway process. --idle-timeout is still available as an explicit opt-in for callers who know their agent/mode actually streams output.

Test plan

• cargo build -p agentflare --bin agentflare — clean
• cargo test -p agentflare --bin agentflare cli::work:: — 43/43 passing
• cargo test -p agentflare --bin agentflare idle_timeout — existing idle-timeout unit tests still pass (they pass explicit durations, unaffected by the constant change)
• cargo fmt --check — clean

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Updated the default idle timeout to six hours, aligning it with the maximum execution timeout.
  • Improved timeout guidance for headless operations that may not produce continuous output.

[coderabbitai]

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📥 Commits

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• src/cli/work.rs

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The CLI now sets the default idle timeout to six hours, matching the hard timeout. Help text explains headless-agent output behavior and the risks of shorter idle timeouts.

Changes

CLI timeout alignment

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Align idle timeout default and documentation src/cli/work.rs	DEFAULT_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECS now uses DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_SECS. The --timeout and --idle-timeout help text documents the matching six-hour defaults and headless-agent behavior.

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~5 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to b729f

The change aligns the default idle timeout with the existing six-hour hard cap so headless work executions are not stopped during legitimate long-running turns; no actionable merge-blocking risk remains after normal checks and review.

Possibly related PRs

• getappz/agentflare#398: Improves diagnostics for idle-timeout events in the same headless-agent workflow.
• getappz/agentflare#401: Addresses idle-timeout behavior in the same CLI workflow.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely identifies the main change: preventing headless SDD dispatches from using the 300-second idle timeout.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description includes a clear summary, rationale, and test results, but omits the Notes for reviewers section and two template test items.
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

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch task/143-idle-timeout-inherit-hard-cap

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