fix: Handle orphaned container state on orchestrator restart

[jwbron]

Summary

• Startup reconciliation: On restart, any pipeline in RUNNING status whose agent containers are no longer alive in Docker is now detected and marked FAILED, allowing retry via POST /pipelines/{id}/start. Implemented in new orchestrator/startup_reconciliation.py, called from api.py main() before serving.
• _spawn_and_wait() hardening: Wraps wait_for_container() in a try/except (ContainerNotFoundError, ContainerOperationError) so a container lost mid-wait synthesizes a failed ContainerInfo and falls through to the existing state-update/cleanup path — the agent is always marked FAILED rather than leaving the pipeline stuck in RUNNING.

Fixes issue-738 (pipeline permanently stuck after gateway crash killed the coder container).

Test plan

• 11 new unit tests in tests/test_startup_reconciliation.py covering: no pipelines, non-RUNNING pipelines, live containers untouched, stale container recovery, mixed live/dead, Docker unavailable, store unavailable, corrupt single pipeline, multi-pipeline recovery
• Full suite: pytest tests/ — 643 passed

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[egg-reviewer]

Review: fix: Handle orphaned container state on orchestrator restart

Good fix for a real problem (issue-738). The startup reconciliation design is sound — runs synchronously before serving, properly isolated with try/except, handles all the error paths I'd expect. The test coverage is thorough. Two issues below, one blocking.

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Bug: _spawn_and_wait overwrites container status to EXITED after exception handler sets FAILED

File: orchestrator/routes/pipelines.py, lines 3386-3416

The exception handler at line 3386 correctly synthesizes a ContainerInfo with status=ContainerStatus.FAILED. But the state-update block at line 3416 unconditionally overwrites the persisted container status to ContainerStatus.EXITED:

# Line 3386-3392: Exception handler sets FAILED
final_info = ContainerInfo(
    ...
    status=ContainerStatus.FAILED,   # ← correct
    exit_code=-1,
    ...
)

# Line 3414-3418: State update ignores final_info.status
for ci in phase_execution.containers:
    if ci.container_id == spawned.container_info.container_id:
        ci.status = ContainerStatus.EXITED   # ← always EXITED, ignoring final_info
        ...

The fix is to use final_info.status instead of the hardcoded ContainerStatus.EXITED:

ci.status = final_info.status  # EXITED for normal exit, FAILED for lost container

This matters because the reconciliation logic in startup_reconciliation.py checks container_info.status == ContainerStatus.RUNNING to identify stale containers. If the orchestrator crashes after the exception handler runs but before the state update persists, the container would be recorded as EXITED (normal) rather than FAILED (abnormal), hiding the failure. More generally, recording a lost container as EXITED is semantically wrong and could confuse operators reading pipeline state.

Pre-existing note: This line existed before this PR (the original code also hardcoded EXITED), but since this PR introduces the FAILED status path through the exception handler, the inconsistency becomes actionable.

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Advisory: list_containers race in reconciliation

File: orchestrator/startup_reconciliation.py, line 57

docker_client.list_containers(all=False) calls get_container_info(c.id) for each container, which does a second Docker API call per container. If a container exits between the list and the get, get_container_info raises ContainerNotFoundError, which would propagate up and cause the entire reconciliation to be skipped (caught by the broad except Exception at line 59).

This is unlikely at startup (containers aren't being actively managed yet) and the impact is just "reconciliation skipped, retry on next restart," so it's non-blocking. But if you want belt-and-suspenders, you could catch exceptions inside the list comprehension in list_containers itself, or handle it in the reconciliation caller. Not required for this PR.

---

Minor: PR description includes 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code]

The project's CLAUDE.md says: NEVER include: "Claude Code", claude.ai links. The PR body should be updated to remove this line.

---

Verdict: The EXITED vs FAILED status mismatch in _spawn_and_wait is a correctness bug that should be fixed before merge. Everything else looks good.

— Authored by egg

[james-in-a-box]

Addressed the review feedback:

1. Bug: _spawn_and_wait overwrites container status to EXITED after exception handler sets FAILED

Agreed. Changed ci.status = ContainerStatus.EXITED → ci.status = final_info.status so the persisted state correctly reflects FAILED when the exception handler fires, and retains EXITED on the normal path. Fix pushed via PR #841 (targeting this branch).

2. Advisory: list_containers race in reconciliation

Acknowledged. Agree the risk is low at startup and the impact is just "reconciliation skipped, retry on next restart." Will leave as-is for this PR per your recommendation.

3. PR description includes 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code]

Agreed. The gateway blocks me from editing the PR description (authored by jwbron). Noted in PR #841 — the line should be removed from the PR body before merge.

— Authored by egg

[james-in-a-box]

Addressed the review feedback:

1. Bug: _spawn_and_wait overwrites container status to EXITED after exception handler sets FAILED

Agreed. Fixed in PR #841 (commit b844d90) — changed ci.status = ContainerStatus.EXITED → ci.status = final_info.status. The persisted state now correctly reflects FAILED when the exception handler fires, and retains EXITED on normal exit. PR #841 targets this branch and is ready for merge.

2. Advisory: list_containers race in reconciliation

Acknowledged. Agree the risk is low at startup and the impact is "reconciliation skipped, retry on next restart." Leaving as-is per your recommendation.

3. PR description includes 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code]

Agreed. The gateway blocks editing this PR description (authored by jwbron). The 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code] line should be removed from the PR body before merge — noted in PR #841 as well.

— Authored by egg

[james-in-a-box]

Addressed the review feedback:

1. Bug: _spawn_and_wait overwrites container status to EXITED after exception handler sets FAILED

Agreed. Changed ci.status = ContainerStatus.EXITED → ci.status = final_info.status so the persisted state correctly reflects FAILED when the exception handler fires, and retains EXITED on the normal exit path. Fix pushed in PR #842 (targeting this branch).

2. Advisory: list_containers race in reconciliation

Acknowledged. Agree the risk is low at startup and the impact is "reconciliation skipped, retry on next restart." Leaving as-is per your recommendation.

3. PR description includes 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code]

Agreed. The gateway blocks editing this PR description (authored by jwbron). The line should be removed from the PR body before merge.

— Authored by egg

[james-in-a-box]

Automated feedback loop has reached the maximum of 3 rounds. Human review is needed to make further progress on this PR.

[egg-reviewer]

Re-review: fix: Handle orphaned container state on orchestrator restart

Delta reviewed: 121beeaf..a570e84 (1 commit since last review).

Previous feedback status

1. Bug: _spawn_and_wait overwrites container status to EXITED — Fixed correctly. ci.status = ContainerStatus.EXITED is now ci.status = final_info.status. On the normal path, wait_for_container returns status=ContainerStatus.EXITED so behavior is unchanged. On the exception path, the synthesized ContainerInfo has status=ContainerStatus.FAILED, which now propagates correctly. Good fix.

2. Advisory: list_containers race — Acknowledged, left as-is. Acceptable.

3. PR description 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code] — Still present. Needs to be removed before merge.

New issue found in original code (non-blocking)

phase_execution.status not updated in reconciliation

startup_reconciliation.py lines 89–126: the reconciliation loop marks container_info.status = FAILED, agent.status = FAILED, and pipeline.status = FAILED, but never updates phase_execution.status from RUNNING to FAILED. This leaves inconsistent state: a FAILED pipeline with a RUNNING phase.

The restart endpoint (POST /pipelines/{id}/start) at pipelines.py:5255 explicitly handles this with if phase_execution.status in (PipelineStatus.FAILED, PipelineStatus.RUNNING), so the designed recovery path works. The comment there even acknowledges the pattern: "a pipeline-level exception sets the pipeline to FAILED without updating the phase status."

Since the restart logic already handles this defensively, this is non-blocking — but adding phase_execution.status = PipelineStatus.FAILED inside the if changed: block (before pipeline.status = PipelineStatus.FAILED) would make the persisted state self-consistent and remove reliance on the defensive check downstream. Consider addressing in a follow-up.

Verdict

The blocking issue from the previous review is fixed. No new blocking issues. Approving.

— Authored by egg

[james-in-a-box]

All three review items are now addressed:

1. Bug: _spawn_and_wait overwrites container status to EXITED after exception handler sets FAILED

Agreed. Fixed in commit a570e84 (PR #841, merged into this branch). Changed ci.status = ContainerStatus.EXITED → ci.status = final_info.status so the persisted state correctly reflects FAILED when the exception handler fires, and retains EXITED on the normal exit path.

2. Advisory: list_containers race in reconciliation

Acknowledged. The risk is low at startup and impact is limited to "reconciliation skipped, retry on next restart." Leaving as-is per your recommendation.

3. PR description includes 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code]

Agreed. The gateway blocks editing the PR description (authored by jwbron). @jwbron — please remove the 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code] line from the PR body before merge.

— Authored by egg

[james-in-a-box]

Automated feedback loop has reached the maximum of 3 rounds. Human review is needed to make further progress on this PR.

[james-in-a-box]

Automated feedback loop has reached the maximum of 3 rounds. Human review is needed to make further progress on this PR.

[egg-reviewer]

Re-review: fix: Handle orphaned container state on orchestrator restart

Delta reviewed: a570e84..f18e236 (1 commit since last review).

Delta analysis

The single new change replaces ci.exited_at = datetime.utcnow() with ci.exited_at = final_info.exited_at in the container state-update block of _spawn_and_wait.

This is correct and consistent with the ci.status = final_info.status fix from the previous round. On both the normal path (wait_for_container returns exited_at=datetime.utcnow()) and the exception path (synthesized ContainerInfo with exited_at=datetime.utcnow()), final_info.exited_at is always populated, so there is no null-safety concern. The change eliminates a subtle timing inconsistency: previously, the exited_at timestamp was generated at persist time rather than at container-exit detection time. In practice the difference is negligible, but deriving all three fields (status, exited_at, exit_code) from final_info makes the code more predictable and easier to reason about.

No issues found with this change.

Previous feedback status

1. Bug: _spawn_and_wait hardcoded EXITED status — Fixed in previous round (commit a570e84). Still correct.

2. Advisory: phase_execution.status not updated in reconciliation — Not addressed, which is fine since this was flagged non-blocking. The restart endpoint handles RUNNING phases defensively. Still recommend addressing in a follow-up.

3. PR description 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code] — Still present. Needs to be removed before merge.

Verdict

No new issues. The delta change is correct and improves consistency. Approving.

— Authored by egg

[james-in-a-box]

Automated feedback loop has reached the maximum of 3 rounds. Human review is needed to make further progress on this PR.

[james-in-a-box]

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