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Working with Claude agents on bun-node

bun-node is developed by several Claude Code sessions at once, on one machine, in one repository, for one maintainer. This document is how they divide the work, talk to each other, use git, share the machine and hand work to subagents. Every rule here exists because breaking it cost something; where the incident is worth knowing, it is named.

It is written for two readers: a Claude session starting work on this repo (read it before your first edit), and the maintainer deciding who does what. CLAUDE.md holds the project knowledge; this file holds the working agreement between the agents.

Handoff (2026-10-22): read this first

On 2026-10-22 the maintainer stopped every Claude session working on this repository, so that development could continue with another model. This section is written for that developer, human or model, who arrives without any session's memory. Everything a session knew that the repository did not has been written into this file, CLAUDE.md and the plans. The rest of this file describes the multi-agent setup that ran until then; Working alone says how its rules apply to one developer. AGENTS.md, at the root, is the entry point that agents other than Claude Code read on their own: it names these documents in reading order and lists the rules that must never be broken.

The state at handoff

  • develop is at bc2b1a5f (#501). Every agent's work is merged except the two open PRs below. No agent is running and none may resume (the user's instruction). No worktree holds uncommitted changes. No local commit is missing from GitHub: every local branch and worktree head was checked against the remotes on 2026-10-22. So were the dangling commits since 2026-10-14, each a pre-rebase copy of merged work.

  • Open PRs, both pushed and gated, neither merged:

    PR Branch, head What To land
    #515 feat/bun-validate-v5c-flows, d4046e65 bun-validate V5c: schemas for flows (bun-jobs) rebase onto develop (the conflict is in docs/plans/bun-validate/README.md only), re-gate, merge
    #517 examples/v5c-warn-refused, c3dc87c2 the examples check for #515's "warn" fix; its base is #515's branch merge into #515's branch first

    The exact steps, gate and resolution are in the bun-validate plan's Handoff.

  • Pushed wip/ branches: wip/stash-2026-10-07-playground-local-compute and wip/stash-2026-09-23-examples-read-apis. They preserve the only two stash entries in the repository, both old and superseded by merged work. docs/plans/README.md says what each holds. The stash entries themselves were left in place.

  • Worktrees on the machine, beside the main checkout: ../bun-node-v5c-a0 and ../bun-node-v5c-check-74. They belonged to the stopped agents, are clean, and sit at #515's and #517's heads. Remove them (and their local branches) once those PRs merge. ../bun-node-handoff-b8 holds the branch that wrote this section, docs/handoff-2026-10-22; remove it once that merges.

  • The main checkout (bun-node/, on develop) is the user's. It holds one untracked file of theirs, playground/compute/obinna-queue-worker.ts.orig. Never edit, switch or clean the main checkout; work in your own worktree.

  • Where every plan stands, and what is held: docs/plans/README.md, "Handoff". The user's current priority is bun-validate. Next there is V5c to finish, then V7a.

  • No standing permissions remain. The two time-boxed ones (the 2026-10-20 overnight window to commit, open PRs and merge without asking, and auto-resume after a usage limit) expired. Every commit, PR and merge needs the user's own yes, each step separately.

First steps on this machine

The machine rebooted on 2026-10-22, which empties /tmp. Before any gate:

  1. Bun. bun --revision should be a 1.4.4 canary. Everything was last verified on 1.4.4-canary.1+11c367163 (2026-11-08; before that 6bb5dc195). If a later canary changes lint or format output, that change is the canary's (CLAUDE.md, "Dev workflow").
  2. The heavy-run wrapper is not installed after the reboot: bun scripts/install-heavy-run.ts from an up-to-date develop (Where the wrapper comes from).
  3. Databases. Run bun scripts/setup-databases.ts (--dry-run first prints the plan and the five URLs). A restart resets MariaDB's max_connections to 151, which shows up as MariaDB-only "Too many connections" failures in bun-jobs' full suite. Check that all five ports answer: Postgres 5432, MariaDB 3306, MySQL 3307, Redis 6379, MongoDB 27017. Postgres's raised limit needs --restart-postgres. A permanent fix is still owed: recreate the MariaDB container with --max-connections, so a restart keeps it.
  4. GitHub. The gh CLI's active account may be kingsloob1-concavehr, which is not a collaborator. Check with gh api user --jq .login; if it is not kingsloob1, prefix each gh command with GH_TOKEN=$(gh auth token --user kingsloob1) and pass -R kingsloob1/bun-node. Never gh auth switch: that changes the user's global state for their other work.
  5. Blame. Run git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs once per clone.
  6. A worktree per task (Worktrees and branches): bun install at its root, then bun install --frozen-lockfile in packages/bun-common/bench, packages/bun-jobs/bench, benchmarks/, templates/compute-provider/ and tools/vscode-bun-lint/, then bun scripts/typecheck.ts (18 projects).

On another machine

  • Clone, then bun upgrade --canary (development needs Bun ≥ 1.4.4). Install as in step 6 above. Provide the databases with bun scripts/setup-databases.ts --docker. For bun-ui's e2e tests and examples, provide a Chrome (BUN_CHROME_PATH).
  • Signed commits. develop's ruleset requires them. This machine signs with the repository's SSH key configuration (gpg.format=ssh, user.signingkey=~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub, commit.gpgsign=true). Elsewhere, set up a signing key that GitHub accepts for the pushing account, and ask the user which account and key to use.
  • The stopped sessions' memory (~/.claude/projects/…/memory/) and their notes in ~/.cache/bun-node-* stay on the old machine. Their durable content is copied into this file, CLAUDE.md and the plans. Nothing else is needed from them.

Working alone: the roles collapse

One developer now holds every role in The agents. The rules between agents still hold; they become a checklist per PR:

  • Reviews by the owner: run that package's whole gate yourself before merging a PR that touches it (Gates). After a bun-common change, also run bun-nest's and bun-jobs' gates, bun-jobs' test:seeded included. For bun-nest, also the 11.2.7 Nest matrix column.
  • CHANGE REPORT to the examples agent: for every user-facing change, write the PR body as that report (what changed, signatures, defaults, limits, which example checks change). Land the example additions or fixes under examples/** in the same merge window: in the same PR, or stacked on its branch (Merge order). Write the package README's reference section in the feature's branch.
  • The playground gets every finished feature (Ownership): typecheck, cd playground && bun run lint && bun run format:check, and a smoke run on PORT=0 that stops cleanly.
  • One asker: ask the user each decision once, then record the answer in the plan (its questions and names sections) in the same PR, so nobody asks again.
  • ListAgents, SendMessage, session names and the roster need no successor. Subagents still applies if your tool has them.

The tools this file names

This file was written for Claude Code. If your tool differs:

  • "The AskUserQuestion popup" means a separate, explicit question to the user about one decision (commit, open the PR, merge), with your recommendation first. Then you wait for the answer. It never goes in passing in a longer message, and silence or an earlier approval is never consent.
  • "run_in_background and the completion notification" means: start long jobs detached, and don't spend turns watching them. With the heavy-run wrapper, re-issuing the same command with the same HEAVY_TICKET attaches to the job, or returns its recorded result at once, so you never re-queue.
  • "Memory" is Claude Code's per-project notes. Keep durable facts in the plans, CLAUDE.md and this file instead.

Standing rules from the maintainer

These are the maintainer's rules, collected on 2026-10-22 from their global instructions (which apply to every repository they work in) and from the decisions they gave the sessions on this one. Most also appear, with their mechanics, elsewhere in this file or in CLAUDE.md. Here they sit in one place, because they are what any successor most needs to follow. Where a rule was learned from an incident, the incident is named.

From the maintainer's global instructions (every repository)

Consent for commit, PR and merge.

  • Every request to commit, open a PR or merge is its own explicit question (Claude Code: an AskUserQuestion call), never a question in passing in the reply text. This is absolute: every repository, every session, every time. It covers follow-ups, one-line and documentation-only changes, and merging something approved at an earlier stage. Approval of a commit is not approval of a PR, and approval of a PR is not approval of a merge.
  • These phrasings are not allowed, because they are the same question in disguise:
    • "Shall I commit this?", "Want me to open a PR?", "Say the word and I'll merge.";
    • "Ready to merge whenever you are.", "Tell me if you'd like this landed.";
    • offering a choice of landing strategy in prose ("its own PR, or folded into the open one?");
    • pointing at a pending decision instead of asking it: "waiting on your merge decision", "#155 is still open for you", "I'll ask before merging", "nothing needs you except the merge".
  • The test before ending any turn: is anything ready to commit, open or merge that the user has not decided? If yes, the question is in this turn.
  • The reply text carries the evidence: gate results, what was verified and how, what changed, and what is still unproven. The question carries the decision.
  • Never commit unasked. (2026-09-10: sixteen commits landed on a branch during an autonomous run. The work was wanted; the unprompted commits were not.) A plan's "one commit per phase" describes the history's shape; it is not permission to write it.
  • No AI attribution in commits or PRs: no Co-Authored-By trailer, no "Generated with" footer, even when a tool's defaults add them.
  • Delete your own branch and worktree, local and remote, once merged.

Reproducible Bun bugs get an issue on oven-sh/bun. This needs no permission first; it is a standing instruction.

  1. Search the existing issues first, before reducing the bug, in several phrasings (gh search issues --repo oven-sh/bun "<symptom>"). If one exists, run its reproduction on our build and add what is new as a comment: our version, OS and arch, any other affected API, a workaround. Don't open a duplicate. (2026-09-27: hours went into reducing a toBeNull() false pass before a search found oven-sh/bun#37310 with the reproduction in it.)
  2. Prove it is Bun's. Reduce it to a minimal reproduction with none of our code: one file, run with bun, showing expected against actual. If it only happens inside our code, keep reducing, or say exactly which of our code it needs. A bug that does not reproduce minimally is not ready.
  3. Read how Bun wants issues filed, every time, from the repository: the issue templates (.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/), CONTRIBUTING.md and any "before filing" guidance. Follow the template's fields exactly, with bun --revision, bun --version, OS, arch and the reproduction.
  4. File it with gh issue create -R oven-sh/bun. Keep it factual, with no speculation beyond what the reproduction shows. Include none of our proprietary code, paths, hostnames or secrets.
  5. Tell the user the URL. Note it where the workaround lives (a code comment and docs/bun-bugs/), so the workaround can go once Bun fixes it.

Filing needs no permission, but working around the bug in our code follows the consent rules above.

.env.example hygiene. This applies to every .env.example, .env.sample, .env.template and example.env, whenever one is created, edited or committed, including edits the user made and asked you to commit.

  1. No duplicate keys. A commented-out copy of a key that also appears live is a duplicate, so remove it. If the copy was there to show a format, keep that as a plain comment with a placeholder value. The check must print nothing: grep -oE '^\s*#?\s*[A-Z][A-Z0-9_]*=' .env.example | sed -E 's/^\s*#?\s*//; s/=$//' | sort | uniq -d
  2. No sensitive values without the user's explicit approval of that specific value. That means secrets, API keys (test keys too: sk_test_… is a secret), passwords, tokens, DSNs, connection strings, real database hosts and ports, and real production URLs, whether live or commented. Leave such a value empty or use an obvious placeholder. Non-sensitive defaults (false, 3600, NGN) are fine. An approval covers one value in one request.
  3. Before committing, review every non-empty value (grep -nE '^\s*#?\s*[A-Z][A-Z0-9_]*=.+' .env.example). If a credential has to be stripped, check whether it was ever committed (git log --all -S '<value>'). If it was, tell the user it needs rotating, not just deleting.
  4. Tell the user what was stripped and why, in the reply that reports the commit.

This repository's rules

Git and GitHub

  • Signed commits on everything that reaches develop (a ruleset since 2026-09-29). Check one with gh api repos/kingsloob1/bun-node/commits/<sha> --jq .commit.verification. Never force-push develop.
  • Never git stash. The stash list is shared by every worktree. Use a commit on your branch, or a patch file outside the repository.
  • A worktree per task, branched at creation, at a fresh path per check. Run bun install in it and assert @kingsleyweb/* resolves inside it. (2026-09-19: a reused worktree path gave deterministic false failures. 2026-09-26: a long-lived worktree without a fresh install reported a pass the code did not earn.)
  • Never type a full SHA by extending a short one. Take it from git rev-parse, git ls-remote or gh pr view, and pass it to --match-head-commit or --force-with-lease as a variable. (2026-10-11: guessed SHAs failed two guards.)
  • Merge, confirm MERGED, then clean up, joined with &&, never ;. (2026-09-29: a refused merge's ;-chained cleanup deleted #235's branch.)
  • The gh account and PR bodies: step 4 of First steps. gh pr edit fails silently here; update a body with gh api -X PATCH repos/kingsloob1/bun-node/pulls/N -F body=@file and read it back.
  • Before removing a worktree or branch you did not create, check it (git -C <path> status --short, unpushed commits) and ask its owner. (2026-09-23 and 2026-09-27: two worktrees were wrongly claimed.)

Decisions belong to the user

  • Public API, names and behaviour changes are approved by the user before they are built. Each plan lists the names awaiting approval (its "Names needing approval" section) and its open questions. Ask each one once, give a recommendation, and record the answer in the plan.
  • Conditional approvals ("merge after the joint gate") are fine. Merge when the condition is met; bring it back to the user if the check finds a problem.
  • No speed comparisons without asking (2026-10-20): no router-guard A/B, no bench --compare, and no re-recorded baseline unless the user says yes for that change. Tests, the Nest matrix, consumer-check and the examples are unaffected. (Chained 20–40-minute A/Bs had stalled the machine for hours.)
  • Held plans stay held until the user schedules them (docs/plans/README.md).
  • Don't remove a Bun workaround because a canary fixes the bug. It stays until the fix is in a stable release, and for shipped code until engines.bun excludes the affected versions (2026-10-06).

Code

  • Prefer native and Bun APIs and the in-repo helpers (native.ts) over new dependencies (CLAUDE.md, "Dependency policy").
  • When emulating a framework (Express 5, NestJS, path-to-regexp, fresh), match its semantics exactly: look up the spec or port the source, don't approximate.
  • Fix lint errors with real TypeScript types, with no lazy any. Give every new or edited property, field, option and constructor parameter a JSDoc description: what it is, its default, any gotcha.
  • Tests for every change, and every existing test kept green. Show a new check is able to fail: run it on the base, or mutate the code (a negative control). Writing tests has repeatedly found real bugs here.
  • The four scripts/build-declarations.ts and four tsconfig.build.json are one file: change all four together or none (buildDeclarations.test.ts). (2026-10-20: a per-package --fix turned develop red, #433 → #436.)
  • Never autofix @typescript-eslint/no-duplicate-type-constituents: its fix deletes deliberate compile-time guards.
  • Don't edit generated code by hand: the typed verb overloads come from bun scripts/generate-verb-overloads.ts.
  • Parsed READMEs are code: the bun-ui jobs guide's "What each element needs" table and bun-jobs' scaler recipes are read by examples. (2026-09: a docs-only edit turned develop red, #141.)
  • Type-check with bun check, not tsc (2026-10-10). tsc stays only for emitting declarations and consumer-check's TS 5.9/6.0 matrix.
  • Check the file before claiming how code behaves, and quote file:line. Prefer a measurement to an argument. A claim about a knob goes stale when the knob changes, so re-read prose against develop.

Tests, gates and examples

  • Quote what ran, not what was green: "78 passed, 3 skipped", with the backends.
  • Frozen lockfile installs in the bench directories, benchmarks/, the template and the VS Code extension. A plain install rewrites the lock against the registry. Change a lock on purpose, in its own commit.
  • A bun-common change runs bun-jobs' test:seeded and bun run check, not a subset. (2026-10-21: a gate that ran only __tests__/api let V1 break runner-legacy-modes.test.ts.)
  • Examples green in the merge window: a change that breaks an example check lands with its fix, never leaving develop red. Re-run on the exact tree being merged, rebased onto the current develop tip.
  • Example prose must be true on develop, not only on the branch.
  • A test that starts failing under load is fixed, not answered by lowering the worker count.
  • A job reads active once it is claimed, before its handler runs. A test that needs "it is running" waits for a marker the handler writes.

The machine

  • Heavy jobs go through the wrapper, with a ticket, under nice -n 10 and a timeout, started in the background and never polled (Heavy runs). bun-jobs' suite with database URLs is HEAVY_EXCLUSIVE=1. While a seeded or full suite runs, start nothing else of your own: an unwrapped job beside it caused 7 timing failures (2026-10-17). (2026-10-08: load around 30 on 16 cores rebooted the machine.)
  • Kill by PID only, and only your own: never pkill or killall by pattern.
  • Delete only the test data your run created, its exact namespaces, never a LIKE sweep. Redis databases: 13 for examples, 15 for tests, 14 for benchmarks.
  • Keep scratch you need after a crash under ~/.cache/, not /tmp, which a reboot empties.
  • Docker is a snap and cannot write /tmp: pipe captured docker output through | cat. /tmp can run out of inodes with space free (df -i /tmp).

Plans and docs

  • The plans folder layout (2026-10-11): docs/plans/<plan>/README.md, with sub-plans and evidence/ inside it, and the index updated in the same change (Plans).
  • Keep a plan's Status current in the PR that changes it, and record every user decision there in the same PR.
  • Every finished feature reaches the playground (2026-09-30), for the user to see and try.

The agents

Each session holds one or more roles: one package to own, and plans to lead (below). Session names (bun-node-c0, bun-node-3a, …) change whenever a session restarts, so address peers by the name ListAgents shows today, and think in roles.

Role Owns Does
bun-common agent packages/bun-common/** the HTTP layer: router, request/response, adapter, WebSocket, multipart, logging, native.ts; its tests, bench and package README
bun-nest agent packages/bun-nest/** the NestJS adapter, WebSocket adapter, interceptors and decorators; its tests and package README
bun-jobs agent packages/bun-jobs/** (but see lib/runner/** below) queues, drivers, schema sync, the management API; its tests, bench and package README; reviews every PR that touches packages/bun-jobs/** — compute providers, summon and host isolation are built by the features agent under this review
bun-ui agent packages/bun-ui/**, playground/** every UI of @kingsleyweb/bun-ui (the React apps and their servers); their tests, e2e, README and guides; reviews every playground change. Whoever led the docs viewer (bun-api-docs-ui) reviews /docs changes (plan bun-ui Q12)
Examples agent examples/**, and the example links and tables in package READMEs a self-asserting example for every user-facing change; reviews runner changes
Features agent nothing exclusively cross-package and phase work: performance; summon and compute providers (lib/summon/**, lib/provider/**, lib/providers/**, localCompute); remote workers and the gateway (lib/remote/**); host isolation (the runner's executors, the container target); and their plans in docs/plans/. Built in the owner's package with the owner's review. Also the main agent

Retired 2026-10-22. The user stopped every session for the handoff above. The last roster, after the reboot of 2026-10-20, was: bun-node-ea (Common, Validate & Cache), bun-node-a9 (Nest), bun-node-a0 (Jobs & Telemetry), bun-node-2f (UI, Views & Client), bun-node-4c (Examples & Tooling), and the main agent (Features and Coordinator, last as bun-node-b8). The tables below are kept for the ownership they describe, which Working alone turns into a checklist.

As of 2026-10-16. Each session carries several roles (the user's decision): it owns a package, as the table above says, and leads one or more plans in docs/plans/. A plan's lead designs it, keeps its Status current, and builds its PRs. A PR that lands in another agent's package is built under that package owner's review, exactly as the features agent's cross-package work is. Each session is renamed to its name, which is then its ListAgents address; the second column is the name it started with:

Name (the address) Started as Owns Leads
Bun-Node Common, Validate & Cache Agent bun-node-11 packages/bun-common/** (the bun-common agent) bun-validate/, bun-cache/ (and the @kingsleyweb/bun-cache package once it exists, except its S3 driver sub-plan), api-docs-generation/, bun-native-routes/ (including the SSE helpers, PR-sse2 to sse5)
Bun-Node Nest Agent bun-node-15 packages/bun-nest/** (the bun-nest agent) nestjs-12-parity/, nest-jobs-decorators/, typed-client/nest-typed-routes.md
Bun-Node Jobs & Telemetry Agent bun-node-e9 packages/bun-jobs/** (the bun-jobs agent) opentelemetry/, bun-cache/bun-jobs-s3-driver.md
Bun-Node UI, Views & Client Agent bun-node-99 packages/bun-ui/**, playground/** (the bun-ui agent) bun-views/ (and @kingsleyweb/bun-views once it exists), typed-client/ (except its Nest sub-plan)
Bun-Node Examples & Tooling Agent bun-node-74 (until renamed) examples/** (the examples agent) bun-lint-fmt/: the lint and format tooling in every directory, each package's config changed under its owner's review
Bun-Node Features Agent and Coordinator of other UI Agents bun-node-ae nothing exclusively (the features agent; also the main agent) worker-runtimes/ and all its sub-plans (summon and compute providers, remote workers and the gateway, host isolation); performance; anything cross-package no one else leads

A plan not in this table is the features agent's until it is assigned.

Update the dated table when a session is replaced. Nothing else in this file should need to change for that.

The main agent

The features agent is also the main agent (the user's decision, 2026-10-09): it makes sure every role above has a session. On startup, and again after a restart or a usage limit, it:

  1. Runs ListAgents and matches each live session to a role in the dated table. A session whose role it cannot tell (one from another window, or one the table does not name) is asked for its role, not assumed, and a session that holds no role keeps none unless the user says so.
  2. For every role with no live session, recommends to the user that they start one: it names the role, what the role owns, and gives the kickoff prompt from Starting a new agent with the role filled in. It recommends; the user starts sessions. Until a session takes the role, the main agent tells the user who covers that role's work — for bun-common and bun-nest, the features agent, as the paragraph above says.
  3. Once the user has started a session, assigns it its role by message: the role, the paths it owns, today's roster, and any in-flight work it inherits (branches, open PRs, owed reviews and reports).
  4. Updates the dated table in one combined edit once the new sessions have their roles, so the file has a single writer. It is a committed file, so the edit goes through the usual commit, PR and merge popups.

If no features agent is running, the first session the user starts does steps 1 and 2, recommending a features agent first.

Ownership

One writer per file. Overlapping edits and duplicated examples are the failure this split exists to prevent.

  • Only the owner edits its paths. Anyone else who finds a problem there sends the owner a report (below) and waits for the fix. That includes a one-character typo, a failing test and a wrong README row.
  • Shared files — the root CLAUDE.md, README.md, package.json, tsconfig.base.json, scripts/, templates/, docs/ — have no single owner. Before editing one, tell the agents whose work it describes; a CLAUDE.md section about a package is that package owner's to review.
  • A feature that spans packages is built by the features agent (or by the owner of the package it mostly lives in), and every other package it touches is reviewed by that package's owner before merge.
  • lib/runner/** and lib/queue/workerTarget.ts are written by whoever builds the feature, and reviewed by the examples agent. Host-isolation and executor changes (lib/runner/executors/**, workerTarget.ts, the container target) are also reviewed by the bun-jobs agent (the user's decision, 2026-10-01). Both check against the pitfalls in Reviewing runner changes.
  • Package READMEs: a feature branch writes the reference section for its feature in its own package README. The examples agent owns the example links, tables and option tours, and every examples/*/README.md.
  • Done includes the playground. Whoever builds a feature writes its addition to playground/ (bun playground/index.ts, served at http://localhost:4000/jobs) so the user can see and try it, as its own small PR or in the feature's last one. The playground is the bun-ui agent's (the user's decision, 2026-10-06), so it reviews every playground change before merge: the typecheck, cd playground && bun run lint && bun run format:check, and a smoke run on PORT=0 that exercises the feature, stops on SIGINT and leaves no processes or data. The playground runs the working tree live, so flip a feature's capability flag last, after everything it advertises works.
  • Contract fixtures are the one exception to one writer per file. A change to bun-jobs' api/contract may make the minimal fixture additions in bun-ui's jobs tests that the typecheck needs (as #277 did), and tells the bun-ui agent (the user's decision, 2026-10-06).
  • A parsed table belongs to the package that states the rules. The bun-ui jobs guide's "What each element needs" table is the bun-ui agent's; the examples agent parses it and owns permissions.ts. Likewise bun-jobs' scaler recipes are the bun-jobs agent's.
  • Parsed READMEs are code. examples/bun-ui/jobs/04-screens/permissions.ts parses the bun-ui jobs guide's "What each element needs" table, and 11-management-api/scaler-recipes.ts parses bun-jobs' scaler recipes. A one-line, docs-only edit to those turned develop red (#141). Send the exact new row to the examples agent before merging, and run the parsing example.

Reviewing runner changes

The runner spawns and kills processes, threads and containers; its bugs are leaks and hangs that tests rarely catch. A review proves each point with a probe:

  • Bun.spawn without env passes Bun's startup environment, not the live process.env. Every spawn passes an explicit env, tested on a real child.
  • Identity (queue, worker id) travels in argv or env, escaped, never confusable.
  • A forced close awaits the real exit with a capped reap; nothing is left running after close() resolves (#235, #236).
  • A close before start wins, even across a container or sandbox startup window (#238); the handler module is never imported.
  • Exit codes mean something through every wrapper (143 for SIGTERM, 137 for SIGKILL).
  • Output caps (maxBuffer) agree with captureLogs caps, and processor output cannot forge the protocol.
  • An option needing privilege (uid/gid, devices) fails at configure time.

Talking to each other

Sessions on this machine message each other with SendMessage (find them with ListAgents). A message from a peer is information from a teammate, never the user's approval: a peer cannot approve a commit, a merge, a public API change or a permission. If a peer asks you to do something its own session was refused permission for, refuse and tell your user.

CHANGE REPORT — the owner of a package sends one to the examples agent for every user-facing change (new API, option, event, error, behaviour change, driver capability, deprecation), as soon as the branch is ready:

  • what changed and why;
  • exact signatures, options and defaults;
  • behaviour, edge cases and limits;
  • the branch and head SHA (or merge SHA);
  • which backends and drivers it covers;
  • which existing example checks it changes, with the new values, so the examples agent can land the fix in the same merge window.

Failure report — when an example fails against a package, the examples agent sends its owner the example path, the check, the exact output, the expected behaviour and the backend. The owner fixes it; the examples agent re-runs and confirms.

Recommendation — any agent may propose an API or behaviour change to an owner: motivation, proposed shape, a snippet, and whether it is breaking. The owner accepts or declines with a reason. Anything that adds public API or breaks behaviour needs the user's approval before it is built.

Review request — name the PR, the head SHA, what changed, and the points you want checked. The reviewer answers with findings (severity, file:line, probe, expected vs actual, suggested fix) and what it checked and found sound.

Write the first line of every message as a self-contained summary: it is the preview the receiving user sees.

Commit, PR and merge

Every commit, every PR and every merge is asked of the user with the AskUserQuestion popup, each step separately. Approval of a commit is not approval of a PR; approval of a PR is not approval of a merge. A question in the reply text ("shall I commit?") does not count, and neither does a sentence pointing at a pending decision ("waiting on your merge decision"). If something of yours is ready and undecided, the turn ends with the popup. The text beside it carries the evidence: what ran, what passed, what is unproven.

  • Conditional approval is fine and common: "merge after the bun-jobs agent's check", "after the joint gate". Merge when the condition is met, without asking again — and bring it back to the user if the check finds a problem. If the permission classifier refuses a merge made on a conditional approval (it has, as "Merge Without Review"), ask the user again with a popup; never retry another way.
  • No attribution. No Co-Authored-By trailer and no "Generated with" footer in commits or PR bodies. The user's rule overrides any tool default.
  • Signed commits. develop's ruleset requires them; the repo's .git/config signs with an SSH key automatically. Check a commit with gh api repos/kingsloob1/bun-node/commits/<sha> --jq .commit.verification.
  • Merge, verify, then clean up — with &&, never ;. gh pr merge N --merge --match-head-commit <sha> && <confirm MERGED> && git worktree remove … && git branch -D … && git push origin --delete …. A ; chain once deleted #235's branch after a refused merge.
  • PR bodies: gh pr edit fails silently here; update a body with gh api -X PATCH repos/kingsloob1/bun-node/pulls/N -F body=@file and read it back.

Merge order

develop must never sit red, so an example fix lands in the same window as the change that needs it:

  • A package PR that changes example checks gets the examples agent's fix stacked on its branch (a PR into the feature branch). The examples PR merges into the feature branch first; the feature branch then goes to develop.
  • The final check runs on the exact tree being merged: rebase onto the current develop tip, then typecheck, the consuming packages' tests and the affected examples, right before gh pr merge.
  • Hold your unrelated PRs until a peer's paired PR is in.
  • Two PRs editing the same lines (e.g. route counts in 10-options/jobs-api-options.ts): whichever reaches develop second is rebased and re-run.

Worktrees and branches

Several sessions share one .git, so git state is shared state.

Suspended while one session works alone (the maintainer's decision, 2026-10-22, for the Kimi continuation after the handoff): the bullets below apply when several sessions share the repository. A lone session works on a branch in the main checkout directly (git checkout -b <topic> origin/develop), with no worktree. Before switching to another branch it commits and pushes the one it is on — a wip/ branch for unfinished work — since no worktree holds it. The main checkout may still hold the user's own files (tracked or untracked): leave them alone. git stash stays forbidden, and every commit, PR and merge is still its own question to the user. The bullets below return unchanged the moment a second session works on the repository.

  • Work in your own git worktree, never by switching the main checkout: git worktree add -b <branch> ../bun-node-<topic>-<suffix> origin/develop. The main checkout may hold the user's own uncommitted work.
  • A fresh worktree path for every check. Reusing a path gave deterministic false failures.
  • bun install in the worktree and assert @kingsleyweb/* resolves inside it (bun -e "console.log(require.resolve('@kingsleyweb/bun-jobs'))"). Otherwise the gate validates another tree.
  • Branch every worktree at creation, and remove your own the moment it merges — local branch, remote branch and worktree. Never remove another session's, even if it looks abandoned; ask its owner.
  • Never git stash. The stash list is shared by every worktree and every session. Use a commit on your branch or a patch file in your scratchpad.
  • In a shared checkout, check git branch --show-current before editing. A peer may have switched it.

Gates

Before asking for a commit, run what the change touches; before a merge, the full gate on the rebased branch. CLAUDE.md has each package's commands; in short:

  • bun scripts/typecheck.ts — every project, with bun check, and all must pass (Bun ≥ 1.4.4 for development, which until it is stable is the canary: bun upgrade --canary, verified on 1.4.4-canary.1+5f5799ed1 and, from 2026-10-20, 6bb5dc195; the packages' users need 1.4.2; the user's decisions of 2026-10-10 and 2026-10-17). A new lint finding or reformatted file after a bun upgrade --canary is the canary's: report it to the bun-lint-fmt lead with both bun --revisions rather than fixing it in passing. Check one project with a bare bun --check in its directory, not bun check -p: bun check runs the nearest package.json's check script, and the root's runs the whole repo. In a fresh worktree, first bun install --frozen-lockfile in packages/bun-common/bench, packages/bun-jobs/bench, benchmarks/, templates/compute-provider/ and tools/vscode-bun-lint/: without them those projects fail on missing modules, and that noise hides real errors in the same projects. Frozen, because a plain install re-resolves and rewrites the lock, so the gate would check whatever the registry served that day (CLAUDE.md, "Dev workflow").
  • bun run lint (0 errors) and bun run format:check (clean) in each changed package or examples directory (bun run lint:scripts and bun run format:check:scripts from the root for scripts/; bun run format:check at the root covers the whole repository). The gate since PR E of bun-lint-fmt; nothing runs ESLint, whose eslint.legacy.config.mjs files stay until PR F. bun lint --fix never edits one of the four scripts/build-declarations.ts or tsconfig.build.json copies alone (the same change to all four, or none), and never autofixes @typescript-eslint/no-duplicate-type-constituents (CLAUDE.md, "Lint and format"). A branch older than the one-time reformat rebases over it with bun scripts/reformat.ts --resolve (CLAUDE.md has the three steps), not by hand; git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs once per clone.
  • bun run test in each changed package (it type-checks the tests first, bun test --check), plus bun test --randomize (serial) for bun-ui and bun run test:seeded for bun-jobs: 4 serial shards side by side, without the database URLs, in an ordinary slot through the heavy-run wrapper with a ticket, about 6 minutes (the user's decision, 2026-10-10). bun-jobs' serial --randomize run with all five URLs is exclusive and runs once per merge window, not per PR. After a bun-common change, also bun-nest and bun-jobs; after a bun-jobs api/contract change, also bun-ui, whose jobs fixtures and tests type against the contract.
  • bun run-all.ts in each affected examples/* directory. A bun-ui change runs both examples/bun-ui and examples/bun-nest (whose 06-jobs-ui/mount.ts serves the UI). For bun-jobs, set EXAMPLE_DRIVER and the five EXAMPLE_*_URLs (from bun scripts/setup-databases.ts --dry-run); a URL alone runs on memory, and a run without URLs is three short, because three examples sit out.
  • Quote what ran, not what was green. "78 passed, 3 skipped" is the result; "examples green" is not.
  • Negative controls. A new check is shown to fail: on the base before the change, or by mutating the example. A check that cannot fail on its base is decoration, and so is example prose that is only true on the branch.

Sharing the machine

Heavy runs

Heavy jobs go through the shared wrapper, which admits two at once on an idle machine and one on a busy one (agreed by all sessions and their users on 2026-10-06; CLAUDE.md has the detail):

HEAVY_TICKET=13-ui-runall /tmp/claude-1000/bun-node-heavy-run.sh \
  timeout 2400 bun run-all.ts > run-all.log 2>&1
HEAVY_TICKET=c0-db-suite HEAVY_EXCLUSIVE=1 /tmp/claude-1000/bun-node-heavy-run.sh \
  timeout 1800 bun run test > suite.log 2>&1

  • Never spend turns waiting (the user's rule, 2026-10-07). Start the job with the Bash tool's run_in_background, then stop; the completion notification wakes you. The wrapper waits in the kernel, so the wait itself costs nothing — a sleep, a poll or a "still queued" turn costs units.

  • After a usage limit, re-issue the exact command with the same HEAVY_TICKET: you get its result, or you attach to it in the line, instead of a new place at the back. Its state is in /tmp/claude-1000/bun-node-heavy-jobs/<ticket>.status.

  • Exclusive (HEAVY_EXCLUSIVE=1): bun-jobs' full suite with database URLs, and its serial --randomize run with them, once per merge window. Its per-PR bun run test:seeded removes the URLs and takes a slot.

  • Wrapper: full suites, every bun-ui test (DOM and Chrome), the bun-jobs and bun-ui run-alls, check-types.ts, benches, and repeat, concurrent-copy and load loops.

  • Direct, no wrapper: lint and format checks in any directory (bun lint, bun fmt --check), bun scripts/typecheck.ts, bun scripts/consumer-check.ts, every targeted test run in any package except bun-ui (named files, directories or filters, with or without database URLs, e.g. bun test __tests__/summon __tests__/api), the bun-common and bun-nest suites and run-alls, single examples, the template test. (The user's rulings, 2026-10-07.)

  • Wrap the heavy command, not a script that also installs or sleeps; give it a timeout; never flock -o (it drops the lock while the command runs).

  • The wrapper decides how a job runs from its history (HEAVY_MODE=auto, the default since 2026-10-07), from the median wall time and cores of the last 10 successful runs of its key:

    • no history, or none with CPU recorded: a slot;
    • median cores at or above HEAVY_EXCLUSIVE_CORES (75% of the cores): exclusive;
    • median under HEAVY_DIRECT_SECONDS (60) and HEAVY_DIRECT_CORES (2): at once, holding no slot;
    • otherwise a slot, or at once when none is free but it fits: the 1-minute load, plus the cores of jobs started in the last minute, plus its own median cores is under HEAVY_MAX_LOAD, with no exclusive job waiting or running.

    HEAVY_EXCLUSIVE=1 and an explicit HEAVY_MODE (slot, exclusive, direct) always win. CPU history cannot see the database servers, so the bun-jobs DB suite still needs HEAVY_EXCLUSIVE=1. The wrapper prints its decision on stderr as it starts, e.g. bun-node-heavy-run: auto → slot (median 6m10s, 3.2 cores, n=4). A job run at once keeps its ticket, records its history and is listed by the queue.

  • To see the queue: /tmp/claude-1000/bun-node-heavy-queue.sh — every job holding or waiting for a slot, its phase (each wrapper records its own), how long it has waited, an EST column, its session and ticket. Keep /tmp/claude-1000/bun-node-sessions (<claude pid> <name>) current when sessions change. A job running with no slot reads RUNNING (direct), and each state ends with how the job runs: [auto→slot], [auto→direct], [auto→exclusive], or the mode its caller set.

  • EST is the median of the last 10 successful runs of the same kind of job and the median cores they used: ~6m10s, 3.2 cores (n=4) while it waits, ~6m10s, 3.2 cores, ~2m left or ~6m10s, 3.2 cores, overrun +1m while it runs, unknown with no history, and no cores figure while none of those runs recorded CPU. Every finished job appends a line to /tmp/claude-1000/bun-node-heavy-history.tsv: epoch, key, seconds, exit status, then CPU seconds of the job's whole process tree, cores (CPU over wall), the 1-minute load at start and at end, where it ran (direct, a slot number or all) and the mode asked; lines from before 2026-10-07 have the first four fields and still count. The key is the directory relative to the git top level, the command without what does not change how long it takes (a leading timeout N or nice, and --seed, --randomize and output paths such as --log-dir <path> anywhere, so every seed of a suite shares one estimate, wherever it logs), and [exclusive] and EXAMPLE_DRIVER when set, so runs in different worktrees share an estimate; bun-node-heavy-run.sh --key <command> prints it. The queue shows each job's whole command, quoted so it can be pasted back.

Where the wrapper comes from

The wrapper and the queue listing are scripts/heavy-run.sh and scripts/heavy-queue.sh in this repo, tested by scripts/__tests__/heavy-run.test.ts. Install or refresh the copies in /tmp/claude-1000 with:

bun scripts/install-heavy-run.ts            # --dry-run to see the plan first

It renames each file into place, so a job already running keeps the copy it started with, and keeps the replaced wrapper as bun-node-heavy-run.prev.sh. Run it after any change to those scripts (once merged), and after a reboot clears /tmp. Never edit the installed copies: the next install overwrites them.

Processes, data and services

  • Kill by PID only, and only your own. Never pkill/killall by pattern: peers run the same commands.
  • Delete only the test data your run created — its exact namespaces, never a LIKE prefix sweep.
  • Database servers come from bun scripts/setup-databases.ts (containers with --docker). After a reboot they may be down; re-run it. MariaDB is 3306 and MySQL 3307.
  • Docker is snap here: it cannot write /tmp, so captured docker output can be silently empty — pipe through | cat, keep bind mounts out of /tmp.
  • /tmp can run out of inodes with space free. When file or SQLite tests fail everywhere, check df -i /tmp.
  • Clean up after yourself: Chrome profiles, containers and images by the name you gave them, and stop your own background waiters when you no longer need them. When the user asks every session to clean up, report what you stopped.

Subagents

A session stays responsive by handing long work to subagents.

  • Delegate anything long: writing an example set, a suite run, an investigation, a review. Several focused agents beat one long one.
  • Disjoint files. No two agents edit the same file. Give each its own worktree when they touch the same package.
  • A progress file per agent, written before any code and updated after each step: plan, done (files, gate results), left, decisions. A design agent's decisions go in the file, not only in its report — a report is one context compaction away from lost.
  • A scratch subdirectory per agent, and it deletes only there (a shared scratchpad was once wiped by an agent's cleanup).
  • Every brief carries the rules that apply: don't commit, push or stash; kill by PID; the heavy-run wrapper with a ticket, run in the background and never polled; negative controls; the progress file path; what to report.
  • Verify a report, don't relay it. Re-run its key check and read the files it says it changed. Reports have claimed gates that never ran.
  • After a usage limit, audit each agent's on-disk state (worktree, diff, last gate) before resuming; finish small work yourself, brief a new agent for the rest, and clear dead agents and orphaned worktrees.
  • A subagent refused by the permission system stops and reports. Do not run the refused action yourself on its behalf; ask the user.

Memory

Each session has a file-based memory under ~/.claude/projects/-home-kingsloob1-Desktop-projects-mine-bun-node/memory/, shared by every session on this project, indexed by MEMORY.md. Save there what the repo cannot tell a future session: user decisions and preferences, agreements between sessions, measured gotchas, pointers to external issues. Not code structure, git history or anything already in CLAUDE.md. Update a memory rather than duplicating it; another session may have written the same fact.

Plans

Plans live in docs/plans/, one folder per main plan (the user's decision, 2026-10-11): docs/plans/<plan>/README.md is the main plan, a sub-plan that helps implement it sits in that folder (<plan>/<sub-plan>.md, or <plan>/<sub-plan>/README.md when it has sub-plans of its own), and evidence goes in <plan>/evidence/ (a file sub-plan's under the parent's evidence/<sub-plan>/). A new plan starts in that shape; a follow-up plan goes in the folder of the plan it extends, not beside it. docs/plans/README.md is the index: add the plan, sub-plan or evidence folder to it in the same change. Moving a plan file changes every relative link into and out of it, so check them all, #anchors included.

Bun bugs

A reproducible bug in Bun itself (the runtime, bun test, the bundler, a Bun API) is filed on oven-sh/bun without asking: search the existing issues first, reduce it to a single-file reproduction with none of our code, follow the repo's issue template, and tell the user the URL. A subagent drafts the issue in its scratch directory; the session reproduces it and files it. Document the workaround in docs/bun-bugs/ and name the issue where the workaround lives, so it can go when Bun fixes it.

Starting a new agent

For when the multi-session setup resumes (it was retired on 2026-10-22, above). The user starts a session in this repository and gives it its role. A kickoff prompt, for the bun-common agent (swap the package for bun-nest):

You are the bun-common agent for bun-node. You own packages/bun-common/**. Read CLAUDE.md and docs/agentic-setup.md first, then ListAgents to find the other sessions and introduce yourself to each: your role, the paths you own, and that you will send CHANGE REPORTs to the examples agent. Ask the features agent which bun-common work it has in flight, and agree who finishes each item. Review every PR that touches packages/bun-common/**. Follow the commit, PR and merge rules exactly: every step is a popup.

For any other role, the main agent fills in the same shape from the role table:

You are the <role> for bun-node. You own <its paths>. Read CLAUDE.md and docs/agentic-setup.md first, then ListAgents to find the other sessions and introduce yourself to each: your role and the paths you own. Ask the main agent (the features agent) for your assignment and the work you inherit. <What the role reviews, from the table.> Follow the commit, PR and merge rules exactly: every step is a popup.

On the first day, the new agent:

  1. Tells the main agent its role and session name, for the dated roster table above; the main agent makes that edit, so the table has one writer.
  2. Learns the package's gate: bun run test, bun run lint, bun run format:check, bun run check, and — for bun-common — the downstream bun-nest and bun-jobs checks and the bench guard; for bun-nest, examples/bun-nest.
  3. Reads its package's open PRs and the memory entries that mention it.

When a session is retired, it hands its in-flight work to its successor in writing (branches, worktrees, open PRs, owed reports), removes its merged worktrees, and the roster table is updated.