host: every completed turn should carry its own outcome, not leave workflow steps parsing prose

changelog.d/2742-turns-failure-marker.fixed.md

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A Bot turn now carries its own outcome to the sender instead of leaving it in the wording: an answer says `failure: false`, a turn stopped before it answered says `failure: true` with the stop notice as its reason, and a failed one keeps its failure notice — so a workflow step classifies the step by that marker, a stop notice can no longer advance a run, and an answer that happens to quote a failure sentence can no longer fail one ([#2742](https://github.com/ThinkFlowLab/FlyBot/issues/2742)).

core/src/host/turns.js

@@ -721,15 +721,19 @@ export function install(rt) {
           } else if (reply !== '' || reason?.kind === 'aborted') {
             // A turn stopped before it could answer still owes the sender a line,
             // or it would wait forever for a reply that never comes.
+            const stopped = reply === ''
+            // #2742: the outcome is the message's own field, not something a reader infers from
+            // the sentence — an answer says it answered, and a stop says it did not.
             void rt.deliver({
               fromId: rt.selfOf(id),
               toId: source.senderSessionId,
               ...(back ? { sessionId: back } : {}),
-              text: reply !== '' ? reply : `${name} was stopped before it could answer your message.`,
+              text: stopped ? `${name} was stopped before it could answer your message.` : reply,
               role: 'reply',
               hop: (source.hop ?? 0) + 1,
               replyTo: source.exchangeId,
               origin,
+              failure: stopped,
             }).catch(error => rt.warn('ds-bot: reply delivery failed: %s', error))
           }
         }

core/test/bot-messages.test.js

@@ -373,6 +373,21 @@ test('a joined request in a stopped turn tells its sender, and is not handed bac
   assert.equal(delivered[0].toId, 'a')
   assert.equal(delivered[0].replyTo, 'e1')
   assert.match(delivered[0].text, /was stopped before it could answer/)
+  // #2742: the outcome travels with the answer, so a step reader never parses this sentence.
+  assert.equal(delivered[0].failure, true, 'a stopped turn answers with a failure marker')
+})
+
+test('#2742: a completed reply carries an explicit success marker', () => {
+  const { emit, delivered } = turnsHost()
+  emit('b', 'turn/start', { turn: 1 })
+  emit('b', 'user/message', { content: textBlock('[Message from Chief]\nstatus?'), source: replySource('request', { exchangeId: 'e1' }) })
+  emit('b', 'assistant/message', assistantText('Scout abc could not answer your message: its model call failed (RATE_LIMIT 429).'))
+  emit('b', 'turn/end', { turn: 1, reason: { kind: 'completed' } })
+  assert.equal(delivered.length, 1)
+  assert.equal(delivered[0].replyTo, 'e1')
+  // The answer says what it is, so an answer that happens to quote a failure notice is still an
+  // answer; without the marker a step reads the sentence and fails the node (#2742).
+  assert.equal(delivered[0].failure, false, 'an ordinary answer carries failure: false')
 })
 
 test('a joined request gets the failure notice when the model call fails', () => {

docs/subsystems/core-host.md

@@ -469,7 +469,7 @@ Work a member hands a Bot with `message_bot` from its group Session runs in a hi
 ### Untrusted fences in every shared room
 
 - `authoredRoomLine` fences peer-controlled text by the line's origin, not the room kind (#98): a remote participant, a local remote-chat record (`state.bots[id].remote`), a botId that is no team Bot, or `line.remote`. A friend's Bot speaking in a non-face group is fenced the same way as in a face room. A complete wrap is left as-is so outbound fanout does not nest residue; a mention of the marker in the body still fences. `stripUntrusted` is one fixed-point pass over both `untrusted-message` and `untrusted-file`, and its pattern allows whitespace inside the tag (`< / untrusted-message>`), since a parser that ignores whitespace reads the same marker; `stripMarkers` does the same for one tag. `core/test/fence-property.test.js` fuzzes a corpus of reconstitution attempts to keep this a fixed point. Inbound-share lines from the other instance are `remote: true` so owner-typed text is fenced too. Face join/leave notices stay unfenced platform copy. Channel room previews use `unwrapUntrusted` so the sidebar never shows the wrap. A human line whose `who` is `User` is rewritten from the signed-in display name before it is stored or fenced.
-- A late group model failure posts a short friendly line into the room (`This Bot could not answer right now.` / `This Bot has no model set up yet.`); `failureLine` stays on Bot-to-Bot deliver and in diagnostics, not in the human transcript. That Bot-to-Bot failure notice carries `failure: true` (#2677), the same field the remote notice uses, so a consumer reads the outcome from the message instead of parsing the sentence.
+- A late group model failure posts a short friendly line into the room (`This Bot could not answer right now.` / `This Bot has no model set up yet.`); `failureLine` stays on Bot-to-Bot deliver and in diagnostics, not in the human transcript. That Bot-to-Bot failure notice carries `failure: true` (#2677), the same field the remote notice uses, so a consumer reads the outcome from the message instead of parsing the sentence. Since #2742 every reply the host completes carries that field: an answer says `failure: false`, and a turn stopped before it answered says `failure: true` with the stop notice as its reason, so no reader has to infer a step's outcome from the wording.
 
 ### Remote chats and mentions
 

patches/ds-bot/0001-core-fixes.patch

@@ -8959,7 +8959,7 @@ diff --git a/src/host/turns.js b/src/host/turns.js
            if (!expectsReply(source) || answersUser(source)) return
            const name = rt.botOf(rt.selfOf(id))?.name ?? 'The other Bot'
            // A sender that wrote from a group gets the reply in its Session there, while
-@@ -434,6 +434,9 @@ export function install(rt) {
+@@ -434,21 +434,33 @@ export function install(rt) {
                role: 'reply',
                hop: (source.hop ?? 0) + 1,
                replyTo: source.exchangeId,
@@ -8969,11 +8969,21 @@ diff --git a/src/host/turns.js b/src/host/turns.js
              }).catch(error => rt.warn('ds-bot: failure notice delivery failed: %s', error))
            } else if (reply !== '' || reason?.kind === 'aborted') {
              // A turn stopped before it could answer still owes the sender a line,
-@@ -446,9 +446,14 @@ export function install(rt) {
+             // or it would wait forever for a reply that never comes.
++            const stopped = reply === ''
++            // #2742: the outcome is the message's own field, not something a reader infers from
++            // the sentence — an answer says it answered, and a stop says it did not.
+             void rt.deliver({
+               fromId: rt.selfOf(id),
+               toId: source.senderSessionId,
+               ...(back ? { sessionId: back } : {}),
+-              text: reply !== '' ? reply : `${name} was stopped before it could answer your message.`,
++              text: stopped ? `${name} was stopped before it could answer your message.` : reply,
                role: 'reply',
                hop: (source.hop ?? 0) + 1,
                replyTo: source.exchangeId,
 +              origin,
++              failure: stopped,
              }).catch(error => rt.warn('ds-bot: reply delivery failed: %s', error))
            }
          }
@@ -9891,6 +9901,28 @@ diff --git a/test/bot-messages.test.js b/test/bot-messages.test.js
    }
    installTurns(rt)
    let seq = 0
+@@ -342,6 +342,21 @@ test('a joined request in a stopped turn tells its sender, and is not handed bac
+   assert.equal(delivered[0].toId, 'a')
+   assert.equal(delivered[0].replyTo, 'e1')
+   assert.match(delivered[0].text, /was stopped before it could answer/)
++  // #2742: the outcome travels with the answer, so a step reader never parses this sentence.
++  assert.equal(delivered[0].failure, true, 'a stopped turn answers with a failure marker')
++})
++
++test('#2742: a completed reply carries an explicit success marker', () => {
++  const { emit, delivered } = turnsHost()
++  emit('b', 'turn/start', { turn: 1 })
++  emit('b', 'user/message', { content: textBlock('[Message from Chief]\nstatus?'), source: replySource('request', { exchangeId: 'e1' }) })
++  emit('b', 'assistant/message', assistantText('Scout abc could not answer your message: its model call failed (RATE_LIMIT 429).'))
++  emit('b', 'turn/end', { turn: 1, reason: { kind: 'completed' } })
++  assert.equal(delivered.length, 1)
++  assert.equal(delivered[0].replyTo, 'e1')
++  // The answer says what it is, so an answer that happens to quote a failure notice is still an
++  // answer; without the marker a step reads the sentence and fails the node (#2742).
++  assert.equal(delivered[0].failure, false, 'an ordinary answer carries failure: false')
+ })
+
+ test('a joined request gets the failure notice when the model call fails', () => {
 @@ -356,6 +356,109 @@ test('a joined request gets the failure notice when the model call fails', () =>
    assert.match(delivered[0].text, /^Writer could not answer your message: its model call failed \(SERVER 503: upstream busy\)/)
  })

plugins/workflow/test/step-body.test.js

@@ -179,3 +179,13 @@ test('#2677: an old host without the marker is read only at the start of the tex
   assert.equal(await stepOk({ text: 'The model call failed.' }), false)
   assert.equal(await stepOk({ text: 'The log said "`<name> could not answer your message: its model call failed`".' }), true, 'a quoted notice after the start is not the step failing')
 })
+
+// #2742: every turn the host completes carries its outcome, so the sentence is never read for a
+// new host — a stop notice fails the step, and an answer that merely quotes one still advances it.
+test('#2742: the host marker decides a stop notice, not its wording', async () => {
+  const stopNotice = 'Writer was stopped before it could answer your message.'
+  assert.equal(await stepOk({ text: stopNotice, failure: true }), false, 'a marked stop fails the step')
+  assert.equal(await stepOk({ text: stopNotice, deliverArgs: { failure: true } }), false, 'the live delivery carries it under deliverArgs')
+  assert.equal(await stepOk({ text: stopNotice, failure: false }), true, 'a marker that says the answer succeeded wins over the wording')
+  assert.equal(await stepOk({ text: QUOTED_FAILURE, deliverArgs: { failure: false } }), true, 'an ordinary answer that quotes the notice is still an answer')
+})