Adds a periodic timer (default 30s) that calls drain() unconditionally,
covering the case where chokidar/inotify silently drops an IN_MODIFY
event. Observed twice in production: ping appended to inbox, file mtime
updated, but no event delivered to the watcher; a sibling-file touch
unblocked it. Root cause is Linux inotify under brief idle gaps + atomic
writes — not consistently reliable on its own.
drain() is already idempotent (HWM comparison short-circuits when
nothing's new), so the steady-state overhead is one stat + JSON parse
per poll cycle. Event-driven path remains the primary; the poll just
masks the rare miss within the cycle interval.
- safetyPollMs option: default 30_000, set to 0 to disable
- stop() clears the interval before closing chokidar
- Two new tests: safety-poll delivers when fs-event never fires;
safetyPollMs:0 truly disables the timer
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per spec/agent-watcher.md §4. TypeScript/Node implementation living in
mcp-watcher/ subdirectory, parallel to Layer 1 Collector at repo root.
What lands:
- Core MCP server (src/server.ts) with experimental['claude/channel']:{}
+ tools:{} capability declarations, stdio transport, channel-event
notifier wired through the inbox watcher.
- Identity resolution mirroring agent-ping's layered model
(PING_AGENT_IDENTITY env, $CLAUDE_HOME/ping-agent, ~/.ping-agent).
- Inbox reader with HWM tracking, sentinel deferral (warn-after-3),
atomic HWM writes via tmp+rename.
- chokidar-backed file watcher with coalesced drain, urgent-first
ordering, recentEvents map for tool sender lookup.
- Three reply tools (ack / respond / mark_handled) with cross-host
write discipline (writes to local inbox files; Syncthing replicates).
- Sentinel file (.<agent>.watcher-active) for hook coexistence per
spec §4.3 — agent-ping hook stands down when the watcher is in
charge of delivery on this host. Sentinel + hwm in .stignore.
- 35 unit tests passing (vitest): inbox parsing, HWM round-trip,
sentinel deferral semantics, identity layers, tool I/O, watcher
drain + ordering + restart-from-hwm.
- install.sh (Angus-executed, rule-2 compliant) installs deps,
builds, symlinks ~/.local/bin/agent-watcher-mcp, prints mcp.json
registration snippet for paste.
- README documents launch flag, sandbox CLAUDE_HOME pattern,
hook coexistence, observability, v2 limitations.
Not yet:
- Integration test against a real Claude Code session — gated on
Angus spinning up a sandbox CC session on the VPS with
CLAUDE_HOME=~/.claude-sandbox.
- agent-ping hook update to read the sentinel and stand down.
Separate small PR against agent-ping.
Interface contract with Layer 1: the inbox JSONL line shape from
inbox.ts::PingEvent matches inbox.Event in the Collector — bit-
identical reads regardless of source.
