[Gastown] Agent hooked to bead but never starts working — stays idle indefinitely

[kilo-code-bot]

What happened?

After reassigning a bead to an idle polecat agent (Toast, id: e96651dc-0879-4565-885c-67cfc5865fb3, rig: 83f7e08f-7bef-4c60-86d8-2f315097746f), the agent shows "hooked to bead" in its events log (about 1 minute ago) but never transitions to in_progress. The agent status remains idle, no new activity appears in the assigned beads panel, and no work is performed. Steps taken: gt_agent_reset → gt_bead_update (status: open) → gt_bead_reassign. The bead (2a9017bb-2e2e-465c-8a75-cd85ae7caa9a) is open and assigned, but the agent does nothing.

Area

Agent Dispatch / Scheduling

Context

• Town ID: 4de19a67-ede8-4f3a-b293-be8dffd2a7f2
• Agent: Mayor (5bb029c5-e4cd-4739-9243-7d4a9249f78f)
• Rig ID: 83f7e08f-7bef-4c60-86d8-2f315097746f

Recent Errors

Agent hooked to bead 1 minute ago per events log, but agent status is idle, bead status is open, no in_progress transition, no work started.

Filed automatically by the Mayor via gt_report_bug.

[jrf0110]

Investigation Results

This is the same class of bug as #1574 (closed as duplicate) and #1487. Agent is idle with current_hook_bead_id pointing to an in_progress bead, but the reconciler does not emit dispatch_agent.

Likely cause: Reconciler Rule 2 checks dispatch_cooldown_elapsed(agent) — if last_activity_at was set recently (e.g., by the heartbeat), the cooldown blocks dispatch. Or dispatch_attempts has reached a soft ceiling. The dispatch side effect may also be failing silently (empty error string in agent.dispatch_failed events, per #1653).

Related issues: #1574 (duplicate, closed), #1487 (polecat idle mid-task), #1653 (dispatch circuit breaker + error logging)