Fo dispatch recovery

First Officer Dispatch Recovery (Claude)

The two Claude dispatch exception bodies, each read only at its own failure trigger in claude-fo-dispatch.md — never at boot, never on a session where dispatch never fails.

Break-Glass Manual Dispatch

The resident trigger line already covers the first action (report the helper failure — command, exit code, stderr — to the captain before proceeding). The dispatch mode selected before dispatch build remains authoritative: do not probe another transport, retry in the other mode, or turn a selected bare dispatch into a named worker. Populate {numbered checklist} with the output of «dispatch.checklist»(entity, stage); do not rebuild its rules here. In either arm, include model="{effective_model}" only when an effective model is set.

For selected bare mode, use this blocking call. Omit name, team_name, and run_in_background entirely; Claude's observable tool stream may preserve that omission or normalize it to run_in_background=false, and both mean blocking bare dispatch. Never pass or accept run_in_background=true. Omit the completion-message block because the blocking return is the completion signal:

Agent(
    subagent_type="spacedock:ensign",  // override with the stage's agent: field when the workflow README names one
    description="{entity title}: {stage}",
    model="{effective_model}",
    prompt="## First action\n\nBefore anything else, invoke your operating contract:\n\n    Skill(skill=\"spacedock:ensign\")\n\nThis loads the shared ensign discipline (stage-report format, background-task polling, worktree ownership, completion signal protocol). Do not paraphrase; call the tool.\n\nYou are working on: {entity title}\n\nStage: {stage}\n\n### Stage definition:\n\n{copy stage subsection from README verbatim}\n\nRead the entity file at {entity_file_path}.\n\n### Completion checklist\n\n{numbered checklist}\n\n### Summary\n{brief description of what was accomplished}\n\n### Stage report\n\nAppend a Stage Report section at the end of the entity file (per the shared-core Stage Report Protocol). Use the title `Stage Report: {stage}`. Account for every checklist item above with a `- DONE:` / `- SKIPPED:` / `- FAILED:` entry. Use the checklist item text verbatim when possible."
)

For selected team mode, use this named background call. Omit team_name; retain the completion message to the single team-lead target:

Agent(
    subagent_type="spacedock:ensign",  // override with the stage's agent: field when the workflow README names one
    description="{entity title}: {stage}",
    name="{worker_key}-{slug}-{stage}",  // if this exceeds 64 chars, cap it the way `spacedock dispatch build` does: keep the {worker_key} prefix and -{stage} suffix and, on id-style: sd-b32, replace the slug with a fixed-length prefix of the entity id (id-less slug workflows truncate the slug head instead)
    run_in_background=true,
    model="{effective_model}",
    prompt="## First action\n\nBefore anything else, invoke your operating contract:\n\n    Skill(skill=\"spacedock:ensign\")\n\nThis loads the shared ensign discipline (stage-report format, background-task polling, worktree ownership, completion signal protocol). Do not paraphrase; call the tool.\n\nYou are working on: {entity title}\n\nStage: {stage}\n\n### Stage definition:\n\n{copy stage subsection from README verbatim}\n\nRead the entity file at {entity_file_path}.\n\n### Completion checklist\n\n{numbered checklist}\n\n### Summary\n{brief description of what was accomplished}\n\n### Stage report\n\nAppend a Stage Report section at the end of the entity file (per the shared-core Stage Report Protocol). Use the title `Stage Report: {stage}`. Account for every checklist item above with a `- DONE:` / `- SKIPPED:` / `- FAILED:` entry. Use the checklist item text verbatim when possible.\n\n### Completion Signal\n\nSendMessage(to=\"team-lead\", message=\"Done: {entity title} completed {stage}. Report written to {entity_file_path}.\")"
)

This is the concrete Claude form of fo-dispatch-core.md's Break-Glass template; the contract (what it omits, the conditional model= slot, "use only when the helper is unavailable") is stated there. The canonical enum the conditional slot draws from is the resident ## Context Budget section of claude-fo-dispatch.md (already loaded alongside this skill at the first dispatch).

Context Budget Failure and Dead Ensign Handling

Budget-unavailable is fail-safe (never silent-reuse). The probe exits non-zero with no reuse_ok field in three conditions; the FO treats every one identically — fresh-dispatch:

• missing jsonl — no agent-*.jsonl exists for the named member (stderr: no subagent jsonl found for '{name}').
• unreadable/empty jsonl — the jsonl exists but carries no assistant entry with non-zero usage (stderr: no assistant entries with usage in {path}).
• agent-not-in-team-config — no team config.json lists a member with that name (stderr: no team config found for member '{name}'). A non-zero exit with no reuse_ok: true means the FO never silent-reuses on an absent reading.

Recovery clause (only when replacing a prior ensign): The prior ensign was shut down due to context budget limits. Its worktree may hold uncommitted changes. Run git status and git diff first; commit legitimate WIP or reset broken changes.

Dead ensign handling:

• SendMessage(shutdown_request) is cooperative — do NOT send to dead or unresponsive ensigns.
• Track dead ensigns in session memory; do not route work to dead names.
• Fresh-dispatch under a -cycleN suffix when replacing a zombie ensign.
• The post-dispatch config check does NOT detect zombies — zombies pass it. Session memory is the authoritative dead-vs-alive tracker.