A llama session's tools all answered "failed to spawn process
[exit code: -1]": `llama-server` takes the working directory as an
`x-tool-cwd` header and `chdir`s to it with no shell in the way, so a
`~/…` cwd named a directory of that name. `files::resolve_blocking`
asks the machine that will serve the session what the path is, and the
driver does that once at launch.
The other half is the storing. `~` and `/home/someone` are a path and a
snapshot of where it pointed, and it is the snapshot that breaks when an
account is renamed -- so `machines::tidy` no longer expands one and
`set_cwd` no longer contracts one (`shorten_home` is gone with it). The
identity file is expanded at the point `ssh` is invoked instead.
Spawn now asks the same question of a typed working directory that
`set_cwd` already did: absolute or home-relative, and actually there on
the machine that will run it. It accepted anything, so a typo became a
session whose process could not start, reported later and pointing at
nothing.
Also: a provider written before `mcp_servers` existed adopts the
defaults a probe would give it now, so a machine discovered before
2026-09-19 stops silently having no web search.
Exercised end to end against a real llama session spawned with
`cwd: "~/repos/ai-app/server"`: `exec_shell_command` with `pwd` answered
`/home/bob/repos/ai-app/server`, exit 0.
The markdown had accumulated a lot that was stale rather than wrong.
PLAN.md still described pi as the llama.cpp harness, a refcounted
LlamaServerManager, and a providers-by-hosts cross-product, all of which
were superseded or never built; it also carried a second copy of the HTTP
table that routes.rs owns. EXPLORER.md and TRANSCRIPT_CACHE.md held
implementation checklists for work that has since landed. AGENTS.md
restated most of PLAN.md's design instead of being the working-notes
layer it says it is. 3225 lines of markdown to 2180, with the stale
sections gone rather than reworded.
On the server, comments explaining what the code already says are out and
the ones recording a constraint, a measurement or an incident are kept but
cut to a few lines each: 5504 comment lines to 4586.
Four doc comments in session/mod.rs, and one each in process.rs and
usage.rs, had drifted onto the item above the one they describe --
functions were reordered without them, so `stop_session`'s doc sat on
`set_session_cwd`, `stat_of`'s on `struct Stat`, and `UsageMonitor`'s on
`type Cached`. Each is back on its own item.
routes.rs's module table also claimed later phases would add `/hosts`,
which setups replaced.
cargo test (127 passed), clippy --all-targets and fmt are clean.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The first half of EXPLORER.md: server/src/files.rs, which lists a
directory, reads a file, writes one, and creates a file or a directory on
whichever machine a setup names.
Each operation is one small POSIX script run through `Transport`, the way
the import listing and the usage fetch already ask a machine a question,
so the local and the ssh case are one implementation rather than two that
drift. The path crosses as a positional argument and never as script
text; `PATH_PRELUDE` is the one line that gives a leading `~` its
meaning, because a shell expands a tilde in text and not in an argument,
and it is the far machine's home that has to answer.
A read has four answers -- text, binary, tooBig, or the machine's own
error -- because a binary file drawn as text and a big one cut off
silently are both wrong in ways the reader cannot see. A write carries
the sha256 the read reported and is refused with a 409 when the file has
moved on, which is what happens whenever an agent is editing the file
somebody is reading.
`Transport::capture_with_input` is the one description of "run this
there, with this on stdin", and `ship_attachment` moves onto it rather
than assembling a second ssh invocation of its own. It is also the only
capture that hands back the exit status, which is how the write says
"this is not the file you read" without that answer looking like a
failure.
Exercised on both transports against the sandbox -- ssh to this VM with a
throwaway key, since the quoting and the stdin path are what that proves
-- including a filename with an apostrophe, one with a tab, an unreadable
file, a binary one, one over the limit, and the 409.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
iris-ai
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