4.2 KiB
office --new false attach-line bug: diagnosis, fix, and multi-host copy gotcha
Investigation into a confusing office --new failure on the paperclip-harness project.
Symptom: office /home/sam/TEST-BETA --new "TEST-BETA" --session TEST-BETA printed "the project was not created: commit the staged files, then run this again." immediately followed by switch to it: tuios attach --host nixos-desktop TEST-BETA. That attach failed: session 'TEST-BETA' not found. TUIOS listed existing sessions: TEST-BETA-git, drone deeca ai, email_agent, factory, harness-repo, nixos desktop 13 devops, office, paperclip-harness, test-alpha, tuios coding harness.
Root cause: the remote wrapper in office printed the "switch to it" line unconditionally, even on the abort path where the project was deliberately not created (no commit in the git repo). So the instruction was false — no session existed. The real session was TEST-BETA-git (lazygit session) and the repo was on branch main with no commits yet (staged: .gitignore, TEST0.md, TEST1.md, TEST2.md, folder-0/TEST3.md).
Fix: office now only prints the attach line when a session was actually built; the building machine prints it, adding --host when remote. Commit b76dc5e ("office: promise an attach line only when a session was actually built"), range bd0114a..b76dc5e on main.
Verification (both paths):
- abort path (no commit): output ends at "the project was not created…", no attach line.
- success path:
switch to it: tuios attach --host sam-4screen-desktop succ-testprinted exactly once. Workspaces "New task workspace 6 / Project workspace 7 / Repair workspace 8".
Important discovery: the copy of office on the machine you type on is the one that runs; --host ships that local copy to the target machine. So fixing on .13 does nothing for .27 until the copy is refreshed. All three hosts (.13, .27, .51) were synced to commit b76dc5e, verified by checksum.
Correct remediation for the user: attach TEST-BETA-git on nixos-desktop, commit there (space stage, c commit, i ignore), detach, then re-run office ~/TEST-BETA --new "TEST-BETA" --session TEST-BETA --host nixos-desktop.
Source references seen in code: line ~148 h.say("session: %s (created; switch to it with TUIOS's session switcher)"), line ~368 (old) / ~793 (new) h.say("switch to it: tuios attach%s %s"). office main flow: pj.save → pj.register (pj.REGISTRY) → scaffold → os.spawnv running board --folder <folder>.
Evidence
- Confidence: 90%
- Reason: Rich troubleshooting session with root cause, fix commit, verification results, and multi-host operational gotcha.
Related
Related learned memories
- runbook: packs/paperclip-harness/70-runbooks/tmp-deployment-operations
- decision: packs/paperclip-harness/50-decisions/paperclip-harness-ui-six-workspaces-spec-first-four-panel-li
- action: packs/paperclip-harness/40-actions/2026-11-10-wrote-docs-ui-layout-md-and-three-live-layout-mockups
- session: packs/paperclip-harness/80-sessions/office-new-false-attach-line-bug-diagnosis-fix-and-multi-hos
- session: packs/paperclip-harness/80-sessions/rich-discovery-what-happened-2026-11-13-00-33-43
- context: packs/paperclip-harness/20-context/paperclip-harness
- observation: packs/paperclip-harness/60-observations/tmp-repository-structure-and-configuration-patterns