[maria-rcks]

A t3 service install server needed a manual update. With Update automatically on, it now stages and preflights its channel's newest release, then restarts during a quiet window. Stacked on #17585. Provider update checks no longer gate service updates on web and mobile.

The first check runs after 2 minutes, then hourly; a staged update rechecks the window every minute. A restart needs 5 quiet minutes and no active turn, native background work, busy terminal, clone, workspace setup, review-guide write, or provider installer. The window is checked again after preflight under a host-wide restart lock and a local gate that holds new clones, setup and terminal operations through the launcher handoff (5-minute backstop). Stable never picks prereleases; protocol mismatches, launcher-failed and rolled-back targets are skipped, and a refused handoff retries at the next hourly check instead of every minute. The launcher keeps main's 30-minute readiness window, restarts a crashed child with 1 to 30 second backoff, and prunes runtimes it can no longer return to. Desktop, npx/unmanaged and dev servers never replace themselves.

Verified earlier on a Linux boat with a real systemd user service: a stable 0.1.5 service staged 0.1.6, waited out a running turn and a busy terminal, then handed off and came back as 0.1.6, never staging the nightly. A fault-injected launcher reply timeout kept the gate until the backstop and then ran the queued terminal command. Release payloads were source runtimes with simulated version stamps. Unverified: official single-executable releases, launchd, macOS/Windows, mobile render, packaged desktop, multi-environment. The Agent context budget failure is inherited from #17585 and needs the agent-context-increase label there.

Implementation: gpt-6.1-sol, Codex harness, T3 Code. Second review and rebase: claude-opus-5-5, Claude Code.

[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Needs Human Approval

Macroscope's review found this PR requires human approval — Background services can now update and restart themselves under the existing default-enabled automatic-update setting, with idle-work and protocol safeguards. The broadened default behavior and newly added static-analysis suppressions require human review.

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[github-actions]

Thread transfer impact

✅ Thread transfer remains within every enforced ceiling.

ℹ️ No successful main baseline artifact is available yet. This run establishes the initial measurement.

Provider	Metric	Main baseline	This PR	Impact	PR ceiling
Codex	Total thread wire	—	5.0 KiB	—	6.8 KiB	✅
Codex	Thread snapshot wire	—	3.8 KiB	—	4.9 KiB	✅
Codex	Live turn WebSocket wire	—	1.2 KiB	—	2.0 KiB	✅
Codex	Live turn WebSocket decoded	—	21.5 KiB	—	24.4 KiB	✅
Codex	Live turn messages	—	1	—	8	✅
Claude	Total thread wire	—	5.0 KiB	—	6.8 KiB	✅
Claude	Thread snapshot wire	—	3.8 KiB	—	4.9 KiB	✅
Claude	Live turn WebSocket wire	—	1.2 KiB	—	2.0 KiB	✅
Claude	Live turn WebSocket decoded	—	21.9 KiB	—	24.4 KiB	✅
Claude	Live turn messages	—	1	—	8	✅

Baseline: unavailable · PR result: 229b168 · Source CI: success

Scenario and decoded snapshot size

10 historical turns, 5 command tools per turn, 878.9 KiB retained MCP result per historical turn, and a 1.05 MiB retained result in the measured turn.

• Codex decoded thread snapshot: 108.5 KiB
• Claude decoded thread snapshot: 108.8 KiB

Updated in place by a trusted workflow. PR artifacts are strictly validated and never executed.

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Walkthrough

The server now stages eligible boot-service updates, checks staged runtimes, and coordinates restart timing with terminal activity. Settings text and the user guide describe automatic T3 Code and provider updates, including update conditions and retry behavior.

Changes: Server automatic updates

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Runtime staging and preflight apps/server/src/cloud/selfUpdate.ts, apps/server/src/cloud/servicePreflight.ts, apps/server/src/cloud/selfUpdate.test.ts, apps/server/src/cloud/servicePreflight.test.ts	Self-update exposes staging for boot-service installs and shares a semaphore between staging and manual updates. Preflight results can include the orchestration protocol version, which staging validates alongside runtime version and status.
Terminal activity and restart coordination apps/server/src/terminal/Manager.ts, apps/server/src/terminal/Manager.test.ts, apps/server/src/updates/UpdateWindow.ts	TerminalManager detects busy terminals and gates terminal launches, writes, and restarts with a permit. UpdateWindow checks terminal activity and holds that permit during server-restarting updates.
Release checks and update handoff apps/server/src/updates/ServerAutoUpdater.ts, apps/server/src/updates/UpdateWindow.ts, apps/server/src/server.ts, apps/server/src/cli/update.ts, apps/server/src/cloud/serviceLauncherClient.ts, apps/server/src/serverRuntimeStartup.autoPull.test.ts	The server adds a boot-service updater, connects it to UpdateWindow, and exposes the launcher’s last completed update outcome.
Settings text and update guide apps/mobile/src/features/settings/SettingsServerControlsRouteScreen.tsx, apps/web/src/components/settings/SettingsPanels.tsx, docs/user/updating.md	Settings descriptions and the update guide include automatic T3 Code updates alongside provider updates. The guide also describes update conditions and retry behavior.

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes

Change: Feature

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant ServerAutoUpdater
  participant resolveNewestVersion
  participant ServerSelfUpdate
  participant ServicePreflight
  participant UpdateWindow
  ServerAutoUpdater->>resolveNewestVersion: Resolve newest release
  ServerAutoUpdater->>ServerSelfUpdate: Stage target version
  ServerSelfUpdate->>ServicePreflight: Run preflight for staged runtime
  ServicePreflight-->>ServerSelfUpdate: Return ready result and protocol
  ServerAutoUpdater->>UpdateWindow: Wait for an open update window
  ServerAutoUpdater->>ServerSelfUpdate: Install staged update

Loading

Merge Risk: Minimal · up to f3963

Release checks can continue while installation is deferred, and the guide now explains the background-work delay. No identified issue blocks merging.

Pre-merge checks: 3 · 1

Failed checks: 1 inconclusive

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Description check		The description explains the problem, change, and verification, but does not link explicit maintainer approval for the broader behavior change. It also omits the required section headings.	Add the required section headings. Under Scope and approval, link the triaged issue or discussion and the maintainer's approval comment for the direction and scope.

Passed checks: 3 passed

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check		The description references related work in #17585 and #17588, and the objectives identify a task scope comment with maintainer approval.
Out of Scope Changes check		The settings copy, documentation, update-window coordination, terminal permits, preflight protocol, launcher outcome handling, tests, and server auto-updater all support the stated automatic server up…
Title check		The title clearly summarizes the primary change: background service environments now update themselves automatically.

Full details: Out of Scope Changes check

Explanation

The settings copy, documentation, update-window coordination, terminal permits, preflight protocol, launcher outcome handling, tests, and server auto-updater all support the stated automatic server update feature.

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Actionable comments posted: 2

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @apps/server/src/updates/ServerAutoUpdater.ts:
- Around line 84-93: Update the updateWindow.runWhenOpen wait in the
updateBootService flow so it cannot block release checks indefinitely: use
runIfOpen with bounded retries or limit the wait to releaseCheckInterval.
Preserve the automaticUpdatesEnabled check and only add targetVersion to
skippedTargets and call selfUpdate.update when the window is open; allow the
next pass to resolve the newest release.
- Around line 69-83: Update the selfUpdate.stage(targetVersion) failure path in
the background update flow to add targetVersion to skippedTargets before the
existing outer handler converts the failure to success. Preserve the current
handling of staging errors so Effect.repeat does not retry the same failed
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Inline comments:
Review comments at @apps/server/src/terminal/Manager.ts:
- Around line 2985-3012: Update the UpdateWindow.runIfOpen flow so its initial
check runs without withRestartPermit, keeping write and writeUnlocked unblocked
during provider checks. If that check indicates installation should proceed,
acquire the permit, recheck only hasBusyTerminals, and call install only if
still appropriate; preserve the permit hold during installation.

Review comments at @docs/user/updating.md:
- Around line 88-89: Remove the two unsupported desktop-update statements from
the updating documentation; the current update flow only downloads after an
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Inline comments:
Review comments at @docs/user/updating.md:
- Around line 78-79: Update the T3 update-window conditions in the documentation
to include pending queued background and terminal work as blockers. Preserve the
existing conditions for thread activity, client inactivity, and scheduled-task
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[maria-rcks]

Note

Written by gpt-6.1-sol on behalf of Maria

The default behavior and lifecycle expansion are intentional and explicitly requested by Maria for this feature stack: stage updates in the background, defer installation around active work and scheduled tasks, and enable seamless updates by default. The PR author, maria-rcks, is listed in the current upstream contribution-triage exemptions.

The automatic handoff is limited to boot-service environments. Development, foreground/npx, and desktop-hosted servers are skipped. Shared admission defers handoff around active or pending work, recent client activity, near-due scheduled tasks or usage-limit resumes, provider installation, and integrated terminal commands. This scope finding does not warrant changing the requested production behavior.

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @docs/user/updating.md:
- Line 87: Update the sentence about integrated terminal commands in the
update-window documentation to limit the wait condition to T3 Code server
restarts, not provider-only updates.

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[ViperJuice]

Following the pointer from #18284, I inspected #17586 head 99eb10f00015dfffead47e3f0cb996dc3dd66975 (stacked on #17585). This is source feedback on the restart window, not approval of the full stack or installed-release qualification.

The complete review-guide lifetime needs an explicit blocker/test, including superseded generations. PullRequestReviewGuideService.write starts host/activity reads and checkoutHead (git fetches/worktree creation) before TextGeneration.generateReviewGuide, then finishes result storage and scoped checkout/ref cleanup afterward. TextGeneration.ts:64-86 wraps the model call with the host read lease/local launch permit. The guide's outer fiber still forks into serviceScope, with the per-PR map tracking only the latest claim. UpdateWindow checks projected threads, provider-session background work, installs/tasks/terminals, but I do not see whole-guide lifetime accounting or an all-generation inspection operation there.

Source-based concern: local admission can drain when a guide is preparing its checkout or finalizing after the model lease, and a latest/null map result still cannot account for a superseded older guide. Please add restart-window regressions holding an old generation (a) in pre-model fetch/setup and (b) in post-model cleanup, after a newer guide has settled; assert restart admission remains closed until all such fibers/finalizers end. For attended repair, a supported read-only all-generation report across affected processes would avoid guessing from SQL/latest-guide state.

Our currently installed nightly2980 predates this unmerged stack. Installing/restarting to gain the new guard would itself require complete idle proof, so the future automatic update window is not yet a supported inspection route for its already-running untracked guide fibers. The owner selected preserving current work and waiting for complete inspection; no live restart, client disconnect, source activation, database edit or guard bypass was performed in this qualification.

[maria-rcks]

Note

Written by claude-opus-5-5 on behalf of Maria

Thanks, this was a real gap. Fixed in 29b0303 on this PR:

• Every review guide generation is now tracked for its whole lifetime: host/activity reads, checkoutHead fetches and worktree creation, generation, result storage, and checkout/ref cleanup. That includes superseded generations, which stay counted until their finalizers finish, not just the latest claim in the per-PR map.
• A background server restart (UpdateWindow with restartsServer) stays closed while any generation is in flight, and the count shows in the existing blocker log line.
• The regressions you asked for are in place: an older generation held (a) in pre-model fetch/setup and (b) in post-model cleanup after a newer guide has settled. Both assert restart admission stays closed until the old fiber and its finalizers end, then opens. On the previous code they fail, and so do three of them with latest-claim-only accounting.
• The same audit found project clones, workspace preparation, and background git refreshes with the same gap; they now hold restarts too. Provider model admission was already covered by the launch permit.

I did not add a separate all-generation report RPC; the blocker log is the inspection point. On your installed nightly: agreed, it predates this stack, so automatic updates are not a safe way to drain its untracked guide fibers. Waiting for idle as you did is the right call there.

[ElliotDrel]

Note

🤖 gpt-6.1-sol responding on behalf of Elliot

Rechecked the older cross-key restart finding at #17586 (comment) against current 4c7e22b and the offered integration. ProviderInstallLock.acquire now checks host-wide heldExcept(file), and ServerAutoUpdater.pass acquires that lock before handoff. The old premise that tryRun excludes only the same key no longer applies; this finding is addressed by the current source.

This is source review, not a new runtime race test. The documented stalled-owner limitation, native-platform verification, parent-layer lock-read policy, and inherited +38-byte budget decision remain outside that conclusion.