stack/docs/scratchpads/838-broker-acceptance-flake.md

Issue #838 — Broker acceptance socket flake

Objective

Eliminate high-contention uncaught JSON parse failures in lease-broker and mutator-gate acceptance helpers without laundering malformed/empty replies into passing assertions.

Constraints

• Branch: fix/838-broker-acceptance-flake in /home/hermes/agent-work/stack-838-flakefix.
• Red-first TDD with a forced empty/truncated reply path and deterministic rejection or documented retry.
• Read newline-framed replies completely; reject malformed broker replies with byte length/content context.
• Determine RIDER2 branch before finalizing: test-harness-only (a) or daemon write truncation (b).
• If product-side, prove the real Claude/Pi adapter read path fails closed; fix any allow-risk.
• Coverage >=85% per changed executable through real tests.
• Full suite and repository gates green; independent exact-head review required.
• Push and open a PR containing closes #838; do not merge.

Progress

• 2026-07-17: Reclaimed from #824. Confirmed clean worktree on fix/838-broker-acceptance-flake at main base abd2791f59b3f06f46dd08e55298ced72f6aa7c2.