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#2874 gatorwalk-factory: metrics count an open manual exit as a wait on a person
Opened by skunk-ape · 10/1/2026· Shipped 10/1/2026
Found in the gatorwalk dogfood run on #2711.
What happens
The journal writes "awaiting a person" whenever a manual exit is open, even when nobody is being asked anything. In swamp-club-swamp-extensions.yaml, attest.complete and merge.complete are open as soon as their stage is entered. So while the agent was building the attestation, and later while it waited for CI, the metrics counted those spans as time spent waiting on a person:
| Stage | Exit | Counted | Was a person asked? |
|---|---|---|---|
| attest | complete (manual) | 39s | no |
| merge | complete (manual) | 2m 2s | no |
| plan-review | revise (manual) | 3s | it overlapped the real approval wait |
The summary reported 18m 57s of waits at human stops. The real time spent waiting on the person was 16m 09s, across two plan approvals and the checklist. The "Waits at human stops" table and the metrics record are what a dashboard would read, so they overstate the cost of human stops.
Fix direction
Start a wait only when a person is actually needed: a human-approval gate on a ready exit, or a stage whose only remaining ways out are manual. A manual exit that is merely open alongside the agent's own path is a way out the person can take, not a wait. Record its availability separately if it is useful.
Done when
- A work item driven through attest and merge without stopping records no wait for
complete. - A plan-approval stop still records its wait.
- The metrics tests and the summary pin both cases.
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