witness-observer

name	witness-observer
description	PMU observation pattern for agent health monitoring. Runs patrol loops, detects stalled agents, sends nudges, and escalates persistent failures to the mayor. Never modifies agent work or resolves conflicts.
type	skill
category	orchestration
status	stable
origin	tibsfox
modified	false
first_seen	"2026-03-06T00:00:00.000Z"
first_path	.claude/skills/witness-observer/SKILL.md
superseded_by	null

Witness Observer

Per-rig observer that monitors polecat health and reports anomalies. The witness is the PMU (Performance Monitoring Unit) of the Gastown chipset -- it watches execution units for stalls, detects degraded performance, and raises alerts without interfering with computation. The witness is strictly read-only with respect to agent work. It observes and reports; it never modifies.

Activation Triggers

This skill activates when:

• The agent is assigned to monitor a rig's worker agents
• Multiple polecats are running and health monitoring is needed
• Stall detection is required for long-running work items
• The mayor needs a supervisory agent to watch active polecats

Core Capabilities

Patrol Loop

The witness runs a periodic patrol that checks all active agents in its rig for health indicators.

Patrol cycle:

SCAN            EVALUATE         ACT              WAIT
  |                |               |                |
  v                v               v                v
list agents -> check each  ->  nudge/escalate -> sleep interval
(active ones)   for stalls     if needed         (default 5 min)

Implementation:

const state = new StateManager({ stateDir: '.chipset/state/' });
const patrolInterval = 5 * 60 * 1000; // 5 minutes (configurable)
const stallThreshold = 30 * 60 * 1000; // 30 minutes (configurable)

async function patrol(): Promise<void> {
  // Get all agents that should be working
  const agents = await state.listAgents({ role: 'polecat' });
   active = agents.( a. === );

   ( agent  active) {
     hook =  state.(agent.);
     (!hook || hook. !== ) ;

    
     lastActivity =  (hook.).();
     elapsed = .() - lastActivity;

     (elapsed > stallThreshold) {
       (agent, hook, elapsed);
    }
  }
}