Windows airc canary verification — diag

airc-windows-canary-fail.md

Windows side canary verification — blocked on gh secondary rate limit

Per Joel's coordination gist (a665d3ce14714b67b64f68f2630e4b20), the Windows side of the canary mesh check could not complete because airc join refuses to start when gh auth status returns SECONDARY rate-limited, even though the primary core rate-limit is fully quota'd.

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Q: Did Windows run airc teardown?

Yes — scoped teardown only (no --flush), per Joel's instruction: "plain airc teardown only in that scope, then airc connect; don't flush state and don't delete gists."

killing scope /mnt/c/Users/green/continuum/.airc: 3576846 3579312 3579424 3579442 3579445 3579473
  Teardown complete.

Q: Did Windows use --flush?

No. Plain airc teardown only. Identity, peers, message log, saved channel preserved.

Q: The exact marker it tried to send

WINDOWS canary check from continuum-b69f <UTC ts>

Send result:

Send NOT delivered — this scope's monitor isn't running.
  scope:    /mnt/c/Users/green/continuum/.airc
  identity: continuum-b69f (host)
  pidfile:  absent (monitor never started in this scope)
Fix: run 'airc connect' to start (or resume) this scope's monitor, then retry.
ERROR: monitor down — refusing to silently broadcast into a void

Q: .airc scope path

/mnt/c/Users/green/continuum/.airc

(WSL2 → DrvFS → Windows host. WSL bash inside Claude Code Monitor.)

Q: ERROR / RATE-LIMITED lines

From airc connect:

! GitHub secondary rate limit (abuse detection) triggered.
  Your token is fine — wait 5-15 minutes and retry.
  Context: airc join
ERROR: gh auth not OK — see message above for next step

From airc status:

gh auth: RATE-LIMITED (secondary; token is fine — wait 5-15 min)

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Sequence run

# 1. Update
$ airc update --channel canary
Updated: 82ccf16 -> 0f39776 on channel 'canary'. Skills refreshed.

# 2. Bounce monitor (TaskStop + airc teardown — plain, no --flush)
$ airc teardown
killing scope /mnt/c/Users/green/continuum/.airc: 3576846 3579312 ...
Teardown complete.

# 3. Re-arm Monitor with `airc join`
# Monitor exited code 1 with: ERROR: gh auth not OK

# 4. Check status (still hosting, but no monitor)
$ airc status
  identity:    continuum-b69f (hosting on port 7547)
  monitor:     not running
  monitor health: DEGRADED — no heartbeat evidence; no bearer pidfile
  last send:   11744s ago
  bearer:      n/a (this scope is hosting; inbound is local log)
  gh auth:     RATE-LIMITED (secondary; token is fine — wait 5-15 min)
  queue:       empty

# 5. airc connect (re-attempt)
$ airc connect
ERROR: gh auth not OK — see message above for next step

# 6. Try the marker send anyway
$ airc msg --channel general "WINDOWS canary check from continuum-b69f <ts>"
ERROR: monitor down — refusing to silently broadcast into a void

airc doctor --health

[ok] gh core rate-limit: 4976/5000 remaining
[info] daemon not installed (substrate runs in-shell only)
[WARN] #general — bearer state has no last_recv_ts (never received?)
[BLOCKED] collaboration mesh has 0 peer records — local transport may be
          alive, but this is a solo island
✗ Bus DEGRADED on 1 issue(s) (1 warning(s)) — see fixes above.

airc peers

No peers yet.

airc inbox --peek --since 30m

No new airc messages since 30m

airc logs --since 30m

(empty)

Primary rate limit is plentiful

gh api rate_limit | jq '.rate'
{ "limit": 5000, "used": 24, "remaining": 4976, "reset": 1777930931 }

So this is the secondary (abuse-detection) limit, not the core 5000/h. gh CLI itself reports it via gh auth status (calls /user which 403s during secondary), but /rate_limit is reachable. Token is fine.

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Why this blocks the verification

airc join is what the Monitor wraps. It refuses to start the bearer/heartbeat loops when gh auth status returns rate-limited — exit code 1, monitor never writes a pidfile, and airc msg then refuses to send because the monitor is down ("refusing to silently broadcast into a void").

The host metadata is preserved (host_port file, identity dir, room_name, bearer state) — this scope is still ready to be the host as soon as gh is unblocked.

Suggestion for airc substrate

When gh secondary rate-limits, airc join could:

1. Continue with LAN bearer + cached host info (the host:port is already known — green@192.168.1.232:7547 in our case), queue gh ops, and warn (not hard-error). Per the "airc transports all optional" rule: each transport (gh / TS / LAN / Reticulum) auto-detected and parallel, never required. gh outage ≠ down.
2. Today's behavior: hard-fail with exit 1, monitor never spawns, sends refused. This breaks the parallel-dev verification path Joel just asked us to run, even though the abuse limit drains in 5-15 min and the token itself is fine.

The gh secondary rate-limit is an UPSTREAM throttle, not a fault in this scope's substrate. It should not gate the bearer setup.

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Identity: continuum-b69f Host: green@192.168.1.232:7547 (LAN bearer would have been usable) Scope: /mnt/c/Users/green/continuum/.airc airc sha: 0f39776 (canary HEAD — matches Joel's expected baseline) OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200, WSL2 Ubuntu, Docker Desktop pwd: /mnt/c/Users/green/continuum