VCR tapes not generating (or too slow) for: `download_tool`, `update_a_file`, `read_a_file`

[taoeffect]

Description

Problem

Generating the cassette tapes via GLM-5.1 on Hyper for these tree tests takes forever (each hit a 4 minute timeout):

• download_tool, update_a_file, read_a_file

I was able to generate them for all the other tests.

GPT-5.5 investigated read_a_file a bit and reported:

• It did not hang on filesystem access.
• It emitted glob {"pattern":"go.mod"} and got the correct /tmp/.../go.mod tool result.
• Then it stalled on the next model response, before calling view.
• Conclusion: slowness is the live model stream/planning after a tool result, not sandbox/filesystem permissions.

Solution

No idea. I'm now running them one-by-one with a 10 minute timeout (which seems absurdly long to me). Will report back.

Version

No response

Environment

No response

[taoeffect]

Update: suddenly read_a_file finished in 57s, update_a_file recorded in 4.65s, and download_tool recorded in 7.44s.

This is very bizarre. I probably should have made this a discussion and not an issue (feel free to move it there, I don't have the mod tools to do that).

Hopefully this issue will also help others who are struggling with this to know that you just kinda catch Hyper when it's happy...

To record cassette tapes I recommend doing them one-by-one. This is how you do it btw:

rm -f internal/agent/testdata/TestCoderAgent/glm-5.1/<cassette_name>.yaml
go test ./internal/agent -run '^TestCoderAgent/glm-5\.1/<subtest_name>$' -count=1 -timeout=10m -v

Example:

rm -f internal/agent/testdata/TestCoderAgent/glm-5.1/read_a_file.yaml
go test ./internal/agent -run '^TestCoderAgent/glm-5\.1/read_a_file$' -count=1 -timeout=10m -v

[taoeffect]

To record cassette tapes I recommend doing them one-by-one.

I've had GPT-5.5 create this very handy script for recording them: https://github.com/taoeffect/crush/blob/taoeffect/.agents/notes/record_tapes.mjs

It will handle Hyper's finickiness by doing the test recording one-at-a-time in a loop with a small timeout value initially. Any tests that fail during that first loop will be run with ever increasing timeouts, up until it hits a 5 minute timeout (per test). If any tests fail at the 5 minute timeout, it will report those to you and fail the script.

It also has useful timestamp-based progress logging so the agent can keep tabs on which tests have succeeded and which ones have failed.