[schickling-assistant]

Problem

A conversation can appear stale after End even while its live-update footer advances. That footer records receipt, not display freshness. Source inspection did not establish a defect matching the reported reproduction.

Goal

Identify the first stage that stops advancing without recording conversation content.

Decisions

• Opt-in DEBUG tracing, scoped to the TUI thread and the dedicated freshness target; output goes to a private file, not the terminal.
• Carry the actual wire subscription ID through the feed update.
• Trace frame metadata, held timeline, adapted entries, document tail and pane follow/binding state, including before/after End and completed presentation.
• Record build and endpoint at startup and connection changes. No behavior changes or speculative fixes.
• Document activation and interpretation; add a metadata-ordering unit test.

Verification

One admitted final-head ticket runs cargo test --locked -p fractal-tui -p fractal-conversation-ui and cargo clippy --locked -p fractal-tui -p fractal-conversation-ui --all-targets -- -D warnings. Results pending; this draft is not ready. No CI dispatch requested. Automatic local pre-push signing disabled to avoid duplicate builds.

Complexity

Small metadata-only hooks plus a single opt-in tracing module; disabled by default.

Concerns

Identifiers, endpoints and timestamps remain private metadata. Filtered entries and folded tool runs can intentionally change tail IDs. This is a probe, not a claimed repair.

Friction & bottlenecks

None beyond admitted build scheduling.

Follow-ups

Capture an opt-in trace during the next reproduction and locate the first stalled stage.

References

Troubleshooting instructions: docs/when-something-is-wrong.md.

Posted on behalf of @schickling

field	value
agent_identity	agent/dotfiles/fractal-product-lead
session	01a1b525
agent_persona	generalist
agent_supervisor	unavailable
agent_tool	OMP
agent_tool_version	18.12.5
agent_runtime	OMP 18.12.5
agent_model	openai-codex/gpt-6.1-sol
worktree	fractal/2026-11-10-tui-freshness-probe