---
id: ACTIVITY-WP-0014
type: workplan
title: "Schedule Misfire Robustness & Run-Miss Recovery Options"
domain: infotech
repo: activity-core
status: active
owner: claude
topic_slug: activity-core
created: "2026-06-23"
updated: "2026-06-23"
state_hub_workstream_id: "91b64686-5d17-4c86-bc9e-3d0ee6720cf5"
---

# Schedule Misfire Robustness & Run-Miss Recovery Options

Make cron-triggered ActivityDefinitions robust to missed fires (worker/Temporal
unavailable at trigger time) with explicit, per-definition recovery behaviour,
plus detection/alerting when a scheduled fire is missed.

## Motivation

On 2026-06-22 and 2026-06-23 the `daily-statehub-wsjf-triage` definition
(cron `20 7 * * *` UTC, projected into the Railiance runtime ConfigMap
`actcore-external-activity-definitions`) produced **no `daily_triage` progress
event at all** — neither a success nor a `could not run; operator review
required` failure. Complete silence means the workflow never started, i.e. the
miss is at the **schedule/catchup level**, not the instruction level.

Root cause (code-level, confirmed in `schedule_manager.py`):
`_build_schedule()` sets `SchedulePolicy(overlap=...)` but **never sets
`catchup_window`**. Temporal's default catchup window is short, so if the worker
pod or in-cluster Temporal (`actcore-temporal:7233`) was briefly unavailable at
07:20 UTC, the fire is **silently dropped with no recovery and no signal**. The
existing `misfire_policy` (`skip`/`catchup`/`compress`) only maps to
`ScheduleOverlapPolicy` (concurrency of overlapping runs) — it does **not**
control missed-fire recovery. The only recovery path is a manual 1-hour
`backfill` that runs solely at `upsert_schedule` time and only when
`misfire_policy == "catchup"` (the triage def uses the default `skip`).

The trigger now originates entirely on **railiance01** (in-cluster Temporal
Schedule, ConfigMap-projected definition). The workstation laptop is **not**
required at trigger time — so any miss is a runtime-robustness gap, not a
"laptop was off" problem.

## Desired run-miss options (from Bernd)

Three explicit, per-definition behaviours when a fire is missed:

1. **Run on trigger or skip** — never recover a missed fire.
2. **Run on trigger or later if missed** — recover **all** missed fires when back up.
3. **Run on trigger or later if missed, but skip if next trigger reached** —
   recover only the **most recent** missed fire; do not accumulate a backlog.

Proposed mapping to a new `misfire_policy` value set (names open to review):

| Policy | Semantics | Temporal mapping |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `skip` | Run on trigger or skip | `catchup_window ≈ 0`, `overlap=SKIP` |
| `catchup_all` | Run on trigger or all missed later | `catchup_window=<long>`, `overlap=BUFFER_ALL` |
| `catchup_latest` | Run on trigger or only the latest missed | `catchup_window ≈ 1 interval`, `overlap=BUFFER_ONE` |

## Confirm root cause on Railiance01

```task
id: ACTIVITY-WP-0014-T01
status: todo
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "c90ff214-9214-48c7-96b9-7d699528d5ab"
```

Bring up the ops-bridge tunnel (`bridge up state-hub-coulombcore`,
`bridge up state-hub-mcp-coulombcore`; tunnel to railiance01 was down from the
workstation during diagnosis). Inspect the live Temporal schedule
`activity-schedule-<daily-triage-id>`: paused state, configured catchup window,
recent action/fire history, and worker pod status. Confirm whether the
06-22/06-23 07:20 UTC fires were dropped vs. failed. Backfill the missed runs if
calibration evidence is still wanted. Record findings in the workplan.

## Implement explicit misfire recovery modes

```task
id: ACTIVITY-WP-0014-T02
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "19615562-4cb2-4f25-872f-505d6e40dcc5"
```

Add `catchup_window_seconds` to `CronTriggerConfig` and redefine `misfire_policy`
into the three explicit modes above. In `_build_schedule()` set
`SchedulePolicy(overlap=..., catchup_window=timedelta(...))` per mode. Remove the
ad-hoc 1-hour `backfill` hack in favour of native catchup-window semantics. Keep
backward compatibility for existing `skip`/`catchup`/`compress` values (alias
map). Unit tests for each mode's `(catchup_window, overlap)` mapping.

## Missed-fire detection & alert sink

```task
id: ACTIVITY-WP-0014-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "dbedd96a-59ca-4b83-bce6-35755b076807"
```

Detect when a scheduled definition has no successful run within its expected
interval + tolerance, and emit a signal (State Hub progress event and/or
agent-inbox message) so a miss is visible even under `skip`. This is the
observability the current silent-drop behaviour lacks — a miss should never again
be invisible.

## Apply policy to runtime definitions & document

```task
id: ACTIVITY-WP-0014-T04
status: wait
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "04e9d1d2-1192-4402-9402-b12c5d7d44e5"
```

Choose and set the appropriate `misfire_policy` for `daily-statehub-wsjf-triage`
(likely `catchup_latest` — one missed daily run should still run, but a
multi-day outage should not flood the triage feed). Update the Railiance runtime
ConfigMap / bundle, redeploy, and document the run-miss options + per-definition
guidance in `docs/runbook.md`. Depends on T01 (confirm) and T02 (modes exist).