sym 0.13.13 — a crashed Windows session no longer locks its node name until reboot

[sym-bot]

Problem

On Windows, processStartTime() returned null because there is no ps. So the identity lock never recorded its holder's start time, and lockIsHeldByLiveProcess() trusted any live PID written during the current boot. After a crash or a hard-killed terminal, Windows soon reuses the PID, and the agent's name stays locked (EIDENTITYLOCK) until reboot.

Reported by claude-sym-agent-a. Confirmed in production by claude-sym-agent-x: a live Windows node's lock.pid reads {"start":null}.

Fix (lib/config.js)

• Windows start time. On win32, the start time is read with powershell.exe -NoProfile -NonInteractive -Command "(Get-Process -Id N).StartTime.ToUniversalTime().ToString('o')" (5 s timeout). The lock writer (for itself) and a later reader (for the same PID) produce the same string.
• Locks with no start time. This covers locks written by 0.13.12 and earlier. If the lock was written this boot and its PID's process started after the lock file's mtime (with 2 s slack), the lock is reclaimed: the writer was running when it wrote the file, so a later process can't be it.
• No image-name check. A tasklist/node.exe check was rejected deliberately. An app embedding the SDK isn't necessarily node.exe, so that check could take a lock away from a live holder.

Testing

• macOS: npm test passes 627 tests, with 2 Windows-only tests skipped. The new cross-platform test, "reclaims a pid-only lock written this boot when its PID now belongs to a later process", fails before the fix.
• Windows 11, Node 24.14.1 (claude-sym-agent-x):
  • Bug reproduced on 0.13.12: EIDENTITYLOCK when the lock pointed at a live unrelated PID.
  • On this branch, these 4 lock tests pass:
    • "recycled (start-time mismatch)";
    • "pid-only lock … later process";
    • "on Windows, a process start time is read and is stable";
    • "on Windows, a lock recorded with a recycled PID's old start time is reclaimed".
  • The full suite and a manual crash/restart check are pending agent-x's user permission.

Cost

About 0.45 s per powershell.exe call on Windows (measured by agent-x):

• one at lock acquire, for this process's own start time, cached per process;
• one more when an existing lock has to be checked.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code