Treat local agent API failures as unhealthy

src/agent/local-agents.ts

@@ -236,6 +236,13 @@ export interface AgentRunResult {
   error?: string;
 }
 
+function agentFailureOutput(output: string): string | null {
+  const text = output.trim();
+  if (/^API call failed\b/i.test(text)) return text.slice(0, 300);
+  if (/connection error/i.test(text) && /failed/i.test(text)) return text.slice(0, 300);
+  return null;
+}
+
 /**
  * Drive a connected agent with a one-shot headless prompt (real round-trip — SPENDS the agent's quota).
  * Used by /ping (liveness proof) and /dispatch (actually using the operator).
@@ -270,7 +277,9 @@ export function runLocalAgent(
     child.on('close', (code) => {
       const latencyMs = Date.now() - t0;
       const output = out.trim().slice(0, maxChars);
-      if (code === 0) finish({ ok: true, latencyMs, output });
+      const semanticError = agentFailureOutput(output);
+      if (code === 0 && !semanticError) finish({ ok: true, latencyMs, output });
+      else if (semanticError) finish({ ok: false, latencyMs, output, error: semanticError });
       else finish({ ok: false, latencyMs, output, error: (errOut.trim() || `exited with code ${code}`).slice(0, 300) });
     });
   });
@@ -329,7 +338,9 @@ export function localAgentChat(id: string, prompt: string, opts: { model?: strin
       let content = out.trim();
       if (outFile) { try { content = (readFileSync(outFile, 'utf8').trim() || content); } catch { /* fall back to stdout */ } }
       finish(() => {
-        if (code === 0 && content) resolve(content);
+        const semanticError = agentFailureOutput(content);
+        if (code === 0 && content && !semanticError) resolve(content);
+        else if (semanticError) reject(new Error(semanticError));
         else reject(new Error((errOut.trim() || content || `exited with code ${code}`).slice(0, 800)));
       });
     });