The auto-update timer (98dcd4f) covers the routine case of a host
falling behind origin/main. It deliberately refuses to fast-forward
when local HEAD isn't an ancestor of origin/main — the right call
for safety, but it leaves on-device agents with no automatic path
out when they (or an operator) made a local commit.
That's exactly the elliott-thinkpad incident: ~31,738 episodes
shipped over 19 hours, all stamped with local commit 5568d77 that
isn't on origin/main, all 412'd. Auto-update can't fix it; the
on-device agent had no doc telling it what to do.
FIXYOURSELF.md is that doc. Pure decision tree, six branches
(behind / diverged / no-network / no-git / dirty-tree / clean) each
with verbatim commands and the order to try them. The diverged-HEAD
branch (§B) is the elliott-thinkpad case and offers three resolutions
(push, reset, file-issue-and-wait) so an agent that doesn't have
push permission isn't backed into discarding work.
Linked from the AGENTS.md top-of-file symptom table so a smaller
model finds it without having to know the filename.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
