Fix Stuck AI Planner and Enable Live OutputPublic

Let me investigate the current state of things.

I don't see any plan_PROGRESS.md file in the repo. Let me look more broadly and check for lock files.

Found the problem. Ralph is running (PID 940763), but it's stuck on notify.sh (PID 940793) which is consuming 99.9% CPU and has been spinning for over 2 minutes trying to send the startup notification. It never gets past the "Ralph Started" notify call, so Claude is never invoked for the plan.

Let me check what's wrong with notify.sh.

Yes, it's stuck. The notify.sh process (PID 940793) is stuck in an infinite loop at 99.9% CPU. It never gets to launch Claude.

The bug is in notify.sh line 275-277 — the Discord formatting conversion:

The message *Ralph Started* gets converted to **Ralph Started**, but **Ralph Started** still matches the regex \*([^*]+)\* (the inner *Ralph Started* portion matches), so it grows to ***Ralph Started***, then ****Ralph Started****, etc. — forever.

You need to kill the stuck processes to unstick things:

kill 940793   (the stuck notify.sh)

Would you like me to fix the infinite loop bug in notify.sh?

Now let me kill the stuck process so you can re-run Ralph.

The old process died and Ralph restarted automatically. The new notify.sh processes (942596, 942607) are at 0.0% CPU and sleeping normally — the fix is working. Let me verify they finish cleanly.

Fixed. The notify.sh processes completed successfully and Ralph has now launched Claude (PID 943048) to do the actual planning work.

The bug: The while loop replacing *bold* with **bold** was infinite because the output **bold** still contains a *bold* match. The fix: Single-pass left-to-right processing that consumes matched portions so already-converted text is never re-examined.

Let me check if Claude is actually running or if it's stuck somewhere else.

It's not stuck. Claude (PID 943048) is actively running — it's just that Ralph redirects all Claude output to a temp file (> "$claude_output_file" 2>"$claude_error_file" on line 731 of ralph.sh), so you won't see anything on screen until the iteration finishes.

With claude-opus-4-6 doing a planning pass on a full codebase, it can take several minutes. The process is at 5.1% CPU and using ~250MB memory, which looks like normal active work.

Just give it time — when Claude finishes, Ralph will dump the output and print "Iteration 1 complete".

Both temp files are 0 bytes. That's expected — Claude is piped with > "$claude_output_file", so output only gets written once Claude finishes (the shell buffers stdout to files). The process is still running and hasn't produced its final output yet.

Still actively running (memory grew from 251MB to 260MB, CPU time from 10s to 12s). It's working — just hasn't finished yet.

Yes — the current code redirects all stdout to a temp file and only cats it after Claude finishes. We just need to use tee to stream to the terminal while still capturing to the file.

Done. The change pipes Claude's stdout through tee, which sends it to both the terminal (so you see it live) and the temp file (so error detection still works). Stderr still goes to the error file for retry logic.

You'll see the streaming output next time you run Ralph. The current run will finish with the old behavior since it's already in progress.

Let it finish — it's already been running a few minutes and planning mode is a single iteration. Restarting would just lose that work and start over. You'll see the streaming output on your next ralph run.

Committed as 6a520a1. Working tree is clean. One commit ahead of origin if you want to push.

I'll create a branch and push it for the PR.

Git is configured for SSH but the remote uses HTTPS. Let me fix that.

You don't have push access to aaron777collins/portableralph. Let me fork it and push there instead.

PR created: https://github.com/aaron777collins/portableralph/pull/4

I'll add a Configuration section documenting the model parameter. The natural place is after the Usage/Examples section and before Plan File Format.

Done. The PR at https://github.com/aaron777collins/portableralph/pull/4 now includes the README update with a new Configuration section documenting RALPH_MODEL and RALPH_AUTO_COMMIT.

Yep, still running. Ralph (942971) and its Claude process (943048) are both alive. Claude has accumulated 25s of CPU time and is using ~257MB memory — still actively working on the plan.

The problem is that claude -p in text mode likely buffers all output until completion — tee can't stream what isn't being written yet. Let me check.

Still 0 bytes — confirms claude -p buffers everything until done. tee has nothing to stream.

The CLI has --output-format stream-json which does stream in real-time, but it outputs JSON chunks, not plain text. We'd need to parse them. Let me check what the JSON stream looks like.

Right — claude -p with text output buffers everything until completion. The tee has nothing to stream.

The fix is to use --output-format stream-json, which emits JSON lines in real-time as Claude works, then filter through jq to display the text content. Let me update the implementation.

Now let me verify the error detection code still works — it uses stderr and exit code, not stdout, so it should be fine.

Good — error detection uses claude_error_file (stderr) and exit code only, unaffected by the format change.

Let me also verify jq is available on the system.

Good. Now let me amend this into the PR.

Pushed. The PR now uses --output-format stream-json which emits JSON lines in real-time as Claude works, piped through jq to display just the text content. If jq isn't installed, it falls back to buffered output.

You can test it on your next Ralph run — kill the current one and restart if you want to see it now.

Yes — the jq filter only shows text from assistant messages, so you see nothing while Claude is reading files, searching code, etc. (which is most of the work during planning). Let me update the filter to also show tool activity.

Now you'll see tool activity in blue between the text output, like:

I'll explore the codebase structure.
  → Read: /path/to/src/main.rs
  → Grep /some_pattern/
  → Bash: cargo test
Now let me analyze the results...

Want to restart Ralph to test it, or should I commit and push to the PR first?

Now let me update the PR description.

Done. PR updated at https://github.com/aaron777collins/portableralph/pull/4 with the new streaming commit and a generic example showing what the output looks like.

Here's the comparison:

What iannuttall/ralph has that portableralph doesn't

Worth considering:

Less interesting (portableralph already has equivalents or better):

What portableralph has that iannuttall/ralph doesn't

• Notifications (Slack, Discord, Telegram, Email, custom scripts)
• Model selection (RALPH_MODEL)
• Streaming output (our new feature)
• Retry logic with exponential backoff
• Plan mode (analyze first, build second)
• Windows/PowerShell support
• Rate limiting, URL validation

My take

The most valuable ideas to steal are:

1. Guardrails file — a persistent lessons-learned doc that Claude reads every iteration. This is cheap to implement and high-value: prevents the same mistake from being made across iterations.

2. Story dependencies — letting tasks declare dependsOn so the picker respects ordering rather than hoping Claude picks wisely.

3. Per-run logging — capturing full agent output per iteration (not just progress) makes debugging much easier when something goes wrong mid-run.

The PRD system and multi-agent support are bigger lifts with less clear ROI for portableralph's audience. The browser testing skill is cool but very niche.

Let me explore how the prompt templates and iteration loop work to figure out where a guardrails file would plug in.

Good, I have a solid understanding of the codebase. Let me design this.