feat: deadline contract in the executor seeds

Workers learn their budget is finite only when the wrap-up interrupt
arrives, which is too late: commands started minutes before exhaustion
die mid-flight, and their results are the ones lost. The pentest agent
has a wrap-up priority rule but nothing that prevents launching
long-running work that cannot finish before the task deadline.

Changes:
- worker seed: budget discipline block. Before starting any command or
  probe, check it finishes well within the remaining step and wall-clock
  budget; never start work whose timeout can outlive what remains, take
  the smaller variant that lands; when the budget is nearly spent or the
  wrap-up signal arrives, land everything already collected (facts
  first, then findings).
- pentest seed: deadline contract bullet. Long commands must fit the
  task's remaining time; as the deadline approaches, shift from
  discovery to consolidation.
- agent/deadline_contract_seed_test.go guards the markers.

Pattern adapted from bug-bounty-hunting-prompts (MIT), whose deadline
contract reads: never start a command whose timeout can extend beyond
the hard deadline.

agent/deadline_contract_seed_test.go

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+package agent
+
+import "strings"
+import "testing"
+
+// The deadline contract must stay in the executor seeds: no work whose
+// timeout can outlive the remaining budget; near the end, land instead of
+// open. Pattern adapted from bug-bounty-hunting-prompts (MIT).
+func TestPromptSeedsCarryDeadlineContract(t *testing.T) {
+	for name, tmpl := range BuiltinPromptSeeds() {
+		switch name {
+		case "worker", "pentest":
+			for _, marker := range []string{
+				"timeout can outlive",
+				"prefer the smaller variant that lands",
+			} {
+				if !strings.Contains(tmpl, marker) {
+					t.Errorf("%s seed missing deadline-contract marker %q", name, marker)
+				}
+			}
+		}
+	}
+}

agent/operator_handoff_seed_test.go

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+package agent
+
+import "strings"
+import "testing"
+
+// The operator-handoff discipline must stay in the executor agents' default
+// seeds: environmental failures stop the retry loop and become one
+// copy-pastable ask_operator command.
+func TestPromptSeedsCarryOperatorHandoff(t *testing.T) {
+	for name, tmpl := range BuiltinPromptSeeds() {
+		switch name {
+		case "worker", "pentest":
+			for _, marker := range []string{
+				"Operator handoff on environmental blocks",
+				"one line, copy-pastable",
+				"never batch",
+			} {
+				if !strings.Contains(tmpl, marker) {
+					t.Errorf("%s seed missing operator-handoff marker %q", name, marker)
+				}
+			}
+		}
+	}
+}

agent/promptcatalog.go

@@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ Traffic binding is optional: for TCP and other non-HTTP vulnerabilities, or when
 
 ━━ Judgment and wrap-up ━━
 - Check against the task goal at any time: when results you have **verified** satisfy the goal, judge it met on that basis and state the grounds. The prerequisite for calling it "met" is that doctrine 4's self-check has passed — an unverified trophy doesn't count as grounds.
+- **Deadline contract**: before launching any long command (broad scans, wordlist runs, big fetches), check it can finish within the task's remaining time; never start work whose timeout can outlive the task deadline — prefer the smaller variant that lands. As the deadline approaches, shift from discovery to consolidation: stop opening routes, verify and land what exists.
 - **Wrap-up takes top priority**: when you receive the wrap-up signal (or judge on your own that the goal is met / all reasonable routes are exhausted), **immediately stop all probing and commands**, land the conclusions in hand, and give a concise summary — at this point every prior instruction ("keep exploring / try once more / exhaust this chain / wait for command results") is overridden by wrap-up; do not start any new action.
 - Summarize in plain language: what was achieved, which routes were taken, which vulnerabilities were confirmed (with PoC locations), which directions are blocked and why. Report only what was really done; never fabricate.
 
@@ -90,7 +91,11 @@ Finding quality gates (proof standard, measured impact, testing bounds):
 - **Every reported finding carries a measured impact**: the attacker outcome as a number with its denominator ("3 of 20 payload variants returned other-tenant rows; 17 rejected", "commands executed: 2, output returned: yes") plus what the defense blocked. "The attacker can dump the table" is a claim; "3 of 20 payloads returned rows" is a measurement. If no number is obtainable, record what was attempted and why it is not measurable.
 - **State the proof basis** on every finding: executed-live, executed-lab, or static-analysis-unexecuted. An executed proof outranks a static conclusion; anything never actually triggered is "potential/suspect", never confirmed.
 - **Testing bounds** (bounded and non-destructive does NOT mean read-only): state-changing requests are in bounds when they are the finding's mechanism. Prove the mechanism on your own objects/accounts first, then confirm cross-entity reach on at most three non-owned objects with the smallest request that demonstrates the boundary; prefer reversible values, restore originals where possible, and record every touched object ID in the evidence.
-- **Priority discipline**: low-impact oracles (user/account enumeration, account-existence checks, response-timing differences) and low-yield misconfigurations (permissive CORS) are not standalone findings; record them only when they directly chain into account takeover, authentication bypass, or mass data exposure.`
+- **Priority discipline**: low-impact oracles (user/account enumeration, account-existence checks, response-timing differences) and low-yield misconfigurations (permissive CORS) are not standalone findings; record them only when they directly chain into account takeover, authentication bypass, or mass data exposure.
+
+Operator handoff on environmental blocks:
+- When a command or tool fails for an environmental reason (a sandboxed or filtered network path, a missing binary or key, TLS or proxy interception, a permission this runtime lacks), stop after the first failure: do not retry with different flags, do not switch tools hunting for a bypass, and do not fall through to an equivalent command.
+- Call ask_operator with the exact single command the operator should run in their own terminal: one line, copy-pastable, followed by what to paste back. One command per request; never batch. Wait for the reply instead of burning turns.`
 
 // DefaultAssistantPrompt is the starter/fallback body for CUSTOM conversational
 // agents — they have no per-key in-code default. It is seeded into agent_prompts

agent/worker.go

@@ -243,6 +243,8 @@ const workerDefaultTmpl = `You are an "executor" (work agent) of a network-secur
 - **Confirmed vulnerability → report_finding (exploration graph, with PoC, pass intent_id)**: **use it only when you actually triggered it this time and obtained reproducible evidence (request/response or command output)**. It is strictly forbidden to treat "version/fingerprint matching a CVE", "the parameter looks injectable", or "inference from external vulnerability databases/changelogs/code diffs" as confirmed, and don't substitute querying a CVE database or comparing patch versions for actually triggering it. Can't trigger it but suspicion remains → record an inferred fact with record_fact (the suspicion point + why it couldn't be triggered) for the planner; don't force it into a finding.
 
 
+**Budget discipline (the deadline contract)**: your run has a step budget and a wall-clock budget. Before starting any command or probe, check it can finish well within what remains; never start work whose timeout can outlive the remaining budget — prefer the smaller variant that lands. When the budget is nearly spent or the wrap-up signal arrives, stop opening new work and land everything already collected (facts first, then findings): a result that exists only in your head is lost.
+
 After completing this intent, summarize in one sentence what you did and which facts you wrote back.
 
 Adversarial gate before report_finding:
@@ -262,7 +264,11 @@ Finding quality gates (proof standard, measured impact, testing bounds):
 - **Every reported finding carries a measured impact**: the attacker outcome as a number with its denominator ("3 of 20 payload variants returned other-tenant rows; 17 rejected", "commands executed: 2, output returned: yes") plus what the defense blocked. "The attacker can dump the table" is a claim; "3 of 20 payloads returned rows" is a measurement. If no number is obtainable, record what was attempted and why it is not measurable.
 - **State the proof basis** on every finding: executed-live, executed-lab, or static-analysis-unexecuted. An executed proof outranks a static conclusion; anything never actually triggered is "potential/suspect", never confirmed.
 - **Testing bounds** (bounded and non-destructive does NOT mean read-only): state-changing requests are in bounds when they are the finding's mechanism. Prove the mechanism on your own objects/accounts first, then confirm cross-entity reach on at most three non-owned objects with the smallest request that demonstrates the boundary; prefer reversible values, restore originals where possible, and record every touched object ID in the evidence.
-- **Priority discipline**: low-impact oracles (user/account enumeration, account-existence checks, response-timing differences) and low-yield misconfigurations (permissive CORS) are not standalone findings; record them only when they directly chain into account takeover, authentication bypass, or mass data exposure.`
+- **Priority discipline**: low-impact oracles (user/account enumeration, account-existence checks, response-timing differences) and low-yield misconfigurations (permissive CORS) are not standalone findings; record them only when they directly chain into account takeover, authentication bypass, or mass data exposure.
+
+Operator handoff on environmental blocks:
+- When a command or tool fails for an environmental reason (a sandboxed or filtered network path, a missing binary or key, TLS or proxy interception, a permission this runtime lacks), stop after the first failure: do not retry with different flags, do not switch tools hunting for a bypass, and do not fall through to an equivalent command.
+- Call ask_operator with the exact single command the operator should run in their own terminal: one line, copy-pastable, followed by what to paste back. One command per request; never batch. Wait for the reply instead of burning turns.`
 
 // workerTrafficBlock is section [B]: the traffic-tool note, code-injected only when
 // traffic capture (recording) is on — i.e. the traffic_* tools actually exist.

server/ask_operator.go

@@ -25,13 +25,13 @@ var askOperatorImageExt = map[string]bool{".png": true, ".jpg": true, ".jpeg": t
 // resumes the run with the answer as the next input (#41).
 func (s *Server) toolAskOperator() actool.CoreTool {
 	return wrTool("ask_operator",
-		"Ask the human operator for input you cannot obtain yourself (a captcha solution, an email/SMS OTP code, a 2FA answer, a decision). The question appears in this intent's chat for the operator, optionally with a screenshot, and this intent then pauses; the operator's reply resumes this run with the answer as your next input. Ask precisely, and only when you are genuinely blocked.",
+		"Ask the human operator for input you cannot obtain yourself (a captcha solution, an email/SMS OTP code, a 2FA answer, a decision, or an action only they can perform). The question appears in this intent's chat for the operator, optionally with a screenshot, and this intent then pauses; the operator's reply resumes this run with the answer as your next input. Ask precisely, and only when you are genuinely blocked. When the block is environmental (a sandboxed or filtered network path, a missing binary or key, a proxy or TLS failure this runtime cannot fix), do not retry or work around it: include in the question the exact single command the operator should run in their own terminal, as one copy-pastable line, plus what to paste back, then wait.",
 		map[string]any{
 			"type": "object",
 			"properties": map[string]any{
 				"question": map[string]any{
 					"type":        "string",
-					"description": "What you need from the operator, precisely (e.g. 'enter the 6-digit code sent to x@y', 'solve the captcha in the attached screenshot').",
+					"description": "What you need from the operator, precisely (e.g. 'enter the 6-digit code sent to x@y', 'solve the captcha in the attached screenshot'). For environmental blocks: the exact single command they should run in their own terminal (one line, copy-pastable) and what to paste back.",
 				},
 				"image_path": map[string]any{
 					"type":        "string",

server/ask_operator_test.go

@@ -68,3 +68,15 @@ func TestAskOperatorActivityShape(t *testing.T) {
 		t.Fatalf("unexpected detail payload: %+v", parsed)
 	}
 }
+
+// The tool description must tell agents what to do on environmental blocks:
+// hand the operator one copy-pastable command instead of retrying or hunting
+// for bypasses. Pattern adapted from bug-bounty-hunting-prompts (MIT).
+func TestAskOperatorEnvHandoffGuidance(t *testing.T) {
+	desc := (&Server{}).toolAskOperator().Description()
+	for _, marker := range []string{"copy-pastable", "do not retry or work around"} {
+		if !strings.Contains(desc, marker) {
+			t.Errorf("ask_operator description missing env-handoff marker %q", marker)
+		}
+	}
+}