BUG: sequential strategy does not enforce chain order (sibling of #33) #34

Bug: sequential strategy does not enforce step chain order — sibling of parallel+reduce bug (nullboiler-62s)

Filed: 2026-07-28
Sibling: nullboiler-62s (parallel strategy reduce block fails with "unknown step type")
Upstream: will file at https://github.com/nullclaw/nullboiler/issues

Summary

When submitting a workflow with "strategy": "sequential" via POST /runs, the strategy expansion is supposed to add depends_on between consecutive steps (chain mode per strategies/sequential.json build field). In practice, all steps dispatch concurrently. A later step can complete BEFORE earlier steps, receiving empty {{state.X}} template values because the upstream step hasn't written its output_key yet.

Reproduction

Submit:

curl -X POST http://localhost:7720/runs \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "strategy": "sequential",
    "steps": [
      {"id":"slow_rca","type":"task","output_key":"rca","worker_tags":["researcher"],"prompt_template":"long analysis taking 60+s","timeout_ms":300000},
      {"id":"review","type":"task","output_key":"review","worker_tags":["researcher"],"prompt_template":"review: {{state.rca}}"}
    ]
  }'

Expected: review waits for slow_rca to complete, then dispatches with {{state.rca}} filled.

Actual: review dispatches immediately, completes in ~9s with "I can'\''t review nothing — RCA context came through empty". slow_rca times out at 120s later. Run marked failed.

Verified on ~/dev/nullboiler/local-deploy branch (commits c0e3648 + f5d23f7).

Same bug class as nullboiler-62s

nullboiler-62s covers the parallel strategy wrapping reduce as type:"reduce" (rejected by validator). This ticket covers sequential strategy NOT enforcing chain order. Both are strategy-expansion bugs — the user-supplied steps aren't transformed correctly before dispatch.

Workaround

Drop "strategy" field entirely and use manual depends_on for chain:

{
  "steps": [
    {"id":"a","type":"task","output_key":"a_out",...,"timeout_ms":300000},
    {"id":"b","type":"task","output_key":"b_out","depends_on":["a"],"prompt_template":"... {{state.a_out}} ..."}
  ]
}

Verified working — outputs chain correctly, step B waits for step A's output_key to land in state.

Suspected root cause

src/strategy.zig expandStrategy() for chain mode adds depends_on to the steps, but the engine (src/engine.zig) doesn't enforce depends_on ordering at dispatch time — it dispatches any ready step regardless of whether its dependencies are completed.

Per odb9 finding #7, step table rows are "decorative" — truth is in checkpoints + state. This may extend to depends_on: declared but not enforced.

Acceptance

• Sequential strategy steps run strictly in order (step B does not start until step A's state has been written)
• Test: 2-step sequential workflow where step A is slow (sleep 30s in worker), step B receives {{state.X}} populated
• Test: parallel + depends_on manual chain still works (regression check)
• odb9-style runner.py harness includes a sequential-enforcement test case