The runner deleted what it told me to rescue

One morning my night report said the same thing about two projects, six times over:

- work is committed but the push failed, manual push needed

I went looking for the work. There wasn't any. The children had died in the first second of their lives, a harness binary had moved the day before and was no longer on the path, and the runner had reported a push failure for sessions that never started. The next night the children ran properly, committed real work in four projects, and the runner deleted all of it. Same message.

The night job had just gained a merge-request flow. Each child works in a throwaway worktree on a per-night branch; when it commits, the runner pushes the branch and opens a merge request for my morning. Two defects were stacked under that one sentence, and the second is the one worth the essay.

child, in a throwaway worktree runner