Polecats have exactly three operating conditions - there is no idle pool:
- Working: session active, doing assigned work
- Stalled: session stopped unexpectedly, never nudged back
- Zombie: gt done called but cleanup failed
Key clarifications:
- These are SESSION states; polecat identity persists across sessions
- "Stalled" and "zombie" are detected conditions, not stored states
- The status:idle label only applies to persistent agents, not polecats
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>