My Agent Migration Finished. Every Gate Looked Wired. None of Them Ran.

Description and use

After migrating an agent’s gate harness, all gates were registered and compiled, yet runtime failures prevented execution. A three‑layer failure chain was uncovered and resolved with five code and data fixes, restoring full gate functionality.

Problem

After migrating an agent’s gate harness to a new framework, all gates were registered and compiled, yet none executed correctly.

Outcome

The migration revealed a three-layer failure chain: compile-time success, runtime NameErrors, and self-check failures due to data drift. Fixing constants, parser syntax, provenance markers, and route table paths restored gate functionality.

Workflow

• 1. Run migrated gate (route_gate.before.py) – exit code 3, NameError AGENT_MEM.
• 2. Run gate with partial fix (route_gate.py) – exit code 2, NameError MEMORY_ROOT.
• 3. Run fully fixed gate (route_gate.fixed.py) – exit code 0, verdict GREEN.
• 4. Inspect inventory (gate_inventory.py) – shows registered/compile status and exit codes.
• 5. Apply five fixes: define AGENT_MEM and MEMORY_ROOT, adjust resident parser syntax, update provenance markers, correct route table paths, create missing report file.

Evidence

I finished migrating my agent's gate harness to a new framework. Files were on disk. Byte counts were sane. Markdown rendered. Every gate was "registered."

Source

Then I actually ran them. None of them worked, and none of them ever had.

Source

route_gate — is the route layer actually wired? target : <repo>/memory/MEMORY.md routes : 3 declared resident: 0 blocks parsed ... [FAIL] ROUTE_PATH_MISSING :: cases.md -> <repo>/arch/cases.md ... [FAIL] NONVACUOUS_SECTION :: parser returned an empty set (routes=3, resident=0) => checks (1)(2) ran over nothing; this gate cannot discriminate

Source

Five changes separate rc=3 from rc=0. The code first: 1) Two constants referenced but never defined — AGENT_MEM, MEMORY_ROOT. 2) The resident parser expected ### N ·; the target writes ## <section> plus 1. item. 3) The provenance marks were ASCII-only (= >); the target writes ⇒. Fixes 2 and 3 are the same failure in different clothes: the gate and its target had drifted apart, and nothing was watching for the drift.

Source

The takeaway is narrower than "migrations are hard": copying is not wiring.

Source