feat(heartbeat): write last-run.json at top of send-telemetry#148
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ashishkurmi merged 3 commits intoJun 23, 2026
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Adds a local "I started" breadcrumb written to <install-dir>/last-run.json
as the first action of the send-telemetry path — before the enterprise
gate and before telemetry.Run acquires the singleton lock.
agent.error.log and scan-state.json only appear once a run gets far
enough to log a line or finish an upload. Several failure modes never
reach that point: a process killed mid-startup (e.g. the Windows
GUI-launcher teardown), a run that fails the enterprise gate, a lock it
can never acquire. The heartbeat records {written_at, pid, agent_version,
command, invocation_method, os} independent of all that, so:
- stale last-run.json -> the agent isn't being invoked (scheduler not
firing: battery policy, missing/broken task)
- fresh last-run.json + no server-side telemetry -> the agent runs but
dies/fails before upload
invocation_method reuses telemetry's scheduler-footprint detection, so a
scheduled fire is distinguishable from a manual run. The write is durable
against the abrupt termination it records: temp sibling, fsync, atomic
rename (mirrors internal/state.Save) — a kill leaves the previous or the
new file, never a truncated one. Best-effort: a write failure is logged
at debug and never affects the run.
swarit-stepsecurity
requested review from
shubham-stepsecurity
and removed request for
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ashishkurmi
approved these changes
Jun 23, 2026
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Adds a local "I started" breadcrumb written to /last-run.json as the first action of the send-telemetry path — before the enterprise gate and before telemetry.Run acquires the singleton lock.
agent.error.log and scan-state.json only appear once a run gets far enough to log a line or finish an upload. Several failure modes never reach that point: a process killed mid-startup (e.g. the Windows GUI-launcher teardown), a run that fails the enterprise gate, a lock it can never acquire. The heartbeat records {written_at, pid, agent_version, command, invocation_method, os} independent of all that, so:
invocation_method reuses telemetry's scheduler-footprint detection, so a scheduled fire is distinguishable from a manual run. The write is durable against the abrupt termination it records: temp sibling, fsync, atomic rename (mirrors internal/state.Save) — a kill leaves the previous or the new file, never a truncated one. Best-effort: a write failure is logged at debug and never affects the run.
What does this PR do?
Type of change
Testing
./stepsecurity-dev-machine-guard --verbose./stepsecurity-dev-machine-guard --json | python3 -m json.toolmake lintmake testRelated Issues