Keeping the patch and the record of a run

I implemented patch capture and worked on saving the record of each run. Previously, the runner removed the container without retaining its changes. It now captures a diff against the task’s starting commit before cleanup.

One real run returned an empty string for the patch. I initially questioned whether I had missed part of the implementation. The distinction matters. An empty string means capture completed but found no changes. None means capture failed. Neither result should silently become the other.

Claude exercised capture in temporary Git repositories, including edited and new files, a change committed after the starting point, an invalid base commit, and a timeout. The recorded checks included applying the captured patch on a fresh copy. These are capture checks, not evidence that the agent solves benchmark tasks.

I chose to put the record functions in handling/records.py so a later batch runner can reuse them. They create a UTC-named run folder and save the resolved settings, Git state, conversation, timing, and prediction entry. I used JSON for the records and one JSON object per line for predictions.

The Git record distinguishes an unknown state from a clean working tree. Working on this involved separating command failures from valid empty output, and learning the difference between converting an object to JSON text and writing that text to a file.

Claude ran the runner against real Docker using scripted model replies, with no model API calls. The check produced run metadata, a trajectory, and a prediction file, captured a patch, and cleaned up the container. This demonstrates the recording path under that controlled check.

When patch capture was forced to return None, the terminal summary crashed because it tried to calculate its length. My attempted correction still called len before testing the value. The files had already been saved, but the final reporting path remained broken at this review.

Run-record work is therefore still in progress. Automatic SWE-bench scoring and batch runs remain ahead, including recording unexpected execution failures rather than losing the trajectory when an exception interrupts a run.