fix(consult): five-minute answer clock as a hang guard; general mode runs on it from the start (BUG-1142)

The 70s answer clock was sized for a non-reasoning writer; thinking tokens
come out of the same clock and deepseek-v4-pro took 77s on a parents answer.
Product 2026-10-01 chose five minutes. The general / no-birth-minute loop has
no tools, so it now starts on the answer clock instead of the 110s tool clock.
Tool phase and domain budget unchanged; maxDuration 240 -> 480.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01N4f2nya58RoRu4yEmJgRGE

frontend/src/app/api/consult/route.ts

@@ -115,14 +115,14 @@ import { generateSessionTitle, shouldGenerateSessionTitle } from "@/lib/session-
 import { z } from "zod";
 
 export const runtime = "nodejs";
-export const maxDuration = 240;
+export const maxDuration = 480;
 
 // The step budget, the wall-clock budget and the domain cap all bound this same
 // run, so they are declared as one group in @/mastra/consultation-tools with the
 // reasoning that ties them together. maxDuration above is the ceiling they must
 // stay under: the tool phase (AGENT_TIMEOUT_MS) plus the answer phase's own
-// clock (CONSULTATION_ANSWER_TIMEOUT_MS), 180s, plus setup and settlement
-// (BUG-1051, BUG-1053). Self-hosted `node server.js` does not enforce it; it
+// clock (CONSULTATION_ANSWER_TIMEOUT_MS), 410s, plus setup and settlement
+// (BUG-1051, BUG-1053, TASK-consult-answer-clock-20261001). Self-hosted `node server.js` does not enforce it; it
 // documents the ceiling.
 
 const chatRequestMetadataSchema = z.object({
@@ -1103,10 +1103,13 @@ export async function POST(request: Request) {
     // that deadline until the calculation result is in hand, then on the answer
     // clock (CONSULTATION_ANSWER_TIMEOUT_MS), because its next step writes the
     // answer. Continuation and answer retries share the same answer clock.
+    // The general / no-birth-minute agent has no tools, so its loop is the
+    // answer from the first step and runs on the answer clock from the start.
     const runClock = createConsultationRunClock({
       toolPhaseMs: AGENT_TIMEOUT_MS,
       answerMs: CONSULTATION_ANSWER_TIMEOUT_MS,
       answerReady: () => state.consultationToolCompleted,
+      answerFromStart: usesPublicDailyGeneralAgent(consultationMode, generalDailyContext),
     });
     const agentAbortSignal = runClock.toolSignal;
     const streamOptions = {

frontend/src/mastra/consultation-tools.ts

@@ -78,19 +78,24 @@ export const AGENT_TIMEOUT_MS = 110_000;
  * covers the rest of the loop plus any length continuation or empty-answer
  * retry.
  *
- * 70s is measured, not guessed: staging writer calls on the default model
- * produced 560-1240 output tokens in 5.7-13.6s end to end (about 90-100 tok/s
- * including first-token latency, PROGRESS-report-writer-failure-20260902). 70s
- * therefore holds about 6,300-7,000 output tokens, three to four times a
- * typical four-heading answer; at half that throughput it still holds about
- * 3,000 tokens. The answer step keeps provider thinking on (it is the loop's
- * step), so thinking tokens now come out of the same 70s; the loop's step
- * after the tool result used to think and write inside the 110s as well, and
- * its text was thrown away. The calculation must finish inside the 110s tool
- * phase, so the worst case is 110 + 70 = 180s, the three minutes the product
- * accepted. The route's maxDuration must stay above the sum.
+ * 300s is a hang guard, not a length limit (product decision 2026-10-01,
+ * TASK-consult-answer-clock-20261001). The old 70s was sized for a
+ * non-reasoning writer (about 90-100 tok/s, PROGRESS-report-writer-failure-20260902).
+ * The answer step keeps provider thinking on, so thinking tokens come out of
+ * this clock too, and a reasoning model spends most of its time there: in the
+ * 10-01 real-model run (docs/testing/consult-plain-answer-20261001-model-runs.md)
+ * a parents answer on deepseek-v4-pro took 77s end to end and would have been
+ * cut, while deepseek-flash took 30-41s with about 85% of its tokens in
+ * thinking. The answer shape no longer has a word cap either, so the clock
+ * only has to stop a provider that hangs. A run that does hit it still ends
+ * as answer_truncated and is not charged (BUG-1051).
+ *
+ * The calculation must finish inside the 110s tool phase, so the worst case is
+ * 110 + 300 = 410s; the route's maxDuration must stay above the sum. The
+ * domain budget below is derived from the tool phase and its own reserve, not
+ * from this clock, so raising it does not change how many domains run.
  */
-export const CONSULTATION_ANSWER_TIMEOUT_MS = 70_000;
+export const CONSULTATION_ANSWER_TIMEOUT_MS = 300_000;
 
 export type ConsultationRunClock = Readonly<{
   /** The tool phase's deadline. Tools and precompute run under it, unchanged. */
@@ -114,11 +119,17 @@ export type ConsultationRunClock = Readonly<{
  * where the calculation settles just before the tool-phase timer fires but
  * the stream consumer has not seen the result yet: the loop is then handed to
  * the answer clock instead of being cut.
+ *
+ * `answerFromStart` is for a loop with no calculation to wait for (the
+ * general / no-birth-minute agent has no tools): its first step already writes
+ * the answer, so the loop runs on the answer clock from the start instead of
+ * being cut by the tool phase's timer (TASK-consult-answer-clock-20261001).
  */
 export function createConsultationRunClock(options: {
   toolPhaseMs?: number;
   answerMs?: number;
   answerReady?: () => boolean;
+  answerFromStart?: boolean;
 } = {}): ConsultationRunClock {
   const toolPhaseMs = options.toolPhaseMs ?? AGENT_TIMEOUT_MS;
   const answerMs = options.answerMs ?? CONSULTATION_ANSWER_TIMEOUT_MS;
@@ -141,6 +152,7 @@ export function createConsultationRunClock(options: {
     }
     loop.abort(toolSignal.reason);
   }, { once: true });
+  if (options.answerFromStart) answerSignal();
   return Object.freeze({ toolSignal, loopSignal: loop.signal, answerSignal });
 }
 export const CONSULTATION_NATAL_CALC_TOOL_ID = "run-jyotish-consultation";