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read_process_output loses stderr when process exits quickly (exit code 1, zero output) #395

@JesperLive

Description

@JesperLive

Description

When a process started via start_process fails fast (exits within ~100ms with exit code 1),
ead_process_output returns zero lines of output. The stderr is lost entirely -- the caller only sees:

[Reading 0 new lines (total: 0 lines)] (No output in requested range) Process completed with exit code 1 (runtime: 0.03s)

This happens consistently with fast-failing commands (bad imports, missing modules, syntax errors). The process exits before DC output buffer captures anything.

Expected behavior

stderr should be captured and returned alongside the exit code, even for sub-100ms processes. When an LLM is using DC, losing the error message means it has to guess why the command failed and retry blindly.

Impact

In a real session with 200 recent tool calls, 6 out of 11 failures were this pattern -- fast exit, lost stderr. It is the most common DC failure mode we hit.

Environment

  • Desktop Commander v0.2.38
  • Windows 11
  • PowerShell default shell
  • Node.js 25.7.0

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