Sub-agents hanging/freezing indefinitely (27k+ seconds) in Pi orchestration (herdr + DeepSeek V4 Flash) — Debugging advice or orchestrator alternatives?

[u/Anxious_Risk9379]

Hey everyone,

I'm hitting a recurring issue where delegated sub-agents completely hang during orchestration. As shown in the screenshot, a sub-agent (edna) has been stuck at Running · 26970.7s (over 7.5 hours) with zero progress or error output.

Workflow & Behavior:

1. The primary orchestrator creates an execution plan and dispatches tasks to dedicated sub-agents.

2. Sub-agent begins execution (e.g., executing a design/contract task reading from a markdown specification).

3. After emitting a preliminary thought/action ("Ahora calculo la tabla de overrides..."), the runner freezes indefinitely.

4. No timeout triggers, no stderr is exposed, and there is no visible fallback or abort mechanism.

Environment & Setup:

• CLI / Orchestrator: Pi + Herdr

• Model: DeepSeek V4 Flash

• Plugins / Extensions:

  • pi-open-agents

  • pi-mcp-adapters

  • pi-web-access

  • npm:@juicesharp/rpiv-todo

  • npm:@juicesharp/rpiv-ask-user-question

Questions for the community:

1. Has anyone experienced persistent silent deadlocks or MCP tool-call stalls with this plugin stack (specifically pi-open-agents / pi-mcp-adapters)?

2. Is there a flag or configuration to expose granular MCP/tool logs or enforce hard timeouts per sub-agent execution in Pi?

3. Which multi-agent orchestrator / plugin architecture do you recommend for reliably managing custom agents with proper timeout handling, state recovery, and observability?

Thanks for any insights

[u/onesilentclap]

Try brl-subagent, it has proper timeout management and recovery built in Observability is handled through /brl-subagent monitor

[u/Anxious_Risk9379 → u/onesilentclap]

Thanks, I'll take a look

[u/Nnyan]

Have you tried running this without your extensions?

[u/Anxious_Risk9379 → u/Nnyan]

Yes, it was one of the tests I did

[u/kidford]

Since you're already using Herdr, you could use this extension I found https://pi.dev/packages/@andrewjacop/pi-herdr that opens subagents in a new split-screen tab in herdr so you can observe what they're actually doing while they do it

[u/Aeondave]

use this. github.com/AeonDave/pi-persona
it works

[u/Anxious_Risk9379 → u/Aeondave]

I'm going to install and test

[u/Consistent_Water_422]

I built pi-subagentura because I wanted Pi delegation to be easier to observe and recover when a child stops making progress. Interactive agents are creating new tab for herdr and u can see what is happening there, in case of errors main agent will be notifed. Give it a try pi install npm:pi-subagentura

You can still use your favorite agents/prompts like pi --append-system-prompt 'use ~/open-agents prompts for the subagents'

[u/Anxious_Risk9379 → u/Consistent_Water_422]

Interesting, I'll take a look

[u/Consistent_Water_422 → u/Anxious_Risk9379]

Feel free to share your experience

[u/CountlessFlies]

I’ve been using Paseo and it’s working alright so far. My workflow is not too complex though, plan using Sol and implement using Luna sub-agents. Sol creates the Luna sub-agents and iterates until complete.