An interrupted git operation (a hard crash / OOM-kill / abrupt container stop mid
`git add`/`commit`/`checkout`) leaves a `.git/index.lock` (or a ref `*.lock`).
Git then refuses EVERY subsequent operation ("Unable to create '…/index.lock':
File exists"), so every poll cycle failed and the space's sync wedged INDEFINITELY
with no self-heal — the whole space stopped syncing until a human ran `rm` on the
lock (found via web-test restart/corruption charter, reproduced deterministically).
The daemon holds the per-space Redis lock and is the vault's ONLY writer, so any
`*.lock` reaching a fresh cycle is necessarily stale (no live git process holds it).
Add `VaultGit.clearStaleGitLocks()` and call it in the cycle preflight, right after
ensureRepo and before the mid-merge recovery — clearing index/HEAD/config/packed-refs/
MERGE_HEAD/ORIG_HEAD and the engine's ref locks (best-effort, missing = no-op).
Verified on the stand: a planted stale index.lock is now cleared and the space
recovers (edit reaches the vault, 0 "File exists" errors) — was wedged forever.
Unit test (real temp repo: index.lock blocks git add -> clear -> git add works);
git-sync suite green (707).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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