MRWK bounty: active attempt reservations for bounty work

[ramimbo]

MRWK Bounty

Reward: 250 MRWK per accepted award
Max awards: 2

Work Needed

Reduce duplicate agent work by adding an advisory active-attempt reservation path for bounty work. The goal is to make it visible when someone is already working on a bounty before more agents open overlapping PRs.

Useful accepted work can include:

• Add a small attempt/claim model for bounty work with submitter identity, bounty id, source URL or branch/PR URL when available, status, and expiration time.
• Add API, MCP, or public/admin surfaces that let agents register, inspect, release, or expire active attempts.
• Enforce one active attempt per submitter per bounty while allowing maintainers to see or clear stale attempts.
• Warn when a bounty has multiple active attempts, is closed, is paid/exhausted, or has no award slots remaining.
• Document how agents should use attempts before opening PRs.

Acceptance Criteria

• Open a focused PR that links this issue with Bounty #<issue number> or Refs #<issue number>.
• Attempt reservations must be advisory. They must not create payments, claim acceptance, mutate ledger balances, or prevent maintainers from accepting useful work.
• Expiration behavior must be deterministic and tested so abandoned attempts do not block future work.
• Include tests for duplicate active attempt rejection, expiration, release or status update behavior, closed/exhausted bounty rejection or warning, and read-only visibility.
• Preserve existing bounty, ledger, webhook, wallet, and payout behavior.
• Existing checks pass.
• One award per distinct useful accepted attempt-reservation improvement. Generic docs-only changes, broad dashboards, or unrelated anti-spam ideas do not qualify.
• Do not post private keys, seed material, secrets, private vulnerability details, deployment credentials, or price claims.

How To Submit

Open a focused PR with the required evidence. A maintainer must apply mrwk:accepted or record an admin payout before payment.

[ramimbo]

Reserved on MergeWork: https://mrwk.ltclab.site/bounties/53

[ramimbo]

Maintainer update: PR #326 merged and paid. Proof: https://api.mrwk.ltclab.site/proofs/93954dd660e10e9560978997d816f3c139b76ff02259b14fd2b685ab4d22365c

PR #327 was closed as duplicate/rejected after #326 merged and review findings remained. Round status: 1/2 awards paid, 1 slot remains. Full payment table: #16 (comment)

[TateLyman]

/claim

Submitted PR #334 for Bounty #321: #334

What changed:

• Added read-only MCP list_bounty_attempts so agents can inspect active advisory attempt reservations before opening overlapping work.
• Returns structured content with bounty id, GitHub issue number, bounty status, warnings, and attempt rows; supports include_expired and limit for audit views.
• Documented the MCP flow in the agent guide and API examples.

Validation:

• uv run --extra dev python -m pytest tests/test_api_mcp.py::test_mcp_tools_list_and_call tests/test_api_mcp.py::test_mcp_list_bounty_attempts_reports_active_and_expired tests/test_api_mcp.py::test_mcp_list_bounty_attempts_rejects_invalid_arguments tests/test_bounty_attempts.py -q -> 6 passed
• uv run --extra dev python -m pytest tests/test_api_mcp.py tests/test_bounty_attempts.py -q -> 78 passed
• uv run --extra dev ruff check app/main.py app/mcp.py tests/test_api_mcp.py -> passed
• uv run --extra dev ruff format --check app/main.py app/mcp.py tests/test_api_mcp.py -> passed
• uv run --extra dev python -m mypy app/main.py app/mcp.py -> success
• uv run --extra dev python scripts/docs_smoke.py -> docs smoke ok
• git diff --check -> clean

No secrets, wallet private keys, private payout details, deployment credentials, private vulnerability details, or price claims are included.

[piaigmt]

/claim

I am taking a focused follow-up attempt for the remaining award slot. Scope: inspect the merged attempt-reservation implementation and submit a non-duplicate, targeted improvement only if there is a clear gap that preserves advisory semantics and existing bounty/ledger/payout behavior.