Reconnect could never recover a terminal pane whose host-side process was gone (host restarted, or the workspace was never opened there): recovery only polled the tab inventory, which can never create the surface it is waiting for, so Reconnect spun for ~60s and gave up permanently.
Verified with a deterministic reproduction: on main the recovery path issues 51 inventory polls and zero activations across both an automatic online trigger and a manual Reconnect click; with this change the pane re-materializes, rebinds and accepts input.
Review found and fixed three further defects beyond the original change:
- an activation answered with a stale ready handle left the loop polling forever instead of re-activating;
- a non-missing activation failure (e.g. an older host without the method) never fell back to inventory;
- host-side, activating a parked surface permanently deleted the host tab, because an already-absent persisted binding was read as a competing owner *after* the destructive retirement had already run.
Independent review confirmed by mutation testing that every production change is covered by a test that fails when it is reverted, that only an authoritative inventory can retire a pane, that the loop is bounded under every failure mode, and that the unknown-liveness guard (proven death required before retirement) is intact.
Fixes STA-3002.
cbc005c8aa