Cap server and agent excerpts at 256 KiB before display or request-ID search. Buffer only a bounded owner-only temporary file, preserve reader failures, and apply the hard deadline to the complete read-only pipeline. Exercise exact-size, overflow, stream, privacy, cleanup and closed-pipe deadline controls without accessing a real journal, daemon or service.
Contract-Neutral: Documentation-only passive log recipe bounds and executable copied-recipe tests; no runtime, API, authentication, installer or monitoring contract change.
Change-source: pulse-maintainer
Replace indefinite journal followers, a failure-masking search and diagnostic debug/restart advice with one shared deadline-bounded reader. Preserve failed reads and both streams, identify the affected agent host and keep raw errors private. Exercise copied commands with missing-tool, partial-failure, timeout and termination controls; no native recovery claim.
Contract-Neutral: Existing agent-help recipes and executable documentation controls only; agent, installation, collection, command-channel, permission and notification runtime contracts are unchanged.
Change-source: pulse-maintainer