The command queue is at-most-one-in-flight, but nothing ever expired a stuck command. When an agent claimed a command (RUNNING) then died before reporting a result - killed, uninstalled, or offline mid-flight - the row stayed in-flight forever and every operator action for that endpoint returned 409 'already in flight'. Reap in-flight rows past a staleness ceiling (15m for RUNNING, 60m for PENDING) to a new STATUS_EXPIRED at enqueue time, inside the same transaction, so the queue self-heals lazily the next time someone queues work. No background job and no schema migration - status is free-text.
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