macOS beta chat errors: agent bridge fails to start

[Git-on-my-level]

Summary

PostHog shows a current macOS beta/newer Desktop chat regression where chat agent requests fail with:

AI not available: bridge failed to start

This is concentrated on beta/newer builds and is the dominant beta chat error in the last 24h.

Evidence

Source: PostHog project OMI / Omi, checked 2026-07-09 ~18:00 UTC.

24h macOS Desktop channel summary:

• Beta/newer than stable: 24 chat-error users / 143 chat-error events across 110 active users (~21.8% of active beta/newer users)
• Stable/prod 0.12.0+12000: 18 users / 37 events across 694 active users (~2.6%)

Dominant beta/newer error:

• AI not available: bridge failed to start: 122 events / 19 users

Breakdown for the bridge-start error in the last 24h:

Version	Build	Events	Users
0.12.58	12058	7	7
0.12.59	12059	47	6
0.12.62	12062	13	6
0.12.57	12057	6	6
0.12.56	12056	6	6
0.12.60	12060	18	5
0.12.61	12061	8	4
0.12.55	12055	4	4
0.12.54	12054	13	3

Current appcast at check time:

• Stable/prod: 0.12.0+12000
• Beta: 0.12.62+12062

Why this seems separate from existing issues

Open issue #9264 tracks a larger Desktop PTT / voice-turn state-machine refactor. This issue is narrower: current beta/newer Desktop chat agent bridge startup failures, visible to users as chat errors.

Suggested investigation

1. Identify which bridge process/service is failing to start for these chat turns.
2. Break down failures by adapter/provider and whether the bridge binary/package exists locally.
3. Capture structured error fields for bridge launch path, executable path, exit code, stderr, and install/setup state.
4. Verify latest beta 0.12.62+12062 on a clean machine and on an upgraded machine.

Acceptance criteria

• Beta Desktop chat can start the local agent bridge reliably on supported installs.
• chat_agent_error for AI not available: bridge failed to start drops to baseline.
• Telemetry includes enough structured fields to distinguish missing install, launch failure, crash, and provider/config errors.