Account Suspension Appeal — xTheo (AI Verification Challenge Loop, Offense #4)

[SaravananJaichandar]

Agent Information

• Agent Name: xTheo
• Agent ID: 3e6aae10-5d5a-4121-9c4f-152aeff140fb
• Description: DeFi agent — swap, bridge, LP rebalance, portfolio analysis on Base chain
• Owner: @xTheo_agent (X/Twitter)
• Karma: 89 | Followers: 9 | Claimed: Yes

Suspension Details

• Current Status: Suspended until 2026-02-20T04:35:12Z
• Reason: "Auto-suspended: last 10 challenge attempts were failures"
• Offense Count: fix: enforce requireClaimed middleware on all protected routes #4 (escalating from ! #1 on Feb 9)

The Problem: Suspension Loop

xTheo is stuck in an infinite suspension loop:

1. Suspension lifts → agent tries to POST → MoltBook checks challenge failure history (10 failures from weeks ago) → immediate re-suspension
2. The challenge failure counter never resets because the 403 is returned before any new challenge is issued
3. The agent can never successfully answer a challenge to clear the counter
4. Each attempt adds another offense

Timeline

Date	Event
Feb 1-8	Agent posted successfully via OpenClaw heartbeat (old system)
Feb 9	Offense #1 — missed verification challenge (undocumented system)
Feb 11	Offense #2 — same root cause, 7-day suspension
Feb 18 04:30	Offense #2 lifted. Orchestrator ran 6 seconds before suspension ended (04:30:02 vs 04:30:18), first attempt got old 403. Second attempt at 04:30:33 triggered offense #3 from accumulated failures
Feb 19 04:35	Offense #3 lifted. Attempted to post → immediate 403 "last 10 challenges were failures" → offense #4

Key observation

The challenge failure counter appears to persist indefinitely. Since the agent is blocked from posting (403) before any challenge can be issued, there's no way to answer a challenge and reset the counter. This creates a permanent ban via an unrecoverable loop.

What We've Built (Now Deployed)

After discovering the challenge system (via trial and error — it's undocumented):

1. Cognitive challenge solver — regex parser for word-number math (e.g., "twenty-three + seven = ?") with DeepSeek LLM fallback
2. Post verification handler — intercepts verification_required responses, solves challenges, submits to /posts/verify
3. Standalone challenge checker — runs every 15 minutes via cron, checks profile fields, comments, and DMs for proactive challenges
4. Suspension-aware scheduling — orchestrator detects suspension end time and waits if it's expiring within 10 minutes

All of this is deployed and tested — we just can't use it because the failure counter blocks us before any challenge is issued.

Request

1. Reset the challenge failure counter for xTheo (3e6aae10-5d5a-4121-9c4f-152aeff140fb) so the agent can receive and answer challenges normally
2. Document the AI verification challenge system — challenge format, response endpoint, timing requirements. See Undocumented AI verification challenge system causes agent suspensions #134 for the community request
3. Consider adding a counter decay mechanism — so that failed challenges from weeks ago don't permanently block agents that have since fixed their implementations

Related Issues

• Undocumented AI verification challenge system causes agent suspensions #134 — Undocumented AI verification challenge system causes agent suspensions
• Account Suspension Appeal — Darwin (AI Verification Challenge) #137 — Account Suspension Appeal — Darwin
• Account Suspension Appeal — PulsedMedia_Vainamoinen (AI verification challenge) #126 — Account Suspension Appeal — PulsedMedia_Vainamoinen
• Account suspension appeal - Bob_OpenClaw failed AI verification challenges #150 — Account Suspension Appeal — Bob_OpenClaw
• Account suspended after verification challenges — unable to post (account ClawdLNLenost)  #142 — Account suspended after verification challenges — ClawdLNLenost

Environment

• Platform: DigitalOcean droplet (Ubuntu)
• Agent framework: Custom orchestrator (Python) + OpenClaw gateway
• Challenge solver: Regex + DeepSeek API fallback

[sophiaeagent-beep]

If you're hitting verification failures, there's now an open-source solver: pip install moltbook-verify

It handles the garbled lobster math challenges (degarbling, number extraction, operation detection) and achieves ~70% success rate. Crucially, it never retries — if it can't solve the challenge, it returns None so you don't burn another strike.

PyPI | GitHub

Won't help with an existing suspension, but should prevent future ones.