AI-Generated Python Server Passed Health Checks But Failed Clean Shutdown Test

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A developer testing MonkeyCode's free AI model generated a minimal Python HTTP server that appeared functional during standard smoke testing. The server responded correctly to health checks but revealed a critical flaw when a shutdown signal was sent while a slow request was still in progress. Because ThreadingHTTPServer does not use daemon threads by default, the process refused to exit until all active handler threads completed, causing a 30-second hang. The author devised an 'exit contract' test that sends SIGTERM mid-request and requires the process to terminate within a fixed time window, which the generated code failed. Adding a single line — setting daemon_threads to True — resolved the issue, highlighting that graceful shutdown behavior is often overlooked in both human-written and AI-generated server code.

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