diff --git a/spike/x86/survey.sh b/spike/x86/survey.sh
index 85d9da0..8a245f5 100755
--- a/spike/x86/survey.sh
+++ b/spike/x86/survey.sh
@@ -75,8 +75,12 @@ out=$(mktemp -d); trap 'rm -rf "$out"' EXIT
 # different lines, so the diff is a report about scheduling rather than about
 # lowering, and it fails the alias every run. dev-repl outlives the timeout in
 # the same way and is not listed, because it prints nothing and the two
-# truncations are both empty.
-forever="dev-loop dev-watch dev-chatty"
+# truncations are both empty. agent-auto is here for the dev-loop reason with a
+# different clock: its ticks wait on an agent connection that never comes when
+# it is run standalone, both backends sit until the timeout, and what each has
+# printed by then (a randomized socket path among it) is not a lowering
+# comparison. test_agent.ml is where that program's behaviour is asserted.
+forever="dev-loop dev-watch dev-chatty agent-auto"
 
 # There used to be a second exclusion list here, holding the five dyn
 # programs, and its note said to take a name off it when the backend grew the