First off, thanks for putting this together as there is very little documentation about the escrow operations!

That said, I'm following everything here and frankly I cannot see how this worked for you.

I'm trying to sign an escrow_release as the agent and I get this:

I dove head first into the matrix and found the steemd code that handles this with the following line # 952:

FC_ASSERT( o.who == e.from || o.who == e.to, "Only 'from' (${f}) and 'to' (${t}) can release funds from a non-disputed escrow", ("f", e.from)("t", e.to) );

This clearly shows that the agent cannot release the escrow. However, that's exactly what you did so I'm beyond confused.

I've even walked recent commits to this file, there were a few, and it doesn't appear this line of code was changed.

What am I missing here? How is it possible for the agent to sign the escrow_release operation outside of a dispute?

I think I sent you a request on Discord as well if you wanna chat there I'm @blervin#9759