I think you are right!

The puzzling bit is that replication agents continue happily along, as though nothing were the matter. You have to look in the application event log...

we have the same problem - did you figure it out?

Log Name: Application

Source: MSSQLSERVER

Description:

Replication-Replication Distribution Subsystem: agent .......

right... so I found a blog that talked about a similar problem and referred to the "useless, truncated message" you get when these plans fail. I liked that 😉

so...

Yes, the quote is from job history. It never tells you very much! Is there a query that gives more complete information?