# Agent Note: Durable subagent catalog and list_agents

Status: implemented

English | [中文](2026-07-22-durable-subagent-catalog-and-list-agents.zh.md)

## Problem

Continuable background subagents expose a stable child id and persist reconstruction data in that child's session, so `send_message` can resume a known child without any listing operation. Discovery has two consumers with different needs: a UI may show both one-shot work and continuable conversations, while the model should receive only children on which `send_message` is meaningful. The durable Session and Activation design is owned by [continuable subagents](../../implemented/feature/2026-07-28-continuable-subagent-conversations.md); this note owns the shared durable inventory and the model-facing projection.

Enumeration must cross-check immutable session lineage, descriptor validity, and the live-preferred session corpus without loading or resuming an Agent merely to display it. Trace lineage supplies candidates but cannot distinguish an ordinary session fork from a subagent, so the child log needs durable classification. The contract must also define how lifecycle mode, missing or corrupt records, deletion, unsupported versions, and repeated child-log loads affect service and tool consumers.

## Decision

**Superseded read path.** [Subagent list identity via the projection unit](../architecture/2026-08-06-subagent-list-identity-projection.md) replaces this note's enumeration and per-child read design: `listChildren` now merges the live session store with optional session persistence directly and serves each child's mode/label from the registered `subagent` projection unit — no session-query dependency, no list-time descriptor scan — and that note owns the current listing semantics, including the diagnostic mapping. This note remains the authority for descriptor persistence, the mode-discriminated descriptor as durable identity, direct-parent authorization, and the model-facing `list_agents` projection; the trace-based read mechanics below are decision context, not current behavior.

Parent-to-child enumeration is a service capability with consumer-specific projections. `SubagentService.listChildren(parentSessionId: SessionId)` ([subagent/src/index.ts](../../../../packages/subagent/subagent/src/index.ts)) does the following:

- use `ctx.sessionQuery.traceSession(parentSessionId)` to obtain the parent's direct live-preferred child sessions;
- read and validate each candidate's `subagent/descriptor` event without activating the child;
- silently omit candidates without a descriptor, and omit a candidate that becomes unavailable or has a corrupt or unsupported descriptor with a per-child diagnostic;
- expose every local session-backed subagent whose supported valid descriptor carries a durable creation `label` and `mode`, regardless of whether its provider is currently registered;
- report corpus activity separately as `running` or `inactive`, without implying completion or resumability;
- return every resulting child in stable `createdAt` ascending, child-id ascending order.

Every ordinary local start receives a `one-shot` descriptor with an optional caller-owned display label, while the continuation manager persists a labeled `continuable` descriptor containing its additional reconstruction fields. The model-facing delegation tool already owns a short `description` and supplies it for one-shot display; lower-level callers such as workflows need not invent presentation metadata. The model-facing `list_agents` adapter filters the service result to continuable children and maps `inactive` to its existing `complete` presentation; a UI can consume both modes and choose an id-based fallback for unlabeled one-shot history. Descriptor persistence, by-id lookup, direct-parent authorization, and provider-independent cold resume remain owned by the implemented Activation contract. Listing consumes those facts but cannot weaken them or invent a second descriptor representation.

### Enumeration decision

The first implementation consumes `ctx.sessionQuery.traceSession(parentSessionId)` and considers only the trace's first-level descendants. The target may be live or persisted; tracing the logical corpus does not load or resume an Agent. Session query already merges `ctx.sessions` with `ctx.sessionPersistence` using live precedence, preserves immutable-header consistency, derives direct-child lineage from `SessionHeader.parentSession`, and sorts siblings by `createdAt` ascending and child id ascending. `listChildren()` does not reproduce that corpus logic or inspect the continuation manager's process-local Activation map.

Corpus construction precedes per-child descriptor inspection. A failure while building the initial trace, including persistence listing failure, a live/persisted header conflict anywhere in the observed corpus, or invalid target lineage, fails the whole `list_agents` call because no trustworthy candidate set exists. Only failures after a successful trace are isolated to one candidate; "corrupt child" in that per-child contract therefore means corrupt loaded event surface or descriptor data, not a corpus-level header conflict.

Session lineage is broader than subagent identity: an ordinary `ctx.sessions.fork()` also creates a direct child. The session header gains no `kind` discriminator; each candidate must instead contain exactly one valid `subagent/descriptor` event in its own suffix. `SubagentService.start()` resolves `{ mode: 'one-shot', provider, label? }` before ordinary provider dispatch, while the continuation manager snapshots and seeds `{ mode: 'continuable', ...composition }` during initial child creation. The local in-process one-shot driver appends its resolved descriptor only during initial creation, and cold resume appends no further descriptor; a second event is corruption rather than evidence of another Activation. Agent creation is the one-shot publication boundary: a rejection means no child was published, while prompt, turn, cancellation, and infrastructure outcomes after publication settle through the returned run without hiding its id. The descriptor event is the sole evidence that a traced child is a session-backed subagent. A candidate without it is an ordinary fork, a remote child without a local session record, or another non-subagent session and is omitted without a diagnostic.

The published logical record is also the activity source: `SessionRecord.live` means `running`, while `live: false, persisted: true` means `inactive`. Activity comes directly from the trace and causes no additional child-log load. `inactive` encodes neither successful completion nor resumability: it may describe settled one-shot history or a continuable child for which `send_message` can materialize another Activation. Conversely, `running` says only that the session is live: a live continuable Agent outside the continuation manager's matching Activation still appears as `running`, but `send_message` rejects it as an ownership conflict. A child is not visible before its session is published, and no process-local Activation entry is added as a second candidate or activity source. Listing is a snapshot that may race publication, disposal, or a later message; `send_message` remains the authoritative delivery-time operation.

The subagent service keeps `sessionQuery` optional so start and follow-up remain available without it. Its public `listChildren(parentSessionId: SessionId)` method resolves the optional service and dynamically loads the optional session-query runtime only when called; ordinary subagent imports, start, and follow-up therefore do not evaluate that package. Listing belongs directly to `SubagentService`: it interprets the query's lineage, events, and live state without resolving the Activation-based continuation manager or consulting Agent registrations, Activations, or providers, so a deployment with sessions, `subagents`, and `sessionQuery` can list even when `agents` is absent. The method throws `SubagentError` with stable code `SUBAGENT_CONTROL_SESSION_QUERY_UNAVAILABLE` before loading the runtime or doing query work when the query service is absent. `@deepseek-ai/dsh-tool-subagent-control` exports separately loadable tool plugins: the `send_message` adapter requires only `subagents`, while the `list_agents` adapter requires both `subagents` and `sessionQuery` at load. A deployment may therefore use `send_message` without installing or loading session query; the list-tool fiber remains inactive until the required service is available, while another direct service consumer receives the same explicit call-time contract. This dependency posture — the optional `sessionQuery`, its error code, and the list tool's load requirement — is part of the superseded read path: the current codes (`SUBAGENT_CONTROL_PROJECTIONS_UNAVAILABLE`, `SUBAGENT_CONTROL_SESSION_STORE_UNAVAILABLE`) and the narrowed load requirement live in the [superseding note](../architecture/2026-08-06-subagent-list-identity-projection.md).

`listChildren(parentSessionId, signal?)` forwards the caller's signal to `traceSession()` and the conditional exact `readEvent()` operation. `listEvents()` has no cancellation parameter, so the listing path checks the signal before and after that await and after each candidate settles. If any query operation rejects after the signal aborts, the service normalizes the result to `SubagentError` with stable code `CANCELLED`; a backend abort error or a diagnostic-mapped query error cannot escape or become a successful partial listing.

This descriptor-read path is the correctness baseline, not a claim that work is linear only in the number of direct children. Let D be the number of direct-child candidates, C be the number of persisted sessions scanned by each persistence listing, and L_i be the size of candidate i's full log. One corpus trace is followed by `sessionQuery.listEvents(childId)` for every candidate. A candidate with no descriptor is omitted, and one with multiple descriptors is diagnosed without another read; only a candidate with exactly one descriptor is loaded again through `sessionQuery.readEvent({ sessionId: childId, seq })`. The read must return the same immutable session header observed by the trace, including the direct-parent relationship, and its target must still be the located descriptor event; a mismatch is per-child corruption. In the persisted-only worst case, each exact read repeats `persistence.list()`, loads the full child log, and clones its events, for O(D × C + Σ L_i) work up to constant factors; a candidate with exactly one descriptor pays those costs twice, while other candidates pay them once. A live candidate similarly takes one detached in-memory snapshot of its full log, or two when its descriptor is read. Session query resolves persisted candidates through the persistence seam's non-mutating `inspect()` read, which returns the valid stored prefix without repairing a torn tail or closing an interrupted turn, so listing is storage-read-only; repair remains the resume path's concern. The first version accepts these repeated reads as the no-index correctness baseline, but deployments must treat total corpus and child-log size—not only direct-child count—as the capacity constraint. Listing creates no Agent and appends no catalog, descriptor, or repair event. The model-hidden descriptor remains outside the conversation surface and survives compaction, so compacted and uncompacted children must enumerate identically.

If measured scale later requires an index, that index is derived state: session headers and child descriptors remain authoritative, and rebuilding or corruption fallback must reproduce the same results. An index cannot become a second authorization source or make an unpublished child visible.

### `list_agents` contract

`SubagentService.listChildren(parentSessionId: SessionId)` returns `Promise<SubagentListEntry[]>`, one array preserving the trace's candidate order rather than separate child and diagnostic arrays. `SubagentListEntry` is a closed union discriminated by its readonly `kind`:

- `kind: 'child'` carries readonly `id: SessionId`, `mode: 'one-shot' | 'continuable'`, and `activity: 'running' | 'inactive'`; a continuable child carries `label: string`, while a one-shot child carries `label?: string`;
- `kind: 'diagnostic'` carries readonly `id: SessionId` and `reason: 'corrupt' | 'unsupported' | 'unavailable'`.

A valid descriptor produces one child entry, a per-child inspection failure produces one diagnostic entry, and a candidate without a descriptor produces no entry. `mode` is durable creation policy; `activity` is a process-local corpus snapshot. Activity is neither `AgentStatus`, the manager's internal Activation state, nor a durable outcome, and the result does not expose the internal `createdAt` sorting key. Exact Activation states and durable outcomes such as successful completion, failure, cancellation, and stop reason require a separate durable activation record and are outside this feature.

The model-facing `list_agents` tool takes no arguments, derives `parentSessionId` from the current execution Agent, and is a thin adapter in `@deepseek-ai/dsh-tool-subagent-control`. It keeps diagnostics, drops `one-shot` child entries, maps a continuable child's `running` activity to `running` and `inactive` activity to `complete`, then renders `<id> [<status>] — <label>` or `<id> [diagnostic: <reason>]` in the surviving trace order. An empty projection renders `(no subagents)`.

Diagnostics use three fixed reasons. Malformed event surfaces, conflicting headers discovered during an exact child load, a read result whose immutable header differs from the traced candidate or no longer names the requested direct parent, a target that is no longer the located descriptor event, malformed descriptor content, and multiple descriptor events map to `corrupt`. An unknown descriptor version maps to `unsupported`. `SESSION_QUERY_SESSION_NOT_FOUND`, `SESSION_QUERY_EVENT_NOT_FOUND`, and `SESSION_QUERY_PERSISTENCE_FAILED` from a per-child read map to `unavailable`. This phase boundary is intentional: a persistence outage during the initial trace fails the operation, while the same outage beginning during candidate reads may produce one identical `unavailable` diagnostic per affected child; the first version neither coalesces those diagnostics nor promotes them to a global failure. A missing descriptor is instead a non-subagent exclusion without a diagnostic. Configuration/window errors and unrecognized failures are not child diagnostics and propagate as operation failures. Each diagnostic identifies the child id and reason without exposing model-hidden descriptor content; the candidate is omitted while healthy siblings remain visible. Sessions outside the trace's direct descendants are never read and produce no diagnostic.

Diagnostics are transient query results, not session events or catalog state. Deriving a diagnostic performs no additional load beyond the `listEvents()` or conditional `readEvent()` operation whose result produced it.

The first version has no child deletion operation. If later product behavior deletes child sessions, persistence listing naturally drops a deleted child; any future derived index must remove or tombstone the same entry so `list_agents` cannot retain stale state.

## Alternatives considered

**Fold listing into the activation RFC.** Descriptor-by-id persistence and cold resume do not require parent-to-child enumeration. Keeping the query separate lets `send_message` land without taking on listing states, scanning performance, or deletion behavior.

**Rebuild lineage directly from `SessionPersistence.list()`.** This duplicates session query's live-preferred corpus merge, immutable-header consistency checks, direct-child tracing, and deterministic ordering. Listing uses the existing trusted query service and adds only subagent-specific descriptor validation and rendering.

**List every traced child session.** `parentSession` proves lineage but does not prove that the child is a subagent: ordinary session forks share that header field. Listing must also read and validate the descriptor.

**Add a `kind` discriminator to `SessionHeader`.** The header would still not carry the reconstruction data required to validate or resume a continuable subagent, so listing would have to read the descriptor anyway. Treating the descriptor as the sole subagent discriminator avoids a second classification source.

**Use the live Agent registry as the catalog.** Activations are deliberately disposed after settlement, and registry state disappears on restart. It cannot support durable discovery.

**Use the process-local Activation map as a second catalog.** This exposes manager residency but couples a session-discovery query to materialization and settlement, introduces another ordering clock, and makes the same child change candidate source during its lifetime. The first version lists published logical sessions only and treats `SessionRecord.live` as its snapshot status.

**Route listing through the Activation-based continuation manager.** The manager owns residency and requires `agents`, while listing interprets only session-query facts. Routing the read through that manager would impose an unrelated runtime service and make discovery disappear with Activation control, so `SubagentService` owns listing directly.

**Filter by current provider availability.** Provider registration is process-local and may change while the descriptor remains durable. Filtering can hide both a persisted child and a live child even though continuation is provider-independent. Listing therefore establishes durable identity from the descriptor, while `send_message` performs the authoritative delivery-time authority and residency checks.

**Persist a parent-session catalog event.** Direct-child headers already provide the durable enumeration seed, and the child descriptor is the reconstruction authority. A second parent log duplicates state and creates cross-session ordering and stale-entry behavior without helping by-id resume.

**Require a display label on every raw start.** This guarantees uniform UI text but makes a presentation concern part of workflow, transport, test, and programmatic start contracts. The raw request keeps the label optional; high-level delegation and continuation APIs supply one where they already own the concept, and UI consumers choose a fallback for unlabeled one-shot children.

**Fail the whole listing when one child cannot be loaded.** This makes corruption impossible to overlook, but one damaged sibling removes visibility into every healthy child. Per-child diagnostics preserve discovery while keeping each omission explicit.

**Return separate child and diagnostic arrays.** Separate arrays introduce two ordering domains or require exposing another sort key to reconstruct candidate order. One discriminated entry array preserves the trace order while keeping child and diagnostic fields type-safe.

**Read candidates through the repairing `load()` path.** Reusing resume's `load()` semantics would let discovery durably close an interrupted tail early, but turns a listing query into a mutating operation and couples its failure modes to write coordination. Session query's corpus reads already use the non-mutating `inspect()` contract, so listing stays storage-read-only and leaves tail repair to the resume path that needs it.

**Paginate or cap the query now (deferred).** This bounds one result, but makes model discovery stateful and can hide older children unless the model follows a cursor. The first version has no cursor, page arguments, or candidate-limit configuration and returns the complete stably ordered set; a service-level bound remains a later decision if measured scale requires it.

## Testing

- `packages/subagent/subagent/tests/service.spec.ts` pins descriptor v2 parsing for both modes and proves an unlabeled raw start resolves a one-shot descriptor before provider dispatch. `packages/subagent/subagent-inprocess/tests/subagent-inprocess.spec.ts` proves the local driver appends that descriptor inside the initial turn, returns the published id when cancellation lands in the factory-to-run handoff, and keeps result and handle-disposal failures on separate channels. Delegation-tool tests pin propagation of their existing display description and preserve independent result and disposal diagnostics.
- `packages/subagent/subagent/tests/list-children.spec.ts` pins the current read path against a real composition of the session store, JSONL persistence, spawn/fork providers, the subagent service, and the projection registry — no query service — keylessly: live-only listing without persistence; loud `SUBAGENT_CONTROL_PROJECTIONS_UNAVAILABLE` and `SUBAGENT_CONTROL_SESSION_STORE_UNAVAILABLE` even with zero children; the three-rung ladder (a live child never inspected, a cold child inspected exactly once, and the cache-hit, absent-key, absent-service, and poisoned-row second-rung cases); last-wins over multiple descriptors; malformed payloads and unknown versions diagnosed as `corrupt`; a failed cold inspection as one `unavailable` diagnostic retried on the next listing; a fork seed's ancestor descriptor listed under that identity; foreign-unit fold failures contained per child as `corrupt` on both the live and cold paths; `createdAt`-then-id ordering without ordinary forks; provider absence without child omission; compacted/uncompacted twins listing identically; a persisted-listing failure failing the whole enumeration; cancellation normalized to stable `CANCELLED`; and typed stable error codes. A companion spec (retired together with the query-backed read path) rejected eager evaluation of the optional session-query runtime while importing the ordinary subagent surface.
- `packages/subagent/tool-subagent-control/tests/list-agents.spec.ts` pins the `list_agents` schema (no parameters), the continuable-only projection that omits a healthy one-shot sibling while preserving diagnostics, the fixed child/diagnostic/empty text forms, an end-to-end settled-child listing with its durable label, forwarding of the tool cancellation signal, the no-agent rejection, the narrowed load requirement without `sessionQuery`, and HMR disposal.
- The keyless ACP snapshot scenario `subagent-list-agents` (examples/acp-agent) fences its second parent turn on a snapshot-only `subagent/end` marker, then executes `list_agents` for real against the subagent service, the projection registry, and JSONL persistence, rendering `<id> [complete] — <label>`.
- The keyless snapshot scenario `subagent-diagnostic` (examples/headless-agent) pins the current listing's model-visible diagnostic classification, including a descriptor-less settled child surfacing as a `corrupt` diagnostic.
- The keyless ACP snapshot scenario `subagent-published-run-failure` publishes a real one-shot child, injects independent run-result and handle-disposal failures, and preserves both diagnostics in the parent tool result.

## Consequences

- Session tracing observes the complete logical corpus, then descriptor validation reads every direct-child log once and candidates with exactly one descriptor twice. In the persisted-only worst case, work is O(D × C + Σ L_i), not merely O(D), because each exact read rescans persistence and loads and clones the full candidate log. A later derived index must preserve the same authorization, per-child diagnostic, and fallback behavior.
- Corpus construction is an all-or-nothing trust boundary: one live/persisted header conflict fails the initial trace and hides otherwise healthy siblings. Per-child isolation begins only after that trace succeeds.
- A torn child tail is surfaced, not repaired: the non-mutating `inspect()` read returns the valid stored prefix, so a child interrupted mid-write may list from a shorter log until the resume path's repairing load closes it.
- There is no deletion operation, so persisted children remain listed for as long as their sessions remain in persistence even though live Agent resources remain bounded by resident Activations.
- The service returns every direct session-backed subagent and diagnostic without a cursor or candidate cap. Stable ordering makes the result deterministic; the model projection avoids one-shot context growth but remains unbounded in the number of continuable children.
- `running` and `inactive` are process-local corpus snapshots, not outcomes or delivery promises. Another process may activate a persisted child while this process reports it as `inactive`; cross-process accuracy requires a shared lease.
- Persisting lifecycle mode is a pre-release descriptor-format change: version 2 rejects old version-1 descriptors as unsupported. Every local session-backed start now pays one small log event so UI and other service consumers can classify one-shot history without replaying model-visible tool results.
- One-shot session persistence remains best-effort. A one-shot child is visible while live and remains discoverable after disposal only when its session checkpoint reached persistence; unlike continuable activation, catalog participation does not add a required final flush or turn a persistence failure into a run failure. Continuable starts need no eager descriptor flush because the descriptor rides in the creation seed and every Activation disposal path performs the required final checkpoint, including after blocked prompt admission.
- Remote ACP one-shot runs remain outside the catalog because they publish no local child session for `traceSession()` to discover. Enumerating them would require a separate durable local record rather than pretending remote lifecycle ids are session ids.
