A hand-damaged preset was silent until the worst moment. An unparsable
composition listed as an ordinary selectable row and failed only at the
next session start — set as default, every new session failed. A
directory whose composition file was deleted vanished from the roster
while still occupying its id: copy answered "delete the existing preset
first" while remove answered "not found", a dead end.
Discovery now owns health: every id-shaped directory is a roster slot,
broken when its composition is missing or unloadable, checked with the
loader's own entryListSchema dialect (!!js included) so health never
rejects what the loader accepts. `broken` rides AgentPreset, the
agentPreset.list entry, and the UI row; mount/recompose/standingKeyFor
refuse broken up front with the discovery-reported reason, while
resolve/read/remove still answer. The section renders marked red cards —
unselectable, uncopyable, deletable, location kept on custom rows — and
both pickers drop broken rows entirely.
The cordis preset's persona now forbids editing the shipped install
(corrupting cordis would disable the mode itself) and points authoring
at $DSH_HOME/.agent-presets; its skill teaches preset.yml metadata, the
copy-first workflow, the one-escalation sandbox reality, and honest
verification. Exercised live: asked to edit the shipped composition the
composed agent refuses citing both rules; asked for real presets (simple
and complex) it lands them under the user root with one approved
escalation each and self-checks with the loader dialect.
The web YAML editor is gone. agentPreset.write (arbitrary composition
text) became agentPreset.copy { from, agentPreset, name? }: a host-side
whole-directory copy of ids the host resolves itself — symlinks
dereferenced, modes re-tightened to owner-only with owner-execute kept,
metadata rewritten to keep the source's description but never its name or
roster order. No composition text or path crosses the wire in either
authoring direction, and the entryListSchema/!!js concern dissolves with
assertComposition itself.
The settings section becomes: a read-only viewer over shipped
compositions, a copy dialog (id + optional display name) as the only
create entry, delete for custom rows, and a location action leading into
the preset's own files — agentPreset.openDocument { agentPreset } resolves
the directory host-side and opens it natively, or answers
{ opened: false, path } for the row to show as text where the deployment
has no desktop. agentPreset.list reports hasDocument beside authorable;
the gateway's nativeOpen config pins the capability where
canOpenNativePath platform detection would mislead. The privileged set is
now read/copy/openDocument/remove.
With files as the only composition editor, standing mounts grew
stamp-keyed generations: ensureStanding compares the composition file's
mtime+size and starts the next generation for later sessions, while every
joined session keeps the generation it runs on.
New keyless web lane (agent-preset-authoring, overlay pins
nativeOpen: false so goldens render one branch on every platform) drives
view/copy/reveal/delete end to end; the real-composition CLI e2e switches
to copy semantics.
Six review findings on the select surface, all reachable from the wire:
**Resume read the header, not the log.** The switch was recorded as
`agent-preset/selected` and every projection resolved from it, but `agentFor`
still composed from `inspected.meta.agentPreset` — the value written once at
creation. A blank session that switched and then ran turns came back after a
restart under the ORIGINAL preset, restoring that history under the tool set it
was not produced with, which is the mismatch this feature exists to prevent.
`inspected` already carries the events.
**Cold summaries dropped the preset entirely.** `summarizeCold` hand-copied
three header fields and omitted the fourth, so a restored session reported no
preset and the picker showed the deployment default. It now uses the same
projection the attached path does.
**`select` had no gate.** Two concurrent selects both passed the blank check;
the second `unmountPresetFor` then found no record, because the first had
already removed it, and both mounts installed into one agent layer. Selects on
one session now queue, and the blank check is re-read inside the queue. This is
not turn admission — a `session.prompt` racing a switch is the agent loop's to
reserve — but it closes the select-versus-select tear-down.
**A same-id restore was skipped.** The roster is a live directory, so "the same
inputs that worked a moment ago" does not hold: a changed file is exactly how a
same-id reselect fails, and skipping the restore left the agent with no
composition at all.
**`writable` was dead state**, initialized true and never set, so the row could
never disable. It now carries `settings.describe`'s bit — a browser that may
not write settings sees the current default and no control, rather than one
whose write answers `settings-not-exposed`.
**`list` was documented as id-ordered.** It is root-precedence order with each
root's own presets sorted, first root to supply an id winning.
A picker showed directory names, so the settings page could only ever list
`standard` / `core-web` / `cordis` and hope the reader knew what they meant.
A preset may now publish display text in an optional `preset.yml` beside
its composition, and the section renders cards — name, description, and the
one in use — instead of rows.
The file carries display text ONLY. `id` is the directory name and `trust`
comes from the root a preset was discovered under, so neither is writable
there: otherwise a locally authored preset could name itself into the
shipped set. It is a separate file because a composition is a top-level list
of plugin rows — YAML cannot carry sibling keys beside it, and a fake
metadata row would hand the Loader something to load.
Every read failure degrades to no metadata; absent, malformed, wrongly
typed, and blank all mean the same thing and the picker falls back to the
id. Presentation is not capability: a preset whose name is broken still
mounts.
The editor gained name and description fields above the YAML, and clearing
both removes the file rather than storing a blank name.
A composition is a file, but "edit it on the filesystem" is not a browser
affordance. The roster gains `read`/`write`/`remove` beside `select`, and
the browser gains a settings section over them: the presets as rows, one
composition open in a YAML editor at a time, and per-row default, duplicate,
and delete.
All four authoring methods are loopback-pinned. A composition names the
plugins a session runs, so reading one is reconnaissance, writing one is
arbitrary capability, and selecting one can move a session onto a preset
that edits the live runtime. `agentPreset.list` deliberately stays ordinary
and now reports `authorable`, so a surface knows whether creating is
possible at all rather than offering a button whose save always fails.
Authoring starts by duplicating: a shipped preset opens read-only because
the deployment's copy is what a broken local one is compared against. Ids
are contained before they become directory names, and the text is parsed
with the loader's own schema, so a save cannot leave a file no session
could load.
Fixes a defect the real-composition test found: a preset written under the
user's home could never mount, because the loader resolves a row against the
composition's own directory and Node's `node_modules` walk from there never
reaches the installed harness. The mount now records the host base and sends
bare specifiers there, leaving relative paths resolving from the preset.
Also closes the coverage the earlier surfaces in this stack shipped without —
the General row, the composer seat, and the plugin halves now have tests.
`agentPreset.select` recomposes one session's agent from a different preset.
It is allowed only while the session is blank — once a turn has run, that
history was produced under the preset's tools and swapping them would strand
logged tool calls, so the attempt answers `agent-preset-locked`.
The agent and the session survive; only the preset subtree is swapped. That
was forced by what the host actually owns: api-proxy discards the `AgentHandle`
it creates, and there is no delete RPC, so neither disposing nor recreating the
session was available. Swapping the subtree is also the better answer — the
session id, its workspace attachment, and its projections all stay put.
`recompose` is unmount-then-mount because two compositions cannot coexist: both
would register the same tool names into one layer. So it resolves the new
preset BEFORE tearing anything down (an unknown id is a no-op) and restores
the previous composition when the new one fails to mount, rather than leaving
the agent with no tools at all. Both paths are pinned by test.
Also restores the English half of the `agentPreset.list` README paragraph,
which was lost before the previous commit — and `verify-translation-pairing
--write` recorded the pair as consistent anyway, because it records whatever
state it finds rather than checking the two sides say the same thing.
`agentPreset.list` gives a browser the deployment's roster so it can offer a
choice when starting a session. Each row carries the id, its `trust`, and
whether it is the current default.
`trust` is on the wire deliberately: a `user` preset is exactly as privileged
as the plugins it names, so a surface that offers one alongside a shipped
preset can say which is which rather than presenting both as vetted.
The domain is read-only. A preset is a composition on disk, so authoring one
is a filesystem act rather than an RPC; and a deployment composing no presets
answers with an empty roster rather than an error, because sharing the host
composition is a valid deployment.
The RPC map made every registration site a type error, so the route, the
response-schema table, the service delegate, and the browser fixture are all
wired rather than only the ones I remembered.
Yichen Jiang