Automatic compaction fires mid-conversation, right after the loop warmed
the provider's KV cache with the last routed request. The default
summarizer then issued a separate request whose prefix shared nothing
with that warm request — a bespoke summarizer system prompt followed by
the older history flattened to one rendered transcript string — so a
differing first token invalidated the entire cached prefix and every
compaction re-processed the whole replayed history twice.
Move the compaction directive from the FRONT (a fresh system prompt) to
the END (a trailing user message), and replay the last routed request's
own system prompt, tools, message prefix, and shadowed-region messages
verbatim via session.requestHeader() + deriveEventMessage. The auxiliary
call is now a genuine prefix-extension of the warm request, so the
provider reuses the cached tokens up to the trailing instruction.
SummarizationInput carries the replayed prefix instead of a flat string;
the now-unused renderTranscript/renderContentBlocks path is removed with
its spec. Cache reuse is best-effort (head compaction guarantees a hit;
a mid-range compaction or a differently-routed summarizer forgoes it),
correctness is not.
Retarget the pruning feature onto the merged compaction foundation.
Adapt content-only tool-result rewrite validation to the session-owned surface manager, migrate the demo wiring to repl-agent, and refresh generated type, catalog, and website contracts while preserving pressure and overflow pruning behavior.
Every packages/*/* README now carries a canonical '## Known Limitations and
Deferred Work' section: condensed, evidence-backed bullets for consumer-visible
gaps (unimplemented features, platform caveats, MVP cuts) and consciously
postponed work (TODO/FIXME/XXX markers, RFC deferrals still open). The ten
pre-existing ad-hoc variants ('What is NOT here (TODO)', 'Deferred',
'Limitations (MVP)', 'Known limitations (tracked TODOs)', ...) are normalized
into the canonical heading.
A new doc-sync gate, scripts/verify-readme-limitations.ts, enforces the shape:
exactly one limitations-like heading per package README, byte-equal to the
canonical h2, with at least one bullet; near-miss headings fail so variants
cannot creep back. Packages with genuinely nothing to declare (dsh-brand,
dsh-timeout, dsh-subagent-mock, dsh-app-boot) are whitelisted in the script and
must NOT carry the section; whitelist entries are validated against the scanned
package set so a rename fails loud.
Wired into the doc-sync chain (package.json) and the run-gates doc-sync leaf
set; the standing rule lands in packages/AGENTS.md and the adding-a-package
cookbook; decision record in
docs/rfc/implemented/process/2026-07-10-readme-known-limitations-gate.md
(RFC index regenerated).
Also fixes two stale '(deferred)' markers claiming dsh-compact-basic is
unimplemented (the dsh-compact seam README's package table and the seam's
module doc comment).
ds-review-bot critical (follow-up): on the first step of a resumed or
seeded/forked instance, auto-compaction ran before runStep composed
this instance's prefix, so the gate read the PREVIOUS instance's logged
prefix from the header fold — a contributor that grew across
resume/fork (skills added, AGENTS.md grown: exactly the
environment-dependent case) could under-gate and ship an over-window
first request.
The loop now composes agent/session-prefix before the instance's first
agent/pre-step (still once per instance; runStep just reads the cache),
and agent/pre-step carries the composed prefix to its listeners.
CompactService.compactIfNeeded gains the sessionPrefix parameter;
BasicCompactService.estimatePressure gates on the handed value — the
header-fold read is gone, so the estimate is exact at every step
including a resumed/forked instance's first. Composition moving before
the boundary snapshot also means a composing listener's session append
now joins the CURRENT request (documented on the seam).
New coverage: composition precedes pre-step and the seam receives the
composed prefix; cancel and disposal landing inside the composition
window drop the step cleanly; the compact gate test hands the prefix
directly.
ds-review-bot critical: compactIfNeeded estimated pressure from the
derived history + system prompt only, but every loop-built request also
carries EpochHeader.messagePrefix in front of the history — a
deployment at the window edge would under-estimate by exactly the
prefix, skip compaction, and ship an over-window request.
BasicCompactService now gates on estimatePressure(): the session prefix
read from the log's folded header + the derived history + the system
prompt. The fold is exact from the instance's second request on (and
from a resumed instance's first — the previous instance logged its
prefix); it is absent only before a fresh session's first request,
where the history is a single prompt and compaction is moot. Compaction
itself still shrinks history only — a prefix that alone approaches the
window is a configuration error no compactor fixes, same as the
documented single-unit-overflow stance.
The compact-basic README's opening line still described summarization
as routed through the agent request pipeline — corrected to the direct
one-shot llm/stream contract the rest of the package documents. The
proposed Code Mode RFC gets a premise-stale note: it names the old
full-request agent/request seam, which now shapes call config only —
re-map onto the log channels and system-prompt/assemble before
implementing from it.
compact/summary gains { model, maxTokens? } — the envelope the
summarize call actually used, reported by the backend that made the
call: summarize() now returns { summary, model, maxTokens? } instead of
bare blocks, so an overriding backend (template or remote summarizer)
reports its own envelope honestly and compactRegion logs it. 'Which
model wrote this summary' becomes answerable from the log alone, and
the one-shot summarize request — outside the loop's header-event fold
by design — is reconstructable from log + code (the reconstructability
RFC's scope statement).
The summarization request no longer dispatches agent/request — that seam
shapes the loop's conversation requests; a hand-built one-shot's
interception surface is llm/stream, like every other direct call. The
model comes from summarizationModel falling back to the agent's own. The
turn/step parameters existed on the compact seam only to feed the
agent/request dispatch and leave compactIfNeeded/compactRegion.
Groundwork for making every conversation request a pure function of the
session log (reconstructability RFC, this branch): the seam split keeps
the loop's request path as the single thing the log must explain.
Ported from worktree-prompt-prefix-stability (PR #162) where it was
review-converged; catalog and producer/consumer graphs regenerated.
A Codex review pass on the draft caught four real gaps and two solid
suggestions; all addressed except one pushed back on the merits:
- hooks-claude/hooks-codex: stderrSummaryMaxChars was the one new knob
with NO range validation — a negative/NaN cap would silently
misbehave inside slice(). Both bridges now assert a positive integer
at the TOP of apply() (before the config-file parse's early return,
so a bad value fails the load loudly), with rejection tests.
- tool-fs: the read caps count lines/chars/bytes, so positive-FINITE
was too loose (a fractional readLimit would flow into windowing
arithmetic and the schema description). All four now require a
positive integer, matching tool-web's cap.
- Doc drift the gates cannot catch: tool-web's README tools table
still named WEB_SEARCH_MAX_RESULTS as the mechanism; compact-basic's
README/module doc and the compaction-capability-seam RFC still
described estimation as fixed char/4 rather than the charsPerToken
default.
- subagent-acp: the dispose graces were tested only at the
startAcpRun level, so a regression that stopped threading plugin
config into AcpRunSpec would have survived. A provider-path test now
drives the trap-escalation scenario through ctx.subagents.start with
small config graces and bounds dispose at 4s.
Pushed back on: converting compact-basic's charsPerToken to a
schemastery field. The package's whole config is deliberately
hand-rolled (resolveConfig, every threshold REQUIRED with no default —
a documented design posture); one schemastery field beside it would be
incoherent. The knob is cordis.yml-reachable, defaulted, and validated,
which is what the convention requires; migrating the package to
schemastery wholesale is pre-existing config-surface hygiene out of
this change's scope.
Tianyi Cui
Yichen Jiang
Jinhua Zhu
Turtle
Hypatia May