context/message previously defaulted to a <context source="…">…</context>
wrapper. No model is trained on a <context> tag either, and message
framing does not belong on the session surface: the surface projects the
durable log, and a caller that wants a frame formats its own content —
which the one heavy producer (workspace-context) already does with its own
<system-reminder> frame, opting out via 'raw'. The tag only added
machinery — ContextEnvelope plus an envelope field threaded through
InjectOptions, HookContext, the context/message event, and the agent-loop
inject/additionalContexts plumbing.
context/message now projects its content verbatim as a user-role message,
sharing one deriveEventMessage case with user/message and steering/message.
ContextEnvelope and every envelope field are removed; context/message.meta
still carries durable, model-hidden JSON state. Regenerated catalogs and
website API; refreshed the three affected keyless snapshots (envelope field
only; timestamps unchanged).
Broadens and renames the steering Agent Note to cover both envelope
removals as one decision.
Agent Note: .agents/notes/implemented/simplification/2026-07-20-unwrap-injected-content-envelopes.md
steering/message previously rendered inside a <steering source="…">
envelope like context/message. No model is trained on a <steering> tag,
so the framing is arbitrary markup the model was never taught to read;
recorded transcripts show it treating the instruction as third-party
metadata and refusing it. Framing also does not belong on the session
surface — a caller that wants a frame formats its own content. It now
projects verbatim as a plain user-role message; the <context> envelope is
untouched and renderTagged becomes context-only.
Agent Note: .agents/notes/implemented/simplification/2026-07-20-unwrap-steering-message-projection.md
toolPairingBalancedAfter previously answered by resolving a cached
positional successor and reading its before-balance, with a null-successor
depth fallback. Both queries are the same prefix property sampled at
adjacent cuts, so the cache now holds one per-cut balance sequence
(N nodes -> N+1 cuts) plus a seq->position index; before/after differ
only by a cut offset. The successor map, the duplicate rebuild/extend
fold loops, and the non-null assertion are gone, and the running counter
is named inProgressToolCalls. Docs describing the successor mechanism
are updated in place.
Review discussion converged on the industry shape (Claude Code caches
user context per conversation; Codex separates initial context from
diffs; Kimi appends at continuation boundaries to protect prompt
caching): stable openers belong in a compose-once prefix, mid-session
changes belong in append-only history — not in a per-request slot.
agent/session-prefix fires ONCE per loop instance, lazily on its first
request-building step: the composed Message[] is deep-frozen, cached on
the transmission bookkeeping, recorded as EpochHeader.messagePrefix on
the anchoring 'initial'/'resume' snapshot, and reused verbatim for
every request the instance sends — prefix stability is structural, not
a producer discipline, and a resume recomposes with attributable drift.
The request is messagePrefix + boundary snapshot.
The per-step RequestAdvice/RequestAdviceContext surface and the
messageSuffix header field are dropped: the tail slot had no consumer,
and every current update pattern (new AGENTS.md discovered, memory
update, skills change) routes through the existing append-only history
channels — inject(), tools/post-execute additionalContext,
prompt-submit additionalContext — each paid once and prefix-cached
thereafter. The messagePrefix delta arm stays for codec totality; the
loop never produces one in practice.
tianyicui's review: the seam name did not say what the event or its
types do. 'advice' reads both ways — advisory content for the model,
and AOP before/after advice woven around a join point (here the
derived history) without modifying it — so RequestAdvice.before/after
are self-describing. Types follow: RequestAdvice / RequestAdviceContext;
the logged EpochHeader fields keep their positional names
(messagePrefix/messageSuffix).
Also sharpens the core.md wording the review flagged as ambiguous:
before-advice sits in front of the ENTIRE derived history, directly
after the system slot (the conventional home for session-stable openers
— an AGENTS.md digest, a skills catalog), after-advice follows the
history's last message. Catalogs and doc graphs regenerated.
A new waterfall near request construction lets plugins contribute
request-ONLY messages framing the derived history: RequestMessages
{ before, after } with a frozen empty seed, fired inside the open step
after the agent/request config waterfall, so the step/start boundary
snapshot and its same-sync-frame invariant are untouched. The request
becomes messagePrefix + boundary snapshot + messageSuffix.
Contributions never enter session history — deriveMessages() is
unchanged — so the request header is their durable record:
EpochHeader gains messagePrefix/messageSuffix (canonical absence for
empty arrays), request/header-delta replaces either array whole with
an empty array encoding the transition back to absence, and the
dev-mode reconstruction cross-check now expects the folded header's
framing around the boundary derivation.
This is the seam for per-request advisory context that must be
model-visible now without becoming durable history (a skills catalog,
an environment reminder), keeping the base system prompt
workspace-independent and provider prefix caches stable. The docs
carry the channel cost model: session-frozen content belongs in
before, low-frequency change notices belong in durable history via
inject() (paid once, prefix-cached thereafter), and after is reserved
for small frequently-refreshed state snapshots re-paid on every
request they ride. No shipped producer yet, so ACP snapshot fixtures
are byte-identical.
Tianyi Cui
Yichen Jiang
Turtle
pku-xht
Hypatia May