Address review: `agentType` was a Claude-Code concept (`subagent_type`) that
does not fit our own subagent seam — nothing in the harness interprets it, and
its only consumer was the CC-dialect hook bridge. Rather than let a foreign
concept sit on the core seam, remove it:
- `SubagentStartRequest`, `SubagentRunInfo`, `SubagentRunEndInfo`: drop the
`agentType` field; the `subagent/start`/`subagent/end` payloads now carry
`provider`/`id` (+ end `stopReason`/`lastAssistantMessage`) only.
- `dsh-tool-subagent`: drop `Config.agentType` and its request plumbing.
- Tests: keep the lastAssistantMessage / clone-containment / reject-path
coverage (rewritten to not assert agentType); delete the two tool-subagent
tests that only exercised agentType forwarding (dead behavior).
- Docs: retitle + rewrite the subagent-observe-enrich RFC to the one shipped
enrichment (lastAssistantMessage), with a note on why agentType was dropped;
update rfc/README index title, both subagent READMEs, and the
core-data-structures/subagent.md type-equiv block + prose; regenerate catalog.
The CC bridge (PR-F) will feed Claude Code's own default matcher value
"general-purpose" for its SubagentStart/Stop agent_type matcher instead.
A hooks bridge translating SubagentStart/SubagentStop needs to know WHICH kind of
subagent ran and WHAT it produced — Claude Code's hooks carry subagent_type and the
child's final message. Enrich the existing lifecycle emits to match, observe-only:
- agentType: an optional caller-supplied subagent-kind label (CC's subagent_type),
added to SubagentStartRequest and carried VERBATIM onto both subagent/start
(SubagentRunInfo) and subagent/end (SubagentRunEndInfo). The seam never interprets
it. dsh-tool-subagent threads it from a new optional Config.agentType, so a
deployment exposing multiple subagent kinds (one tool load per kind) labels each.
- lastAssistantMessage: the child's final output (SubagentResult.output), added to
SubagentRunEndInfo on the settle path so an observer sees what the subagent
produced without holding the run. Absent on the reject path (no result produced).
Strictly observe-only: both events stay plain emits (subagent/end fires from a
detached .then and awaits no listener). A control-flow subagent/end (awaited
waterfall returning a decision) would need the emit→waterfall reshape, awaiting
listeners before settling, and a provider resume capability — deferred to the
background/steering redesign (FIXME(subagent-continuation) anchors it). RFC:
implemented/feature/2026-06-30-subagent-observe-enrich.md.
Reshape the agent's interception surface so every seam returns a small, typed
Decision union, and the set covers the hook points a CC/Codex bridge (and a
native plugin) needs. "Native hooks" are not a package — a native hook is just a
cordis plugin on these canonical events; the bridges (a later PR) only translate
an external protocol onto the same surface.
dsh-agent:
- NEW agent/session-start(agent, source) emit (once before turn 1; SessionStartSource
startup|resume|clear|compact) — a pure notification, seeds context via inject().
- NEW agent/prompt-submit waterfall → PromptDecision (allow, optionally rewriting the
prompt or attaching additionalContext, or block).
- RESHAPE agent/turn-continuation boolean → ContinuationDecision ({action:'stop'} |
{action:'continue', reason?}; a continue reason is recorded as next-step steering).
- New HookContext envelope (required source — inject() would mislabel a missing one).
dsh-tools: split the single tools/execute waterfall into tools/pre-execute
(PreToolDecision allow/deny/ask gate) and tools/post-execute (PostToolDecision
accept/block, optionally replacing content or attaching additionalContext). Core
dispatch sits between as plain code; the tool body keeps its inner try/catch so a
thrown tool still reaches post-execute as an isError. ToolExecutionResult gains
additionalContext (ferried to the loop's per-step buffer). Input rewrite is
deliberately NOT offered (a proposed RFC designs it consistently).
dsh-session: new `rejected` TurnEndReason — a turn whose whole prompt batch was
blocked by prompt-submit.
agent-loop firing points: session-start emitted at create (source threaded —
startup for create/fork, resume for resume()); prompt-submit per drained message
with the always-open-turn rule (a fully-blocked batch is a zero-step rejected
turn); the continuation reshape; post-tool additionalContext buffered and appended
after all tool/results (adjacency). ACP codec maps rejected→cancelled.
A worked native-plugin example (interception.spec.ts) proves all four seams compose
end-to-end through the real loop with NO hook/* events (those belong to the bridge
lib). All existing tools/execute + turn-continuation tests migrated. The
tool-subagent abort test now aborts after a microtask so it still exercises the
live onAbort bridge (execute() awaits pre-execute before the body runs).
RFCs: implemented/feature/2026-06-30-interception-seams.md (the reshape) +
proposed/feature/2026-06-30-pre-tool-input-rewrite.md (the deferred rewrite design).
addEventListener('abort') does not fire for a signal already aborted before the
listener is added, so a parent step cancelled before the subagent tool ran
would never reach the child — the tool leaned on each provider re-checking
request.signal itself, leaving the bridge's own claim incomplete for any
provider that relies on run.cancel(). Re-check exec.signal.aborted right after
registering and cancel explicitly. Regression test uses a spy provider that
only reacts to cancel() (never inspects the signal); proven to hang without the
fix (result never settles) and settle aborted with it.
The first OUT-OF-PROCESS subagent backend, proving the seam generalizes past the
in-process backends. @deepseek-ai/dsh-subagent-acp runs each child agent in a
spawned subprocess, driven over the Agent Client Protocol as the CLIENT — the
direction-inverted twin of the dsh-acp server bridge. Point the configured
command at the acp-agent example and the harness talks to its own process.
- Fresh process per run: start spawns, runs one ACP session (initialize →
newSession → prompt), dispose kills the subprocess and awaits its exit.
- Minimal client stub: advertises no fs/terminal; accumulates agent_message_chunk
text as the result output; auto-answers session/request_permission by a
configured policy (reject default / allow). No start-time capabilities (an
out-of-process child can't enforce the parent's depth/tool-filter); ignores
request.parent; injects only `subagents`.
- StopReason mapping (end_turn→completed, cancelled→aborted, …); result resolves
error/aborted on a child failure, never rejects (seam contract).
- Security: credential-shaped ambient env vars are scrubbed; the child's own key
is forwarded only via explicit config.env. A spawn-level error (ENOENT) is
captured and raced against the ACP drive so a bad command settles error rather
than crashing the parent.
Testing designed at every tier: keyless integration drives a scripted mock ACP
server subprocess (cancellation incl. the pre-newSession race and a
torn-pipe-after-cancel, permission auto-answer, non-message updates, spawn
failure, HMR, export shape) at 100% coverage; a with-key e2e drives the REAL
acp-agent example process (PONG + real file write, verified on disk) — the
harness driving itself. Snapshot coverage of an ACP child is deferred as
TODO(acp-subagent-replay) (each child is its own process with its own replay).
Stayed on @agentclientprotocol/sdk 0.25.1: the proposed 0.28.x bump only
deprecates the stable ClientSideConnection/AgentSideConnection API this layer
uses (33 sites incl. the server bridge), turning no-deprecated red across code
this PR shouldn't rewrite — that fluent-API migration is its own follow-up. The
backend needs nothing 0.28.x adds.
This completes the subagent seam stack (PR1 interface → PR2 in-process → PR2.5
snapshot infra → PR3 ACP); the seam RFC moves to implemented/, amended.
Address four findings from the first Codex review round:
- Contain subagent/start|end listener throws (emitContainedStart/End): a
thrown lifecycle listener could escape SubagentService.start() before the
caller received the live run to dispose it (a leaked child), and a thrown
subagent/end listener could surface as an unhandled rejection on the detached
result-settle hook. Both emits now log-and-contain, mirroring the agent
registry's agent/created|disposed containment.
- Make the model-facing tool name configurable (Config.toolName, default
subagent). The docs say to load dsh-tool-subagent once per provider to expose
multiple transports, but the hardcoded name made the second load throw a
duplicate-tool-name error; a distinct toolName per load is now required and
documented.
- Reach the per-file 100% coverage gate: tests for the subagent/end error
branch, lifecycle-listener containment, every stopReasonError arm + the
merge-extensible default, the multi-provider toolName path, agentOptions
forwarding, and the direct-apply schema-bypass fallbacks.
- Document the seam vocabulary in docs/core-data-structures/subagent.md with
verbatim type-equiv blocks + manifest entries, and link it from core.md (a
brand-new core/seam type the doc-sync gate cannot detect on its own).
Introduce the `packages/subagent/` group and the abstract subagent seam — an
agent delegating to a child agent — as a named-provider registry (`ctx.subagents`),
unlike the single-implementation bash seam, so multiple transports (in-process,
ACP, future A2A) coexist. This first PR lands the interface, a scripted test
backend, and the model-facing tool, validated through the real cordis load path.
- dsh-subagent: SubagentService registry + SubagentProvider/SubagentRun
vocabulary + subagent/start|end events. Start-time capabilities (outputSchema,
depthLimit, toolFilter) are checked pre-start and rejected loud; runtime
capabilities (sendMessage, resume) are optional methods on SubagentRun.
- dsh-subagent-mock (support): scripted provider for keyless, deterministic
tests through the real Loader/export path.
- dsh-tool-subagent: the model-facing `subagent` tool, config-bound to one
provider; synchronous collect with try/finally dispose, signal->cancel
bridging, and non-completed-stop-reason -> isError mapping.
- Proposed RFC documenting the seam, the fork-vs-spawn-as-separate-backends
decision, own-session isolation, synchronous-collect scope, and the deferral
of background/poll/spill to a future unification with bash.
- Wire the new group into tsconfigs, build refs, package hierarchy docs, the
module graph, and the cordis catalog.
RFC: docs/rfc/proposed/feature/2026-06-21-subagent-capability-seam.md
Tianyi Cui