The sandbox execute wrapper JSON round-tripped the return and blindly cast it
to ToolExecuteReturn. A JSON-valid but wrong-shape return — a bare string,
{ content: 'ok' }, blocks without a type tag — sailed through: the registry
spreads result.content, so { content: 'ok' } became ['o','k'], passed the
session log's isJsonValue gate, and the DeepSeek serializer then flattened it
to '(no output)' — silent corruption of the next model request and every
replay, instead of a contained tool error.
The round-tripped value is now shape-checked against the two ToolExecuteReturn
forms (array of content blocks, or { content: blocks, meta? }); block checks
are structural only (plain object + string type tag) because the ContentBlock
union is merge-extensible. A wrong shape — and the formerly cryptic
forgot-return/bare-string cases — fails that one call with a teaching error
echoing a truncated preview of what was returned and the two valid forms.
New specs pin the object-form pass-through (meta included), six rejection
shapes, and the preview truncation; per-file 100% coverage holds.
P1 review finding: extractMeta timed only the literal's vm evaluation;
materializing the RESULT then read properties ordinarily on the HOST
stack, so a meta literal smuggling a getter (get name() { while(true){} })
could wedge the host outside any timeout — defeating the exact spin
isolation the worker thread exists for.
Rather than harden the evaluator (descriptor walks, AST validation),
delete the mechanism: the workflow's identity now reaches the seam as a
plain JSON field (WorkflowStartRequest.meta), carried by the tool as a
schema-validated `meta` object parameter the model fills directly. The
engine only shape-validates data (validateMeta, every violation named)
and pre-parses the body; the scanner, the vm evaluation, and the
host-side materialization are gone, and with them the hole. A body
still opening with a Claude Code-style `export const meta` statement
gets a pointed SCRIPT_PARSE message (the likeliest authoring slip; a
CC script's body stays drop-in, only its meta header moves into the
parameter). syncTimeoutMs now governs exactly one thing: the initial
synchronous slice inside the worker.
The RFC's decision section is rewritten in place (implemented-RFC
rule); the embedded-meta format moves to alternatives-considered with
the hole as the reason. Tool description, presentation (title now reads
meta.name directly — the textual sniff is gone), seam vocabulary docs,
and catalogs follow.
Pure mechanical rename now that the package's internals are the
worker-thread engine: directory, package name, spec/e2e filenames,
module tags and logger prefixes, tsconfig/knip/run-gates/AGENTS.md
references, example cordis.yml plugin ids, doc links; catalogs
regenerated and the lockfile refreshed.
The outer ring catches up with the engine swap (the package's own
README/JSDoc rode the port commit):
- Seam module doc and README name the worker-thread engine as THE
implementation, with isolated-vm/separate-process sandboxing as the
deferred hardening; the seam service doc states the holder-owned-runs
contract (engine-fiber disposal deliberately leaves live runs to
their holders).
- Seam contract precision: agentsStarted documents the termination-path
degradation to the host-observed count; the events section scopes the
agent-start/agent-end pair to calls that STARTED a child run;
WorkflowRun wording drops the vm-era abandonment language.
- The dynamic-workflows RFC is rewritten in place to the shipped
mechanism (implemented-RFC rule): why worker threads, the thread's
concrete buys, the in-process node:vm first cut recorded under
alternatives considered; the tool section describes the usage policy
as the tool's own prompt section.
- gen-doc-graphs: six workflow/* DYNAMIC_EVENT_DISPATCHERS entries (the
catalog no longer claims nothing dispatches them) and the seam-note
wording; core-data-structures gains its workflow.md index row;
packages/README + AGENTS.md layout line + example cordis.yml comments
say worker-thread; catalogs regenerated.
The sandbox docs overclaimed a containment contract the design never makes:
"capability access is routed through cordis services, never Node built-ins,
so everything a mounted plugin does stays inspectable and disposable". The
host-realm helpers on the sandbox global (harness, console, btoa) are
reachable functions, so mount code that goes looking can reach the host realm
through one of them — accepted under the trust stance, because the ctx a
mount ultimately receives is fully privileged anyway. Reword the sandbox
module doc, the README trust stance, and the RFC sandbox-semantics section to
say exactly that: the traps and small global surface STEER honest code onto
the cordis services; they are not a security boundary.
Two review findings (#220) on the sandbox context façade:
- Undeclared services were reachable: the façade resolved any live global via
ctx.get(name), so ctx.bash worked without inject: ['bash']. A cross-mount
consumer could then depend on a provider cordis never saw — unmounting the
provider would neither park the consumer nor unwind its registered tools,
leaving a model-visible tool that fails only at execution. The façade now
reads ctx.fiber.inject and refuses any service the mount did not declare
(with a teaching error naming the inject fix), so the dependency is always
visible to cordis and its activation/unload semantics bind.
- ctx.tools.get returned the live ToolDefinition, including execute — mount
code could call another tool directly and bypass ToolRegistry.execute and
its pre/post-execute hooks and accounting. get now returns the same
read-only name/description/parameters view as schemas(), never an invocable.
Adds inject-gate and schema-view regression cases to sandbox-context.spec.ts
(undeclared property/get denied, declared allowed, the cross-mount zombie-tool
scenario refused at call time, get exposes no execute). Package stays at
per-file 100% coverage. RFC, mount description, and tool-catalog updated.
Review finding (#220): the guarded proxy only special-cased ctx.tools, so
mount code could reach an UNGUARDED context through ctx.root, ctx.extend(), or
a service instance's .ctx, then ctx.root.tools.register({…}) to bypass the
marker check and host-realm normalization — a raw vm-realm result would later
error a real agent turn at the session-log plainness check.
The sandbox ctx is now a whitelist façade, not a pass-through proxy: it exposes
only what a mount needs — tools.register (marker-guarded), on/once, provide, the
timer helpers, and injected services resolved through a guarded get — and denies
every framework-plumbing member (root, parent, fiber, reflect, registry, extend,
isolate, intercept, plugin, set, mixin, …) with a teaching error. Injected
services are wrapped so a method returning a Context is rejected on the way back
(the .ctx escape), closing the one indirect leak. There is no context-valued
member left to reach; cross-mount provide/inject is untouched (the plugin's own
inject and the fiber's pending/active gating are unchanged). ctx.plugin (child
plugins) and ctx.set are denied by design; ctx.effect is deferred (FIXME).
Adds tests/sandbox-context.spec.ts covering the escape class (root/extend/fiber/
plugin/set/… denied, the classic root.tools.register bypass, the .ctx escape,
read-only writes) plus the async-service and symbol/in-operator paths for 100%
coverage. RFC/README/tool-catalog/config-catalog updated; api-catalog.ts
regenerated (also picks up the codeRuntime service that entered on the master
merge and was left stale).
The tree SHAPE was the wrong surface for the model: what it needs from
cordis_inspect is what services, plugins, and capabilities are loaded, not the
fiber hierarchy. The plugins section is now a flat name + lifecycle-state list
from ctx.registry (deterministically sorted, one line per instance); the ASCII
tree renderer, the parent→child rebuild, and the dyn-id tree annotation are
deleted — dynamic mounts keep their own richer dynamic section (id, state,
provides, waits). Net -49 lines; RFC and READMEs state the flat-list contract.
Field sessions showed models writing tool schemas in the JSON-Schema dialect
by strong prior — type: 'integer', required: false, then the full
{ type:'object', properties, required: [...] } wrapper — and the rejection
text itself pushed a nearly-correct DSL attempt BACK to raw JSON Schema: one
stats tool cost three consecutive schema errors before mounting. The boundary
now normalizes wherever the input has exactly one meaning (wrapper unwrapped
with the required array becoming per-property flags at any nesting level,
integer → number, required: false → optional, all rebuilt as fresh host-realm
objects) and rejects only genuinely meaningless input, enumerating the valid
vocabulary in the error. Re-running the failing session mounts first-try.
The mount description documents both accepted forms.
The sandbox deliberately provides no Node API, and now says so instead of
letting a bare ReferenceError teach nothing: require, the timers, and fetch
are callable traps whose error redirects to the cordis alternative (inject:
['fs'] + ctx.fs, ['web'] + ctx.web, ['bash'] + ctx.bash, ['timer'] +
ctx.setTimeout — a fiber effect, unwound on unmount). Only function-shaped
globals are trapped; process/Buffer stay undefined so typeof feature probes
stay inert. The mount description and the demo persona state the routing rule,
and the demo mounts ctx.fs (local provider) and ctx.web (seam + keyless local
fetch provider) so agent-built plugins have real capabilities to build on.
Live-validated: a model that reached for Node setTimeout self-corrected to
inject: ['timer'] in one step and built a working ctx.web fetch tool.
Everything outside the package and example that a new top-level group and a
new demo touch: GROUP_ORDER in gen-module-graph and gen-doc-graphs (plus the
tools-service consumers list, the APP_EXAMPLES entry, and the graph-atlas
label/mode rows), the knip e2e entries, the packages/README group row, the
AGENTS.md layout and demo lines, and the regenerated module-graph /
config-catalog / graph-atlas / capability-seams / composition artifacts.
AGENTS.md and examples/AGENTS.md word-budget ceilings rise to current+5%
(1802 / 653): the new group and demo rows are genuine additions to both docs,
not condensable restatements.
New top-level packages/cordis/ group with the self-referential toolset:
cordis_inspect (services / plugin tree / tools / dynamic mounts / api / events,
the api section intersecting the generated catalog with the live service store),
cordis_mount (model-written code evaluated in a node:vm sandbox, mounted under
one cordis-dynamic group fiber as dyn-<n>), cordis_unmount (awaited disposal to
quiescence). Boundary mechanisms: dual-realm instanceof, JSON realm
normalization of dynamic tool results, marker-guarded registration, SchemaSpec
teaching errors, parse failures surfaced with the offending line + caret and a
line-scoped TypeScript hint, and the unmount-first recipe on tool-name
collisions. Config: vmTimeoutMs (schemastery, default 5000). Design record:
docs/rfc/implemented/feature/2026-07-08-self-referential-cordis-toolset.md.
The tool-catalog boot manifest, its regenerated output, and the pinned
tool-name list land here rather than with the other repo registration: the
completeness guard globs packages/*/tool-* and fails the generator (and the
core/tools spec) the moment the package directory exists.
The design record for tool-cordis: the three-tool contract, the vm sandbox
trust stance and boundary mechanisms, the dynamic-group lifecycle, cross-mount
provide/inject composition, the generated runtime API catalog, and the
alternatives weighed (per-capability registration tools, hand-maintained API
tables, a mount provenance event, a hardened sandbox).
Move compact-basic's private _extractText/_blocksToText into the interface
package as renderTranscript/renderContentBlocks, so the summarize path and a
future recall read path render one span identically. Byte-identical output
vs the private helpers it replaces; compact-basic delegates.
The seam shipped without its own RFC — the reconstructable-requests RFC
was amended with the mechanics, but the decision record (why a
compose-once frozen prefix, and what the per-request before/after shape,
a system-prompt section, a durable history opener, per-turn composition,
and a dedicated session event each lost to) had no home. Implemented
lifecycle, feature class, dated to the first commit of the work.
The seam gained sessionPrefix between fullSystemPrompt and signal in
18d478bc, but the compact README member table and the compaction
core-data-structures page still showed the 3-arg form and listed only
agent/system/signal as what pre-step supplies. The generated service
catalog was already correct; only these two prose homes drifted.
A cancel/dispose landing inside the first agent/session-prefix waterfall
used to commit the listener chain's return value to the instance cache
before the interruption check dropped the turn; an abort-aware listener's
degraded fallback would then ship on every later request of the instance.
The commit now happens only after the composition survives the
interruption check — the cache only ever holds a fully composed prefix,
and the next turn recomposes under a live signal.
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.
Two ds-review-bot findings:
The seam JSDoc claimed extending 'await next()' composes in
registration order — false for the append form: the waterfall unwinds
innermost-first, so appending places later-registered contributions
first. The canonical contribution is now documented as the PREPEND
'[mine, ...await next()]' (registration order on the wire), with the
append form's reverse-order behavior stated explicitly; the ordering
test now uses the canonical pattern in both listeners.
scrubRequestHeaders tokenized only system/tools, so a fixture recording
a composed session prefix would carry its raw text (workspace-specific
churn/leak). The scrubber now maps each header/delta messagePrefix
entry to a {{messagePrefix}} token — count stays a structural fact,
absence stays absent, the empty-array transition stays visible — with
normalize.spec coverage for the header, delta, absence, and odd-shape
paths.
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.
The RFC's deployment-policy decision is unchanged; state the current
mechanism in place — the per-tool budget is declared on ToolDefinition
(timeoutMs, set by the owning tool plugin from its config) and the
enforcer is zero-config, so a mistyped tool name is impossible.
Regenerate config-catalog (timeout-policy -> no-config; tool-web gains
fetch/searchTimeoutMs), the event graph (tools/change loses its
timeout-policy consumer), the ToolDefinition type-equiv block, and a
source-line drift in the cordis services catalog.
