The picker listed presets alphabetically by id, so the shipped set read
cordis, minimal, standard — reverse order of capability. A preset may now
declare `order` in its metadata; the shipped three declare 1/2/3 and read
standard, minimal, cordis. A preset that declares none sorts behind those
that do, then by id, so authored presets stay stable.
Editing had nowhere good to live. Inside a card it was squeezed into a
~268px column; hanging off the end of the grid it was orphaned from the card
it edits. It now replaces the list: a back link, what is being edited, and
the form at full width. One thing on screen at a time, which is what the
form's height wanted all along.
Cards in different grid rows sized independently, so a short description made
a short card. `grid-auto-rows: 1fr` makes every row the same height.
The trust badge lost its pill when the card CSS was rewritten, and `In use`
never had one; both are tags now. Icon labels moved from `title` to a drawn
tooltip — the native one waits about a second, which reads as nothing
happening.
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.
`config.default` becomes the composition base of an `agent-presets` settings
namespace, so the user document layers over the deployment's engineering
default and a person can change which preset new sessions get without a
restart.
The value is read per resolution rather than snapshotted: a hot-reloaded
document takes effect on the next session created, and every running session
stays on the preset it was composed from — which is the same rule the
session-header guard enforces from the other side.
`resolve()` read `config.default` directly, which would have made the whole
setting inert; it now goes through `defaultId` like every other caller.
The write-protection test is rewritten against a temp profile root. It was
passing vacuously: the un-overridden Loader REWRITES the composition it read —
stamping `disabled: true` onto the self-disposing row — so the committed
fixture had been mutated by the very run that proved the bug, and every later
run compared against the damaged file and passed. Building the preset in a
temp directory makes the assertion immune to its own failure mode, and it now
fails with a visible `+ disabled: true` when the override is removed.
Review follow-ups on this layer. The exported schema is
`AgentPresetSettingsSchema`, symmetric with the `AgentPresetSettings`
interface it resolves and self-describing at an import site. The `session.create`
JSDoc promised "the deployment's default preset" for an omitted `agentPreset`,
which this layer makes false — it now names the effective default. The
constructor records why it does not use `installSettingsSection`: that helper
re-judges what a consumer DERIVED across attach and detach, and nothing here is
derived. The provider-unload test disposes the fiber `ctx.plugin()` handed back
instead of reaching into `ctx.reflect.store`, and the write-protection wait says
why slack is the right shape for an absence assertion.
The real composition covers the layering too. `apps/cli` boots the shipped
`cordis.yml`, stores `agent-presets.default`, and asserts an unnamed session
composes from it — the package suite proves the layering against a hand-built
context, this proves the roster and the settings provider are wired to each
other. That test also pins the settings row at a temp file: it defaulted to
`$DSH_HOME/settings.yaml`, so a developer's own stored default decided the
outcome of a file whose whole point is that only the shipped root does.
The Agent Note records the per-resolution read and its correspondence with the
session header, and the vacuous-test finding above.
A preset publishes its services behind `isolate` realms, which is what
makes them per session — and what makes them invisible to every host
context. The api-proxy kept reading the root realm, so requests that are
ABOUT a session but arrive from outside it answered for a singleton that
no longer exists: `goal.pause`/`clear` and `skill.list` returned "this
deployment does not mount @deepseek-ai/dsh-goal / dsh-skill" for sessions
whose composition mounts exactly that. Verified against a running host
before and after.
`agentPresets.serviceFor(agent, name)` addresses the instance instead,
reading the same subtree-ownership relation `leakedServices` already
uses, inverted. It is read addressing for a caller holding the agent: a
host row that `inject`s a service cannot use it, because injection
resolves before any session exists — which is why `tools` and
`subagents` stay host-plane and this is not a way around that.
Tool presenters had the same shape and the same cure: `viewFor` looked
definitions up without a scope while the global layer is empty by
design, so every card degraded to the generic renderer. It now takes the
owning agent.
Cold resume through `agentFor()` mounted no preset at all, so every
generic entry point — prompt, models, commands — rebuilt a restarted
session on host tools and the deployment persona. It composes the
recorded preset now, as the other resume path already did.
A preset is a directory holding one `agent.cordis.yml`. Mounting it under an
agent's scope context during `setup(agentCtx)` gives that one session its own
tools and prompt sections while every other live session keeps its own.
No registry gains a tier. `dsh-tools` and `dsh-system-prompt` already file
registrations into the calling context's scope layer, and entry contexts chain
to the context a subtree was plugged into, so a composition mounted under
`agent.ctx` is that agent's alone and unwinds with it.
The mount audits itself because a directly-plugged subtree is absent from
`ctx.loader.entries()` and no boot audit covers it. It rejects an unscoped
target, a row that never became usable, and a row that published a service into
the root service realm — that last one is process-global rather than
per-session, and its collision with the next session surfaces as an unhandled
rejection `setup` never observes, leaving a half-composed agent that looks
healthy. The package invariant re-checks that rule on every service
notification, since a row publishing from a timer would escape a one-shot audit.
Raises the `packages/README.md` word ceiling from 920 to 980: the group table
must enumerate every group, and the new `preset/` row is necessary content.
Design: .agents/notes/implemented/architecture/2026-08-03-per-session-agent-presets.md
