deepseek-harness/docs/rfc/implemented/process/2026-07-02-tool-schema-catalog.md

RFC: Generated tool-schema catalog (boot-and-harvest)

Status: implemented (accepted 2026-07-02)

Context

A reader — a plugin author, a prompt engineer, someone auditing what the agent can do — has no single place that lists the model-facing tools the harness ships. The name / description / JSON-Schema parameters a tool contributes are what the model actually receives (via ctx.systemPrompt.tools() off ctx.tools.schemas()), but they are scattered across each defineTool call in each packages/*/tool-* package, buried in string concatenation and runtime spreads. The cordis events & services catalog (its RFC) documents the wiring a plugin works against and the core-data-structures catalog documents the vocabulary those signatures move — but neither documents the tools the agent is offered. This RFC adds that third reference surface, docs/tool-catalog/tools.md, and a freshness gate so it cannot drift.

Decision

Generate the catalog by booting each tool plugin and reading its registered schemas, not by parsing source. scripts/gen-tool-catalog.ts mounts each shipped tool package on a fresh cordis Context (with SystemPrompt + ToolRegistry and the injected seams the plugin's apply reads), calls ctx.tools.schemas() — exactly the ToolSchema[] the model is sent — disposes the context, and renders one ## <package> section per package with a ```json parameters block per tool. It mirrors the gen-cordis-catalog / gen-module-graph CLI shape: default --write regenerates, --check fails if the committed copy is stale, output is deterministic (manifest-ordered, tools sorted by name). verify-tool-catalog (the --check) runs inside doc-sync, so the freshness gate fires in the same lefthook pre-push and CI paths as every other doc gate.

Why boot, not parse (the crux)

The cordis catalog is a pure TypeScript-AST pass because every event/service name is a string literal that round-trips to a static declaration — the AST is the whole truth. Tool schemas are not statically knowable, so the same technique would produce a doc that lies:

• tool-todo writes enum: [...STATUSES] — a spread of a runtime const. The AST sees the spread expression, not ["pending","in_progress","completed"].
• Every description is built by string concatenation ('…' + '…'). The AST sees concatenation nodes, not the final prose the model reads.
• tool-subagent's tool name is config.toolName ?? 'subagent' — chosen at load, not a literal.
• An MCP plugin can register raw JSON Schema directly via ctx.tools.register() without defineTool at all, so enumerating defineTool( call sites structurally under-counts.

The only faithful source of truth is the schema the registry actually holds after the plugin loads. Booting is the testing-policy discipline "verify the world, not the self-report" applied to a doc generator: read the shipped artifact, not a re-derivation of it.

Restoring "nothing silently omitted"

Booting has a cost the AST pass did not: there is no source declaration set to enumerate, so a new tool package could simply be forgotten. A completeness guard restores the guarantee — assertManifestComplete globs every tool-* package under packages/ and hard-errors if any is absent from the generator's boot manifest. A new tool package fails the generator, and therefore doc-sync, until it is registered. This is the same structural property the cordis generator gets for free from enumerating source, re-created for a boot-based generator.

A hand-maintained boot manifest is the irreducible policy

The boot manifest (TOOL_PACKAGES) is a hand-written list — in tension with the proposed Discover package inventories instead of maintaining static lists. The tension is deliberate and resolved as follows: the inventory is discovered (the glob guard means no one maintains "the list of tool packages" — the filesystem is the source of truth, and drift fails the gate), but the boot recipe per package — which seams to plug (bash-local for ctx.bash, subagent + subagent-mock for ctx.subagents) and with what config ({ provider: 'mock' }) — is genuine policy that no layout fact encodes. Per that RFC's own "what we give up" ("stay boring: read manifests, filter on explicit fields, print the resolved list, and fail loud"), a recipe closure is the boring, explicit form; inferring seam wiring from injects would be the "too clever" path it warns against. So: discovered inventory, hand-written recipe, gate on completeness.

Scope

Shipped product tool PACKAGES under packages/*/tool-*, each booted with its default config: dsh-tool-bash (bash, bash_output, bash_kill), dsh-tool-todo (todo_write), dsh-tool-subagent (subagent). The examples/ demo tools (echo) are excluded, matching the cordis catalog's packages-only scope — a demo tool is not part of the product surface a reader is cataloguing.

The unit is the PACKAGE, not the deployed tool instance. A package's registered tool name can be a load-time config — tool-subagent's toolName — so the same package surfaces as subagent (spawn backend) AND subagent_fork (fork backend) in the shipped coding-agent / acp-agent configs, with an identical schema. The generator boots each package once at its default and records such shipped aliases in a per-package note, rather than enumerating every deployment permutation. Cataloguing at the package level keeps the source of truth the package (what a plugin author reads) and avoids leaking example-app cordis.yml config into a packages-scoped generator; the note keeps the doc honest about the names a reader will actually see the model receive. The design deliberately does not attempt to catalog "every configured tool instance across every leaf config" — that is a deployment inventory, a different (and unbounded) surface.

A plain json fence

Schema blocks use ```json, not a bespoke ts-family fence. doc-typecheck only extracts ts* fences, so a JSON block is invisible to it — no BlockKind wiring is needed (unlike the cordis catalog's ts cordis-catalog fence, which had to be allowlisted so a bare signature fragment isn't compiled).

Consequences

• The catalog cannot drift: a tool schema change the committed file doesn't reflect fails verify-tool-catalog in the pre-push hook and CI. A new tool-* package not added to the manifest fails the completeness guard outright.
• Tool description prose has a single home — the defineTool description at the source — and the generated entry is only as good as it, the same forcing function the cordis catalog applies to event JSDoc.
• The generator imports and executes workspace packages (the first repo script to do so; the others only read text). It runs under tsx via the root tsconfig paths map, the same unbuilt-source path the demos and tests use, so it needs no build step.
• A new capability seam behind a future tool means a new manifest recipe entry (which seams to mount). This is the deliberate hand-written cost called out above; it changes only when a tool package is added.