Define the in-file RFC contract in docs/rfc/README.md § The file format:
the header block (`# RFC: <title>` plus a dateless Status enum
cross-checked against the lifecycle folder), the per-lifecycle body
skeleton (a Problem opener everywhere; Proposal/Alternatives considered/
Acceptance criteria/Risks in proposed/; present-tense Decision/
Consequences with proposal-era headings banned in implemented/; the
frozen proposal shape in rejected/), and a mandatory Alternatives
considered section with a date-fenced grandfather comment for pre-format
RFCs whose alternatives are not reconstructible from the record.
Enforce it with a new doc-sync gate, scripts/verify-rfc-format.ts, and
normalize all 112 RFCs to it: ~15 Status-line spellings collapse to the
enum, 29 Context openers become Problem, the 39 legacy-format XXX debt
markers are resolved and banned from reappearing, proposal-era sections
in implemented RFCs are rewritten to shipped reality (including the
web/fs/subagent seam RFCs' migration plans and test checklists, closing
the doc-tiers deferred-work item on the web seam), every RFC gains an
Alternatives considered section or the grandfather comment, and the
bilingual pair is re-mirrored and re-recorded.
Move the generated index tables out of README.md into a fully generated
docs/rfc/INDEX.md — gen-rfc-index now writes the whole file, and
verify-rfc-classification checks its freshness and rejects index-shaped
rows in the curated README — which makes room for the format contract to
live in the README front door instead of a separate FORMAT.md.
The decision record, and the first RFC written in the new format, is
docs/rfc/implemented/process/2026-07-05-uniform-rfc-format.md.
A Codex review pass on the draft caught four real gaps and two solid
suggestions; all addressed except one pushed back on the merits:
- hooks-claude/hooks-codex: stderrSummaryMaxChars was the one new knob
with NO range validation — a negative/NaN cap would silently
misbehave inside slice(). Both bridges now assert a positive integer
at the TOP of apply() (before the config-file parse's early return,
so a bad value fails the load loudly), with rejection tests.
- tool-fs: the read caps count lines/chars/bytes, so positive-FINITE
was too loose (a fractional readLimit would flow into windowing
arithmetic and the schema description). All four now require a
positive integer, matching tool-web's cap.
- Doc drift the gates cannot catch: tool-web's README tools table
still named WEB_SEARCH_MAX_RESULTS as the mechanism; compact-basic's
README/module doc and the compaction-capability-seam RFC still
described estimation as fixed char/4 rather than the charsPerToken
default.
- subagent-acp: the dispose graces were tested only at the
startAcpRun level, so a regression that stopped threading plugin
config into AcpRunSpec would have survived. A provider-path test now
drives the trap-escalation scenario through ctx.subagents.start with
small config graces and bounds dispose at 4s.
Pushed back on: converting compact-basic's charsPerToken to a
schemastery field. The package's whole config is deliberately
hand-rolled (resolveConfig, every threshold REQUIRED with no default —
a documented design posture); one schemastery field beside it would be
incoherent. The knob is cordis.yml-reachable, defaulted, and validated,
which is what the convention requires; migrating the package to
schemastery wholesale is pre-existing config-surface hygiene out of
this change's scope.
Use maxTokens as the provider generation cap and remove the confusing stored-summary max config.
Strip reasoning blocks before storing compaction summaries, reject non-shrinking summaries, and retry bounded re-compaction when the surface remains over threshold.
Add config validation for numeric and type-shaped knobs plus unit and real-API e2e coverage for reasoning-capable summarization.
Honor cancellation and disposal around async pre-step setup before the loop can open a step or call the model.
Route compaction summarization through agent/request so router agents can select the model, and remove the stale model argument from agent/pre-step.
Document serial events and the approximate convergence bound, regenerate the Cordis catalog, and add regression coverage for router compaction, HMR cleanup, and assembly/pre-step interruption.
Codex round 1 CBR-003: several docs still described compaction as an
`agent/request` waterfall concern, and the implemented compaction RFC
claimed "No changes to dsh-session or dsh-invariants" while the diff
changed both.
- Package READMEs / JSDoc (agent, agent-loop, system-prompt, compact,
compact-basic): compaction now lives on the serial `agent/pre-step`
seam (fired after turn/start, before step/start); the structural guard
is tool-pairing balance (`isToolPairingBalanced`), not step-alignment;
the convergence bound is strict (`>=` rejects).
- architecture.md / core-data-structures/compaction.md: same seam +
predicate + dispatch-mode updates; regenerated cordis catalog.
- Implemented compaction RFC, updated in place to describe shipped
reality: the seam is `agent/pre-step` (@mode serial) fired before
step/start; alignment is surface tool-pairing balance; the convergence
invariant rejects `>=`; and the "no dsh-session/dsh-invariants changes"
claim is corrected — dsh-session gains the tool-pairing predicate and
dsh-invariants drops its `start <= end` replace assertion (a positional
replace makes start > end normal).
Reform the compaction blueprint so a runaway turn survives and the design
stops drifting across review rounds:
- Drop in-flight-turn protection ("layer 2"). Retention is a uniform tail→head
whole-unit walk; the only structural guard is step-alignment. A single turn
that alone exceeds the window now compacts its own early closed steps instead
of being retained verbatim (the failure mode that motivated this).
- Move auto-compaction off the agent/request waterfall onto a new awaited
agent/pre-request loop seam, fired before history derivation. Compaction
mutates the surface; the loop derives once from the result — no double-derive,
and a listener structurally cannot act on not-yet-derived messages.
- Tighten compactIfNeeded to required (session, system, model, signal).
- Enforce a single-pass convergence invariant in resolveConfig: reject configs
where summarizationMaxTokens + retainTokens exceeds the threshold, so a
compaction can never immediately re-trigger.
- Document the crash vs recoverable failure taxonomy; core session repair stays
compaction-agnostic (a log-only orphaned compact/start is inert).
- Wire dsh-compact-basic into examples/coding-agent and add a with-key
compaction e2e (compaction's first real-world exercise + runaway net).
- Rewrite the RFC to encode the blueprint and move it to implemented/.
The runaway-turn snapshot is a named deferred follow-up: dsh-llm-replay cannot
yet serve the interleaved summarization model call.
Tianyi Cui