Tianyi Cui
e6418398ff
Rewrite the hook-protocol RFC's process-relative wording (freshly-landed / days-old / week-old) as timeless evidence anchored to the recorded RFCs, and sweep the same class from the steering, replay-config, subagent-vocabulary, and vocabulary RFCs. Narrow the fs RFC's acceptance criterion: replaceAll survives on the request spec and version on other outcome types by design — name the exact removed surfaces instead of claiming the spellings vanish.
3.8 KiB
RFC: Remove the agent/steering mirror emit
Status: proposed
Problem
agent/steering is the last remaining transient mirror of a durable session event. The loop's steering drain appends the durable steering/message { turn, content, source } and, on the very next line, emits agent/steering(agent, turn, content, source) — the identical fact as a fire-and-forget event (packages/core/agent-loop/src/loop.ts, drainSteering). It has zero production listeners: the only subscriber anywhere is a loop regression test asserting the emit carries source — the same fact the durable event already records one line above.
Both mirror-removal RFCs retained it while explicitly deferring the decision this RFC now makes. The boundary-mirror removal kept it as "a live control signal, not a boundary"; the stream-chunk removal kept it as "a live control signal with no durable twin, retained (its fate is a separate future decision)". The second rationale does not survive the code: the durable twin is steering/message, appended immediately before the emit with the same payload. The mirrored-vs-live-only line the taxonomy actually draws puts it on the mirror side: agent/queued is genuinely live-only (it fires at enqueue time, before any durable event exists, and already carries a steering: boolean flag — cancelled queued work never enters the log), while agent/steering fires at the exact moment its durable twin lands, carrying nothing the log does not.
Steering carries real production traffic — the hook bridges' turn-continuation decisions inject their reasons through inbox.steer(), landing as durable steering/message events that the hook-matrix goldens pin — and every one of those consumers observes the durable event. Nothing observes the mirror.
Proposal
Remove the agent/steering declaration from packages/core/agent/src/types.ts (and its mention in the live-events JSDoc list there), the emit in drainSteering (whose ctx parameter becomes unused and goes too), the row in packages/core/agent/README.md, and the emit line in the loop-pseudocode blocks (packages/core/agent-loop/src/loop.ts module doc and architecture.md); run pnpm run gen-cordis-catalog. Retarget the one regression test at the durable steering/message event — the source-preservation fact it pins lives on the log. The implementing PR amends the two retaining RFCs' scope lines per implemented/AGENTS.md: the boundary RFC's retained-list entry and the stream-chunk RFC's "no durable twin" clause.
Why not keep it?
"It is a control signal, not a boundary" — but the taxonomy's operative distinction is mirrored-vs-live-only, not control-vs-boundary, and this event mirrors. A consumer that wants enqueue-time notification has agent/queued (with its steering flag); a consumer that wants drain-time notification is by definition asking for the moment steering/message is appended, which session/event delivers with the same payload plus durability. The rejected retire-mid-turn-steering RFC defended the steering capability — steer(), the durable event, continuation forcing — all of which this removal keeps untouched.
Acceptance criteria
- No
agent/steeringspelling outside this RFC and the two amended RFCs; the catalog is regenerated and fresh. - The retargeted test pins source preservation on
steering/message; the suite is green.
Risks
None known: zero production listeners exist to migrate, and both live-notification needs (enqueue, drain) have surviving homes (agent/queued, session/event).