Tianyi Cui
e6fad266a6
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.
46 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
46 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
# RFC: Stop mirroring the token stream as an agent event
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Status: implemented
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## Problem
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The loop records every model token delta as a durable `assistant/chunk` session event AND emitted a parallel live `agent/stream-chunk` Cordis event carrying the identical data. In `packages/core/agent-loop/src/loop.ts` the two sat one line apart:
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```ts ignore-check
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const chunkEvent = session.append('assistant/chunk', { turn, step, chunk })
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chunkSeqs.push(chunkEvent.seq)
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ctx.emit('agent/stream-chunk', agent, turn, step, chunk) // ← the mirror
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```
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- Durable: `assistant/chunk: { turn, step, chunk }`.
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- Live emit: `agent/stream-chunk(agent, turn, step, chunk)` — same `StreamChunk`, same `turn`/`step`.
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The only thing the emit added over the session event was the live `Agent` handle, and the sole consumer discarded it (its handler signature was `(_agent, _turn, _step, chunk)`).
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This is the same duplication the [boundary-mirror removal](2026-06-20-remove-agent-boundary-mirror-events.md) eliminated for turn/step boundaries: a consumer had two sources of truth for one durable fact, and every change had to touch both. That RFC deferred the chunk stream ("`assistant/chunk` persistence remains load-bearing, so the chunk stream could later be evaluated as a mirror, but that is a separate decision") rather than bundling it in. This RFC is that separate decision.
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The premise the deferral hinged on is settled: chunk persistence is authoritative and staying. The proposal to stop persisting chunks and keep only a transient live stream event was [rejected](../../rejected/simplification/2026-06-20-assembled-assistant-messages-only.md) — high-fidelity replay, partial failed streams, and snapshot replay all depend on the persisted `assistant/chunk` feed. So `assistant/chunk` on `session/event` is the durable, load-bearing token stream, and `agent/stream-chunk` is a pure redundant mirror of it.
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## Decision
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Remove `agent/stream-chunk` from the agent event taxonomy. The token stream is read off `session/event` as `assistant/chunk`, the same feed persistence and replay already use — `session/event` is the single live transcript stream (assistant chunks, turn/step boundaries, tool activity, todos).
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**Consumers.** The only production consumer that mattered — the ACP bridge (`dsh-acp`), the real editor-facing streaming surface — already renders `assistant/chunk` off `session/event`, never `agent/stream-chunk`, so it is unaffected. The stdio UI (`dsh-ui-stdio`, a disposable test REPL) was the sole live consumer; it already had a `session/event` listener (from the boundary migration), so its chunk rendering folded into that listener as an `assistant/chunk` case. Consolidating to one listener also removed a latent hazard: the `inReasoning` dim-SGR flag was previously shared across two separate listeners (`agent/stream-chunk` and `session/event`), so a chunk and a boundary racing on it had no defined order; a single listener over the append order makes the interleaving deterministic.
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## Scope
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Removed: `agent/stream-chunk`.
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Not touched:
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- `assistant/chunk` (the durable session event) — the authoritative token stream, kept exactly as-is. This RFC removes the LIVE MIRROR, not the persistence (the persistence-removal proposal was separately rejected — see above).
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- `agent/steering` — not touched by THIS decision (a control signal, not the token stream). Its durable twin is `steering/message`, and the mirror emit was removed by its own follow-up: [Remove the `agent/steering` mirror emit](2026-07-04-remove-agent-steering-mirror.md).
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- `agent/status`, `agent/error`, `agent/created`/`agent/disposed`, `agent/queued`, `agent/session-start` — lifecycle/control events that are not transcript data and have no durable duplicate.
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## Alternatives considered
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**Remove the persistence and keep only a transient live stream** — the inverse cut, [rejected separately](../../rejected/simplification/2026-06-20-assembled-assistant-messages-only.md): high-fidelity replay, partial failed streams, and snapshot replay all depend on the persisted `assistant/chunk` feed. With that settled, the live emit is the redundant half of the pair.
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## Consequences
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A plugin can no longer observe token deltas from an `Agent`-first event. It subscribes to `session/event` and filters `assistant/chunk` (the `Agent` handle, if needed, is recovered from a session-id→agent map built from `agent/created`/`agent/disposed`, exactly as boundary consumers already do). No production consumer needed the live `Agent` at chunk time; this is the same acceptable trade the boundary-mirror removal made.
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