# Agent Note: Event-domain semantics — session is the fact log, agent is the live surface

Status: implemented

English | [中文](2026-06-30-event-domain-semantics.zh.md)

## Problem

The harness extends the agent loop through a Cordis event taxonomy (see [the microkernel event-taxonomy Agent Note](2026-06-11-microkernel-event-taxonomy.md)). As that taxonomy grew, the line between the three event domains blurred:

- `session/*` carries the durable, event-sourced log (`SessionEventMap`).
- `agent/*` carries live runtime signals that hand a plugin the `Agent` handle.
- `tools/*` carries the tool registry + execution seam.

Two problems motivated pinning the semantics down. First, several turn/step boundaries existed BOTH as a durable `SessionEvent` (`turn/start`, `turn/end`, `step/start`, `step/end`) AND as a mirrored `agent/*` emit (`agent/turn-start`, `agent/turn-end`, `agent/step-start`, `agent/step-end`). A consumer had two sources of truth for the same fact, and every lifecycle change had to update both. Second, the upcoming Hooks subsystem needs ONE coherent, documented surface to subscribe to — a plugin author (and the Claude Code / Codex hook bridges built on top) must know, without reading the loop, whether to listen on a session event or an agent event, and why.

This vocabulary is the foundation for interception decisions, the durable `hook/*` log, and the Claude Code and Codex bridges.

## Decision

**Three domains, one job each, with a single boundary rule.**

- **`session/*` — the durable, replayable FACT log.** Owns `SessionEventMap`; every entry is JSON-only (no live objects). One `session/event` emit per append, plus the `session/flush` parallel durability checkpoint. It is also the live transcript feed: a consumer that wants to render or react to what happened subscribes here, so live rendering and replay projections share one path.
- **`agent/*` — the LIVE runtime surface.** Always carries the live `Agent`. Two shapes: INTERCEPTION waterfalls (`agent/request`, `agent/step-result`, `agent/turn-continuation`) that mutate or veto, and TRANSIENT emits (`agent/status`, `agent/error`, `agent/created`/`agent/disposed`, `agent/queued`) that notify with the `Agent` in hand. Turn and step BOUNDARIES are NOT here — they are durable session events read off `session/event`, and so are the token stream (`assistant/chunk`) and mid-turn steering (`steering/message`).
- **`tools/*` — the tool registry + execution seam.**

**The boundary rule:** a durable, replayable fact is a `SessionEvent`; a live interception or a transient/live-object signal is an `agent`/`tools` Cordis event. A turn or step boundary is a durable fact, so it lives in the session log and is read off the `session/event` feed — it is NOT mirrored as an `agent/*` emit.

**Applying the rule to the boundary twins:** all four boundary mirrors — `agent/turn-start`, `agent/turn-end`, `agent/step-start`, `agent/step-end` — are **REMOVED**. No production consumer needs the live `Agent` at a boundary: the ACP bridge correlates its in-flight prompt with the exact `session/event` `turn/start`/`turn/end` pair, and other transcript consumers likewise derive boundaries from the durable stream. See [the remove-boundary-mirror-events Agent Note](../simplification/2026-06-20-remove-agent-boundary-mirror-events.md), which owns that decision. Removing the emits also simplifies the loop's `closeStep`/`closeTurn` (one append each, no paired emit).

## Consequences

- The loop no longer emits any boundary mirror; `closeStep` appends `step/end` only and `closeTurn` appends `turn/end` only. `Session.append` owns post-commit observer containment, so a throwing boundary observer cannot change the turn outcome or starve later consumers; an acceptance or internal validation failure still escapes before the boundary enters the log.
- Tests that observed boundaries via the removed emits now observe the durable `turn/start`/`turn/end`/`step/start`/`step/end` session events — the behavior they pin (boundary ordering, step counting) is unchanged; only the feed they read moved to the canonical one. The tests that exercised a *throwing turn-boundary emit listener* were deleted, because that code path no longer exists (there is no emit to throw from). Per [AGENTS.md "tests document behavior, not golden truth"](../../../../AGENTS.md), the behavior and its test moved (or died) together.
- The loop marks the step open (`stepOpen = true`) only after `append('step/start')` returns. Internal dispatch validation runs before the log push and may reject without opening a step; post-commit `session/event` observer failures are contained inside `Session.append`. The marker therefore represents exactly the committed boundary that owes a later `step/end`.
- The full realization of this is [the simplification Agent Note "Stop mirroring durable boundaries as agent events"](../simplification/2026-06-20-remove-agent-boundary-mirror-events.md): all four boundary mirrors are removed and every consumer reads boundaries off `session/event`. `agent/steering` (not a boundary mirror) stayed outside that Agent Note's scope and was removed by its own follow-up, [Remove the `agent/steering` mirror emit](../../archived/simplification/2026-07-04-remove-agent-steering-mirror.md) — it mirrored the durable `steering/message`.
- The cordis events catalog (`docs/cordis-catalog/events.md`) is regenerated to drop the mirror events.

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