# RFC: Prompt variables and tool-guidance ownership
Status: implemented
## Problem
The assembled system prompt had four defects, all of one family: facts the harness already knows were restated by hand somewhere else, and drifted.
**The model could not know its own name.**`AgentOptions.model` drives every request, but no prompt text carried it — and nothing COULD carry it: sections in `dsh-system-prompt` were context-global while the model name is per-agent, and `assemble()` took no per-agent input at all.
**Tool guidance was hand-written prose in leaf YAML.** The bash/subagent/todo_write usage guidance lived in the `systemPrompt` strings of `examples/coding-agent/cordis.yml` and `examples/acp-agent/cordis.yml` — two drifting copies (the ACP one was already abridged) — while `dsh-tool-fs` and `dsh-tool-web` owned their guidance as `ctx.systemPrompt.section()` contributions. Loading or dropping a tool plugin meant editing every deployment's persona by hand; both YAMLs carried a `FIXME(config-comments)` apologizing for a symptom of the split, and the stdio welcome banner hand-enumerated the tool set too.
**The persona rendered after tool guidance.** The loop string-joined `agent.options.systemPrompt` AFTER the assembled sections, so the model read "Use the read tool…" before "You are coding-agent" — backwards relative to the identity-first convention (Claude Code, Codex) and a second composition path besides the section pipeline.
**The fork tool's description was false.**`dsh-tool-subagent` hardcoded one description written for spawn semantics — "a separate agent that works in its own context … it does not see this conversation" — and the `subagent_fork` instance (whose child inherits the parent's completed turns) got the same words; the YAML prose corrected the lie out-of-band. Minor kin: `PromptSection.name` was documented "(diagnostics / dedup)" but duplicates were silently accepted.
## Decision
**One principle: every fact in the prompt has exactly one owner.** The model name and workspace are config/session facts → the harness exposes them as variables and the persona references them. Per-tool semantics and when-to-use → the tool's `description`. Cross-call habits a description cannot carry → the tool package's prompt section. Identity and behavior → the deployment's persona, and nothing else.
### Assemble context
`SystemPrompt.assemble(context)` takes an `AssembleContext` — declared EMPTY and merge-extensible in `dsh-system-prompt` (the package stays agnostic of who assembles); `dsh-agent` declaration-merges `agent?: Agent` onto it (a new type-level edge `agent → system-prompt`, no cycle — `tools` already depends on both). The loop passes `{ agent }` each step; section text providers become `string | ((context) => string)` (zero-arg providers stay valid), and the `system-prompt/assemble` waterfall gains the context parameter so a listener can filter or extend per agent.
### Prompt variables
Plugins contribute named values via `ctx.systemPrompt.variable(name, provider)`; prompt text references them as `{{name}}`. Providers are functions of the `AssembleContext` and may return `undefined` — "no value for THIS assembly". `assemble()` resolves every registered variable into `PromptAssembly.variables` (waterfall listeners can see, add, or override); `renderPrompt` interpolates. Rendering is STRICT — fail loud beats shipping a malformed prompt: a reference to an unregistered name throws (listing what exists; lookup is `Object.hasOwn`, so a prototype property like `{{constructor}}` is unknown, not a function spliced into the prompt), a registered-but-valueless reference throws, a complete `{{…}}` group that is not a well-formed name (`[a-z][a-z0-9_]*`, e.g. `{{ model }}`) throws, and a `{{` that opens no complete group while a `}}` still follows (`{{{model}}}`, `{{a{b}}`) throws. A lone `{{` with no `}}` anywhere after it is ordinary prose and passes through verbatim; substituted values are never re-scanned. Registration rejects duplicate and unreferenceable names, mirroring the tool registry — and `section()` now rejects duplicate section names, making the documented dedup real.
`dsh-agent-loop` registers the two built-ins, both pure projections of the context agent: `model` (= `options.model`) and `cwd` (= `session.header.cwd`). The example personas write `powered by the {{model}} model` — the model name is stated once, in the `model:` config key. `{{cwd}}` is demonstrated in the ACP example only: every ACP session carries the client's cwd, while config-pre-created stdio agents have none (a persona claiming `{{cwd}}` there fails the turn — by design). The variables stay on the loop plugin (unlike the sections below): they are runtime facts of the agents THIS loop drives, and a replacement loop supplies its own.
### Persona as the order-0 section
`dsh-system-prompt` itself registers the two harness-owned sections (they must survive a swapped loop plugin, so they do NOT live on `dsh-agent-loop`): the static `harness:identity` at order `-100` — every prompt opens by stating the agent is powered by the DeepSeek Harness SDK — and `deployment:persona` at order 0, whose text is the plugin's own `persona` config. The persona is per-DEPLOYMENT, not per-agent: every agent in the context (subagents included) renders the same one, `AgentOptions.systemPrompt` is deleted along with the per-agent forwarding plumbing (the app configs' `systemPrompt` keys become a `persona` key routed to this plugin through `dsh-agent-core`), and the ACP bridge and `dsh-tool-subagent` stop carrying persona configuration entirely. The loop's special-case join is deleted: `fullSystemPrompt ≡ renderPrompt(assembly)`, one ordered pipeline for everything the model sees, and `agent/pre-step` (compaction's token-pressure input) measures exactly the real prompt. Order bands are now convention: harness identity `-100`, persona `0`, tool guidance `100–199`; other negative orders also render before the persona.
### Tool guidance ownership
Per-tool semantics and when-to-use live in tool DESCRIPTIONS, which already ship in every request — the YAML prose was ~fully redundant with them. Sections carry only the cross-call habits a single call's description cannot: `dsh-tool-bash` contributes `tool:bash` (order 105) — check the `[exit code: N]` marker on every result; `dsh-tool-fs`'s read section gains the "not shell commands like cat" contrast. `todo_write` and the subagent tools need NO section — their descriptions already carry the whole contract. The leaf personas shrink to identity + behavior (verify your work; keep answers brief), and the welcome banner stops enumerating tools.
### The subagent context contract
`SubagentProvider` gains `readonly inheritsParentContext: boolean` — a DESCRIPTIVE fact beside `capabilities`, not in it (capabilities are start-time validation; nothing validates against this flag). Spawn and ACP declare `false`, fork declares `true`. `dsh-tool-subagent` derives both the tool description and the `prompt` parameter description from the flag (`providerWording`): the fork instance now tells the model the child inherits the conversation's completed turns (not the in-flight turn) and that its prompt should state only what is new. Deriving the description from a provider that arrives on its own fiber is what forced the provider-lifecycle events and the tool's reactive registration — that mechanism, its Loader-concurrency rationale, and its rejected alternatives are recorded in [the provider-lifecycle-events RFC](2026-07-05-subagent-provider-lifecycle-events.md).
## Alternatives considered
- **The loop composes an identity line itself** — hardcodes model-facing prose in the one package that must stay thin ("plugins, not loop changes"), and outside the section pipeline it would be a second composition path. (The identity DOES ship as a code literal — but as an ordinary section registered by `dsh-system-prompt`, whose `system-prompt/assemble` waterfall remains the escape valve for a deployment that must drop it.)
- **Inject the model name via the `agent/request` waterfall** — prompt text composed in two places, and `agent/pre-step`'s `fullSystemPrompt` would omit it, so compaction would measure a prompt that is not what the model sees.
- **Hand-write the model name in each persona** — duplicates the `model:` key one line above and silently lies after a config edit; the exact disease this RFC cures.
- **Lenient interpolation (leave unknown refs verbatim, or substitute empty)** — a typo ships `{{modle}}` (or a hole) to the model and nobody notices until transcript review.
- **Per-instance subagent wording in config** — returns model-facing prose to every deployment × instance, the P2 disease again. **Keying wording off the provider NAME** — `providerName` is itself config, so a renamed provider silently gets the wrong words.
- **Resolving the provider at `apply` time (a load-order requirement)** and **section-only subagent wording (lazily resolved at assemble)** — the alternatives to the provider-lifecycle events; both rejected in [the provider-lifecycle-events RFC](2026-07-05-subagent-provider-lifecycle-events.md).
## Out of scope
- Further variables (`date`, platform, git state) — the registry makes each a one-line contribution by whichever plugin owns the fact; none is claimed here.
- A config `cwd` for pre-created stdio agents (would let the stdio persona use `{{cwd}}` and partition persistence by real path) — deferred until the session-cwd story is revisited.
## Shipped invariants
-`renderPrompt(assemble({ agent }))` for the coding-agent example renders the persona FIRST (with the agent's model name interpolated), then the fs/bash/web guidance sections; the loop has no other prompt-composition path.
- The `subagent_fork` schema description says the child inherits the conversation; the `subagent` one says it does not. The tool follows its provider: absent before the backend activates, present after, gone when the backend unloads, re-worded from the fresh provider on reload.
- Unknown/valueless/malformed/unbalanced `{{…}}` references throw with the section name in the message; duplicate section, variable, and tool-name registrations all throw.
- Snapshot goldens are prompt-independent by construction: llm-replay keys replay on (turn, step) chunk streams and never re-verifies the outgoing request.
## Consequences
- Every fact in the assembled prompt now has exactly one owner, and the hand-maintained tool prose in leaf YAML is gone: loading or dropping a tool plugin no longer means editing any deployment's persona.
-`{{model}}` reflects `AgentOptions.model` at assembly time. A plugin that switches models in the `agent/request` waterfall makes the prompt's claim stale for that step, and one that SUPPLIES the model there (options.model unset — the loop's documented fallback) leaves the variable valueless at render, failing a `{{model}}` persona before the waterfall runs. Both have the same remedy, and it is the ownership rule itself: the plugin that owns the late-bound model fact states it early on the `system-prompt/assemble` waterfall (`assembly.variables['model'] = …`) — one owner, both statements; a loop test pins the supply path end-to-end. Accepted.
- While a bound provider is absent (not yet activated, unloaded, mid-HMR-reload), the subagent tool does not exist and a model request in that window simply lacks it. That is the honest state — the alternative was a registered tool whose description or execution could not be trusted.
- Strictness means a persona can fail a turn at render (e.g. `{{cwd}}` on a cwd-less session). The failure is contained — the turn ends `error`, the loop survives — and it is an authoring error we WANT loud.
- No escape syntax for a literal `{{name}}` in prompt prose yet; add one if a real prompt ever needs it.
[The prompt-variables RFC](2026-07-05-prompt-variables-and-tool-guidance-ownership.md) makes `dsh-tool-subagent` DERIVE its model-facing wording from its provider: `SubagentProvider.inheritsParentContext` (spawn/ACP `false`, fork `true`) drives both the tool description and the `prompt` parameter description (`providerWording`), so the fork tool stops lying about context inheritance. That fix created a cross-fiber data dependency: a tool's description is fixed at TOOL REGISTRATION (deliberately — the description is where tool-choice guidance lives), but the provider arrives on its own plugin fiber, on no particular schedule.
The first implementation resolved the provider at the tool plugin's `apply` time and threw when it was absent — an implicit load-order requirement ("list the backend before the tool in cordis.yml"). Review reproduced the failure that requirement hides: the cordis Loader starts sibling entries CONCURRENTLY (`Promise.all` over the group) and `Entry.init()` does not await activation, so a backend whose activation is delayed leaves the tool's fiber permanently failed even when "listed first". The ordering the requirement leaned on is not a contract the Loader offers — "async state is not synchronous state" ([defensive patterns](../../../defensive-patterns.md)).
## Decision
The registry announces provider membership as typed events, and the consumer mirrors them instead of assuming order:
- **`subagent/provider-added(provider)`** — a provider became resolvable in the `ctx.subagents` registry. Emitted on registration.
- **`subagent/provider-removed(name)`** — a provider left the registry (its plugin's fiber was disposed — an unload or an HMR reload). Emitted from the registration's disposer.
`dsh-tool-subagent` mirrors its named provider's lifecycle: it registers the tool when the provider is (or becomes) available — deriving the wording from that provider at that moment — unregisters the tool when the provider goes away, and re-derives on re-registration (HMR reload). While the provider is absent the tool does not exist, which cannot lie to the model. There is deliberately NO load-order requirement left to document: the events make the ordering question disappear instead of pinning it.
The events also complete the seam's vocabulary: `ctx.subagents` is a named registry on which multiple delegation backends coexist (`spawn`, `fork`, `acp`), and a registry whose contents other plugins derive state from should announce membership changes as typed events rather than requiring polling or load-order faith.
## Alternatives considered
- **Resolving the provider at `apply` time and throwing when absent (a load-order requirement)** — the first implementation, rejected after review reproduced the failure above. Documenting the requirement ("list backends first") would pin a guarantee the Loader does not make.
- **Retrying the lookup (poll until the provider appears)** — converges eventually but invents a private readiness protocol beside the one the framework already has (effect registration + disposal); it also cannot notice a provider LEAVING, so HMR would strand a tool whose wording describes a disposed backend.
- **Section-only subagent wording, lazily resolved at assemble time** — tolerates any load order too, but moves tool-choice guidance out of the DESCRIPTION, contradicting the ownership rule the prompt-variables RFC establishes (per-tool semantics and when-to-use belong in the description). Reactive registration keeps the description authoritative AND order-free.
- **Keying wording off the provider NAME instead of the provider object** — `providerName` is itself config, so a renamed provider silently gets the wrong words; deriving from the resolved provider's own `inheritsParentContext` cannot drift.
## Consequences
- Consumers deriving state from a named provider react to `subagent/provider-added`/`-removed` instead of reading the registry at `apply` time; `dsh-tool-subagent` is the reference implementation.
- **The two emits carry asymmetric failure semantics, deliberately.** `provider-removed` fires inside the registration's disposer and is delivered with PER-LISTENER containment (the service's `emitLifecycle`, not raw `ctx.emit`, which halts dispatch on the first throw): a throwing subscriber is logged, never starves a later mirror into holding a stale tool, and never disrupts the backend fiber's teardown — dispose reaches quiescence. `provider-added` propagates: it fires at registration time, where a throwing listener unwinds the yielded rollback — the same fail-loud register-time semantics as the system-prompt registries. The run-time backstop bounds what a stale mirror could cost anyway: `start()` re-resolves the provider by name per run, so a tool that outlived its provider fails that call cleanly instead of dispatching into a dead backend. The [events catalog](../../../cordis-catalog/events.md) carries the exact signatures, and the [producer/consumer map](../../../event-producer-consumer.md) shows `dsh-subagent` emitting and `dsh-tool-subagent` consuming both events.
- **A window where the tool is absent.** Between backend disposal and re-registration (an HMR reload), the model sees no subagent tool. This is the honest state — the alternative is a tool that dispatches into nothing — and the tool registry's `tools/change` emit keeps prompt assembly current.
- **Two waiting fibers sharing a `toolName` is an invalid config caught late.** If two loads of `dsh-tool-subagent` name different providers but the same `toolName`, both wait, and whichever provider arrives first registers; the second registration throws only when ITS provider arrives. `TODO(subagent-dup-toolname)` in the plugin records this blast radius; the tool registry's duplicate-name rejection remains the backstop.
Two pieces of `dsh-acp` surface were unreachable from any shipped configuration:
1.**`AcpConfig.agentName` / `agentVersion`** (`packages/ui/acp/src/index.ts`). The shipped app package hands the bridge only `{ model, systemPrompt }` (`packages/ui/acp-agent/src/index.ts`), so no leaf `cordis.yml` — the only production config surface — could set the knobs at all; they were settable solely by direct-mounting the bridge, which only a unit test did. Every snapshot golden — the hook-matrix scenarios included — pins the schema defaults (`deepseek-harness-acp` / `0.0.1`). The pair also carried a live `TODO(double-default)`: the literals existed twice (schema `.default(...)` plus `??` fallbacks), with the TODO asking to pick one home.
1.**`AcpConfig.agentName` / `agentVersion`** (`packages/ui/acp/src/index.ts`). The shipped app package hands the bridge only `{ model }` (`packages/ui/acp-agent/src/index.ts`), so no leaf `cordis.yml` — the only production config surface — could set the knobs at all; they were settable solely by direct-mounting the bridge, which only a unit test did. Every snapshot golden — the hook-matrix scenarios included — pins the schema defaults (`deepseek-harness-acp` / `0.0.1`). The pair also carried a live `TODO(double-default)`: the literals existed twice (schema `.default(...)` plus `??` fallbacks), with the TODO asking to pick one home.
2.**The `toolKindFor` name heuristic** (same file) special-cased `bash*`/`read*`/`write`/`edit*` tool names in the generic-fallback path. Since the [render-intent union](../architecture/2026-07-02-tool-render-intent-union.md), every first-party tool those arms matched ships its own `presentCall` carrying its kind, and the presenter-less production tools (`subagent`, `subagent_fork`) fell through to `other` anyway. The arms were production-reachable only when a tool declined to present its own call — a `presentCall` that THROWS (the containment fallback), or model arguments that fail the tool's schema so `defineTool`'s `presentCall` wrapper returns `undefined` (e.g. a `bash` call missing the required `description`) — and the bridge's own module doc states the design rule the heuristic violated: "the bridge never special-cases tool names".
## Decision
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Tianyi Cui