Every packages/*/* README now carries a canonical '## Known Limitations and
Deferred Work' section: condensed, evidence-backed bullets for consumer-visible
gaps (unimplemented features, platform caveats, MVP cuts) and consciously
postponed work (TODO/FIXME/XXX markers, RFC deferrals still open). The ten
pre-existing ad-hoc variants ('What is NOT here (TODO)', 'Deferred',
'Limitations (MVP)', 'Known limitations (tracked TODOs)', ...) are normalized
into the canonical heading.
A new doc-sync gate, scripts/verify-readme-limitations.ts, enforces the shape:
exactly one limitations-like heading per package README, byte-equal to the
canonical h2, with at least one bullet; near-miss headings fail so variants
cannot creep back. Packages with genuinely nothing to declare (dsh-brand,
dsh-timeout, dsh-subagent-mock, dsh-app-boot) are whitelisted in the script and
must NOT carry the section; whitelist entries are validated against the scanned
package set so a rename fails loud.
Wired into the doc-sync chain (package.json) and the run-gates doc-sync leaf
set; the standing rule lands in packages/AGENTS.md and the adding-a-package
cookbook; decision record in
docs/rfc/implemented/process/2026-07-10-readme-known-limitations-gate.md
(RFC index regenerated).
Also fixes two stale '(deferred)' markers claiming dsh-compact-basic is
unimplemented (the dsh-compact seam README's package table and the seam's
module doc comment).
Review discussion converged on the industry shape (Claude Code caches
user context per conversation; Codex separates initial context from
diffs; Kimi appends at continuation boundaries to protect prompt
caching): stable openers belong in a compose-once prefix, mid-session
changes belong in append-only history — not in a per-request slot.
agent/session-prefix fires ONCE per loop instance, lazily on its first
request-building step: the composed Message[] is deep-frozen, cached on
the transmission bookkeeping, recorded as EpochHeader.messagePrefix on
the anchoring 'initial'/'resume' snapshot, and reused verbatim for
every request the instance sends — prefix stability is structural, not
a producer discipline, and a resume recomposes with attributable drift.
The request is messagePrefix + boundary snapshot.
The per-step RequestAdvice/RequestAdviceContext surface and the
messageSuffix header field are dropped: the tail slot had no consumer,
and every current update pattern (new AGENTS.md discovered, memory
update, skills change) routes through the existing append-only history
channels — inject(), tools/post-execute additionalContext,
prompt-submit additionalContext — each paid once and prefix-cached
thereafter. The messagePrefix delta arm stays for codec totality; the
loop never produces one in practice.
A new waterfall near request construction lets plugins contribute
request-ONLY messages framing the derived history: RequestMessages
{ before, after } with a frozen empty seed, fired inside the open step
after the agent/request config waterfall, so the step/start boundary
snapshot and its same-sync-frame invariant are untouched. The request
becomes messagePrefix + boundary snapshot + messageSuffix.
Contributions never enter session history — deriveMessages() is
unchanged — so the request header is their durable record:
EpochHeader gains messagePrefix/messageSuffix (canonical absence for
empty arrays), request/header-delta replaces either array whole with
an empty array encoding the transition back to absence, and the
dev-mode reconstruction cross-check now expects the folded header's
framing around the boundary derivation.
This is the seam for per-request advisory context that must be
model-visible now without becoming durable history (a skills catalog,
an environment reminder), keeping the base system prompt
workspace-independent and provider prefix caches stable. The docs
carry the channel cost model: session-frozen content belongs in
before, low-frequency change notices belong in durable history via
inject() (paid once, prefix-cached thereafter), and after is reserved
for small frequently-refreshed state snapshots re-paid on every
request they ride. No shipped producer yet, so ACP snapshot fixtures
are byte-identical.
New doc-sync gate verify-export-jsdoc walks every module-level exported
name under packages/*/*/src and requires description prose everywhere,
plus @param per parameter and @returns on non-void annotated returns for
function-like exports, public class methods, properties, and accessors.
The parsing + check helpers move out of gen-cordis-catalog.ts into a
shared scripts/jsdoc.ts so 'documented' means one thing on both gated
surfaces.
Deliberate exemptions (documented in the RFC): heritage-declared class
members (the seam declaration is the doc's one home — the one checker
query in an otherwise pure-AST walk), cordis plugin-protocol slots
(name/inject/reusable/Config/apply, top-level and static), constructors,
overload implementations, declare-module augmentation bodies, and
re-export statements (checked at the defining module).
The 203 under-documented exports the gate found at adoption are filled
in this change, so the gate lands green; generated catalogs/graphs are
regenerated for the shifted line pointers.
RFC: docs/rfc/implemented/process/2026-07-06-export-surface-jsdoc-gate.md
The reconstructability RFC is the principle's home: model-visible ⟺
logged in both forms, the mechanism (boundary derivation + header
fold), the enforcement (write-time round-trip guard, the dev
invariant), the corollaries ranked (prefix-cache stability first), the
MiniCode lineage with the provenance arrow inverted, and the
alternatives it beat — including the stateful transmission client
whose three-design archaeology lives in PR #162.
Placements per the one-home-per-fact taxonomy: a standing-order line in
root AGENTS.md (with displacement trims to stay inside the 1,575-word
ceiling), the principle statement in architecture.md § Session Log and
its Turn Flow lines (condensed to the ratcheted 1,630 ceiling), the
request-envelope section in core-data-structures/core.md with the
LlmCallConfig paste, both review-requested FIXMEs
(FIXME(call-config-shape) beside the type, FIXME(catalog-verbs) at the
catalog's drift-gate note), cookbook rows redirected off agent/request
(tool filtering → system-prompt/assemble, plan-mode prompt → sections/
inject()), and the llm/stream JSDoc stating the frozen-request
contract. RFC index and all generated catalogs regenerated.
The loop is now transmission-stateless; a request is a pure function of
(session log, this step's rendered assembly, current AgentOptions):
- The reconstruction boundary is step/start: the messages snapshot is
taken in the same synchronous frame immediately before the step/start
append, so the request's messages are exactly the derivation over
events[0..stepStartSeq) — an inject() from an agent/request listener
(or any concurrent task) lands after the boundary and joins the NEXT
request. This changes behavior for a synchronous step/start
session/event listener that appends content (master derived after the
append, so such a listener could reach the current request):
agent/pre-step is the sanctioned seam for current-request content.
- agent/request is re-typed to config-only: (agent, turn, step,
config: LlmCallConfig, next) → LlmCallConfig. The frozen seed comes
from AgentOptions on a loop instance's first request (explicit options
beat the logged baseline — fork overrides and resume reconfiguration
stay correct) and from the log's folded header afterwards; listeners
return a replacement to switch. Content shaping through the request is
no longer expressible — model-visible content flows through the log
channels.
- recordRequestHeader appends whatever header event the request owes the
log before dispatch: an 'initial'/'resume' snapshot anchoring each
loop instance, a round-trip-verified delta on change, a 'fallback'
snapshot when the encoding cannot express it. Session.requestHeader()
is the log's incrementally-folded baseline.
- Requests are deep-frozen before dispatch (deepFreeze exempts the
AbortSignal — freezing one breaks AbortController.abort() outright);
frozen + sessionId is the loop-built marker the dev invariant keys on.
Ported from #162 and re-anchored on the log: the append-extension /
frozen-end-to-end / compaction-resend / prompt-change property tests,
plus new specs for the boundary semantics, resume anchoring, and the
end-to-end theorem (every recorded request rebuilds byte-equal from the
log alone). Live cache-hit e2e (request-cache.e2e.ts) verified against
the real DeepSeek API. Snapshot goldens intentionally stale until the
single re-record after the compact/summary envelope lands.
The call configuration (model + sampling scalars) becomes named
vocabulary: per-conversation state that the session log records as part
of the request header (the reconstructability RFC on this branch), with
callConfigEquals as the real-change detector behind logged header deltas
and deepFreeze as the ownership helper the loop applies to every built
request. dsh-llm stays stateless — request in, chunks out; no
conversation object lives here.