Two problems found by deploying the previous commits to production.
FIRST: the rewrite guard compared raw Markdown, so it refused a publish over
formatting. The authoring UI re-serialises a definition when somebody saves it
— writing `webSearch: false` where the hand-authored file omitted the key, and
ordering the frontmatter its own way — and the parser reads absent and false
identically (agent.go: `data["webSearch"] == true`). A definition nobody
meaningfully changed stopped a deploy. Refusing a change that is not a change
is still a bug, even though it fails safe.
definition.SameAgent and SameSkill compare the parsed definition instead, and
are deliberately conservative, because the two ways of being wrong are not
equally bad. A false difference blocks a deploy: visible, recoverable. A false
SAMENESS lets a changed agent overwrite an approved version silently, which is
the thing versioning exists to prevent. So:
- The body is compared verbatim. Agent.Body carries `json:"-"`, so a
comparison that only marshalled the struct would call a completely
rewritten system prompt "unchanged". There is a test that fails loudly on
exactly that, because it is the mistake this design invites.
- List ORDER stays significant. loader.go resolves Skills in order and that
order reaches prompt assembly, so two definitions listing the same skills
differently are still different. A deploy that only reorders still has to
raise its version. That is a limit, recorded in a test rather than left to
be discovered: loosening it needs somebody to decide skill order cannot
matter, which is not a decision to bury in a comparison function.
What it absorbs is exactly what the round trip produces: frontmatter key order,
whitespace, and a defaulted value written out in full.
SECOND: importagents reported "9 agent version(s) recorded" on a run that
recorded nothing. The counter incremented on every successful Snapshot call,
and Snapshot returns nil for the idempotent no-op as well as for a real insert.
The skill counter was already honest; the agent one was not. snapshotAgent now
distinguishes recorded / conflict / already-present, and only the first counts.
Verified locally: 1 on the run that added activity-agent v2, 0 on the re-run,
where it previously said 9. A number that says nine every time is one nobody
checks on the day it matters.
Full suite green against PostgreSQL, only TestLive* skipped.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PJvibeSc1JYXjatankqM1g
repo.KindSkill existed with nothing writing it. Migration 000010 says "agents
and skills version identically", the table has always accepted kind='skill',
and no path on either side ever recorded one — so an edit to a skill left no
record of what it used to say. Agents name their skills and the runtime refuses
to load one whose skill is missing, so a skill changing under a pinned agent is
the same class of problem the last two commits fixed, one layer down.
Skills are numbered differently, and not by preference. An agent's frontmatter
carries `version:`, so its author decides when a change is a new version and can
be refused for rewriting an old one. definition.Skill has no such field, the
skill_definitions table has no such column, and the vocabulary is active |
inactive rather than draft | published. Giving skills an authored version would
mean a migration, a parser change on BOTH sides of the conformance test in
internal/definition — which replays a capture of the real frontend module graph
— and an edit to all 23 shipped skills. That is a feature, not this fix.
So the server assigns it: one after whatever was last published. This is not an
invention. repo.VersionsRepo.LatestVersion was written for exactly this and
says so — "the next published version has to follow what was actually published
rather than what somebody wrote in the frontmatter" — and had no callers
outside its own test.
Because the author never names a version, there is nothing to refuse: an edit
is always a new version. What needs care instead is the opposite — a save that
changed nothing must NOT be one, or every deploy would add a version to all 23
skills and the number would stop meaning anything. Each publish is compared
against the last recorded copy first. Inactive skills are not recorded at all;
inactive is this vocabulary's draft.
Verified against a live stack:
- first import over 23 unversioned skills: 23 skill version(s) recorded
- second import, files unchanged: 0 recorded, total still 23
- one skill edited: 1 recorded, that skill at v1, v2; v1 still holds the
original text and v2 the edit
The test fails without the change — "after create: 0 version(s), want 1" — and
covers the three behaviours that matter: an edit versions, an identical save
does not, and an inactive skill is not recorded.
Both races noted on the agent path apply here as well: two simultaneous edits
can compute the same next number, and the loser's snapshot is dropped rather
than failing the author's save.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PJvibeSc1JYXjatankqM1g
§3 says a published version is immutable and editing publishes a new one.
The machinery for that was all present — an append-only definition_versions
table, a trigger, and repo.VersionsRepo.Snapshot, which already refuses to
store a version number whose content differs from what is stored.
Nothing acted on that refusal. snapshotIfPublished's error was discarded at
both call sites (`_ = s.snapshotIfPublished(...)`), and deliberately so: the
comment there explains that losing an author's work to protect a record of it
is the wrong trade. That is right for a recording failure and wrong for
exactly one case. A conflict is not the history failing to record; it is the
invariant firing.
The effect was silent. Editing a published agent without raising the
frontmatter version answered 200: the live row took the new text, the history
kept the old, and two different definitions were both called v1. Because
runtime.LoadAgentVersion resolves a pin by returning the CURRENT definition
whenever the pinned number equals the current one, a conversation pinned to v1
then ran the rewritten instructions while the audit trail showed the
originals. Verified against a live stack before the fix: PATCH answered 200,
agent_definitions held "SILENTLY CHANGED" and definition_versions still held
the published text, both labelled v2.
So the conflict is now detected before anything is written, where refusing
costs the author nothing but a version bump. The post-write snapshot keeps its
original contract for every other kind of failure, and republishing a version
unchanged stays the no-op it was. Drafts are untouched: they carry no promise,
and are still rewritten in place.
Not addressed here, and each its own change:
- cmd/importagents never creates versions at all (documented at main.go:10),
so the nine file-published organization agents are outside this entirely
and every deploy still mutates v1 in place.
- skill definitions never snapshot, so KindSkill exists with nothing writing
it. Fixing that changes skill authoring behaviour and wants its own pass.
- a concurrent publish of one version number with differing content can still
pass this check and be caught by the unique index afterwards, where it is
swallowed as before. That is the pre-existing behaviour, narrowed rather
than removed.
Tests: the new case fails without the fix — the live row takes the rewritten
text at version 1 — and passes with it. Full suite green against PostgreSQL,
with only TestLive* skipped, which is what CI allows.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PJvibeSc1JYXjatankqM1g
