The step budget mechanism is gone. Agents run until they finish,
are interrupted by the user, or (for sub-agents) hit the timeout.
No replacement. The human is the kill switch.
Enforce three limits on sub-agent spawning:
- depth (default 1): sub-agents cannot spawn their own sub-agents
- parallelism (default unlimited): cap concurrent children per parent
- timeout (default 600s): sub-agents are killed after 10 minutes
Top-level agents are never constrained by timeout.
Also: refactored parseAgentNewRequest to return a struct instead of
4 positional values. Added depth/activeChildren fields to Agent.
OLLIE_SUBAGENT_DEPTH env var set on sub-agents.
Deferred: remove maxSteps (replace entirely with timeout).
- Move user-preferences.md from data/prompts/ to data/agents/.
- Remove it from prompt arrays in all agent JSON configs.
- Add userPrompts field referencing the file via $XDG_CONFIG_HOME path.
- Update justfile install target accordingly.
Sub-agents now clone the parent agent's conversation history into
their initial context. The tool script passes parent=$OLLIE_UNAME
automatically. Mechanically identical to session restore — uses
RestoreHistoryFromMessages on the parent's Messages().
Replace D-Bus fire-and-forget with blocking ollie-9p rdwr to
agent/new. The tool now:
- Blocks until the sub-agent completes
- Returns the sub-agent's reply directly
- Scope: read (multiple spawns run in parallel)
- Tier: hot
Removed: D-Bus dependency, session renaming, JIT config cleanup.
tool_load was a built-in intercept in the agent loop — the only
'tool' that didn't run in toolsrv. Removed entirely:
- Intercept in loop.go (25 lines)
- Script + .meta in data/tools/
- autoLoad references in agent configs
Loading tools is now exclusively via ctl (which already existed):
echo 'tool_load X' | ollie-9p write .../ctl
System prompt updated to show the ctl pattern.
- file_grep.meta: replace /home/user/project with /abs/path
- system_prompt.md: use $XDG_CONFIG_HOME instead of ~
- agent-copilot.md: use relative path in code block example
The sudo credential broker was never functional and added complexity
without value. This removes:
- Sudo field from bypass Request structs (broker, client, toolsrv)
- Sudo parameter from EvaluateRequest interface and implementations
- Sudo/ResetsCounter fields from MetaFile and Variant structs
- sudo: true from system_logs.meta variants
- All sudo documentation from writing-tools.md, tool-registry.md,
core.md, evolution.md, and misc.md
Bypass remains fully functional for sandbox escapes. Tools that need
elevated privileges should handle that internally or be run manually.
- KillAll(): sends SIGKILL to all running proc groups on clean shutdown
- Pdeathsig: SIGKILL ensures child procs die if toolsrv crashes
- Shell tool: use subshell + set +e for streaming without exit propagation
- Fix integration test to match new error format
This is the connection-based ownership model: toolsrv death = proc death.
The session owns the toolsrv process, so session death cascades to all procs.
- Timeout: timeout=0 means no deadline (was defaulting to 30s)
- Signal: send to process group (-pgid) not just process; SIGTERM no longer
cancels context (only SIGKILL does); cmd.Cancel sends SIGTERM with 5s WaitDelay
- Streaming: background procs stream output in real-time via procWriter;
shell tool no longer buffers all output into a bash variable
- Proc tree: olliesrv exposes proc/{id}/out, proc/{id}/ctl, proc/{id}/status
as proper 9P directory (was broken flat file)
- Connection: proc handlers dial fresh toolsrv conn per request via
Session.DialToolServer() to avoid deadlocking the agent's blocked conn
- Stat format: key=value (exited=true, exit_code=N, id=N) matching client parser
- GC: procs auto-removed 10min after LastRead (exited procs only)
- Rename: PID -> ID throughout (synthetic, not OS PID)
- Ctl commands: term (SIGTERM), kill (SIGKILL), signal <n>, dismiss
- System prompt: correct ollie-9p commands for proc management
Dispatch-level flags are now injected into every tool's JSON schema
at runtime via injectDispatchFlags(). No need to declare them in
individual .meta files — they're universal.
Removed redundant declarations from shell.meta (now injected globally).
Only tools that explicitly declare scope="write" get path-based
parallelism. Unset scope is now global (full barrier), avoiding the
"path is a lie" problem where a tool has a path arg but modifies
other files (e.g., lsp_rename).
Tools must opt in to parallelism:
- scope=read: never conflicts
- scope=write: conflicts on same path only
- scope=global (or unset): serialization barrier
Added scope=write to file_edit.meta and file_write.meta.
Rename ToolInfo.ReadOnly bool → ToolInfo.Scope string with three values:
- "read" — path-scoped read, never conflicts (always parallel)
- "write" — path-scoped write, conflicts on same file path only
- "global" — full serialization barrier, runs alone
Tools declare scope in their .meta file. If unset, inferred from path
arg presence (write if path exists, global otherwise).
This correctly classifies lsp_rename as global (cross-file workspace
edits) despite having a path argument. The path arg in lsp_rename is
a symbol coordinate, not a resource scope.
All .meta files updated: readOnly:true → scope:read,
readOnly:false → scope:global, lsp_rename gets scope:global.
tool_load must be handled specially by the agent runtime because tools
run inside toolsrv's sandbox and cannot load other tools into
themselves. The runtime now intercepts tool_load calls and directly
invokes ToolServer.LoadTool().
This is the only built-in tool - all others are external scripts.
Levi Neely
Ollie Agent