dsh-facet/README.md

# dsh-facet

Scope an agent session to **one facet of a system** — the folder the
conversation was started in, plus whatever you explicitly grant it.

A DeepSeek Harness bundle: one host row (the policy) and one agent preset (the
enforcement).

---

## Why this exists

A multi-faceted system is built from modules that look alike. In the project this
was written against there are fourteen controllers — the same idioms, the same
naming, the same shape — and a conversation about one of them that can see all
fourteen spends its first several steps working out which one it is looking at.
That is a quality problem before it is a cost problem, and the cost is real too:
in a long session the dominant expense is re-reading accumulated history, and
most of that history is file content the agent did not need.

So this narrows the world to one module rather than trying to steer through all
of them. It is the same idea as the `focus` argument in
[`dsh-recall`](https://github.com/green-dalii/dsh-recall) — which confines a
*search* to one module — applied to the whole agent: what it may read, where it
may search, and what its prompt says it is.

## What it does

Three things, and they are deliberately in three different places:

| | where | why there |
|---|---|---|
| **the rule** ("work inside the facet; ask to go outside") | system prompt | invariant for the session, so it does not invalidate the prompt cache |
| **the binding** (which folder, what is granted) | runtime-context snapshot | it changes when you grant something, and a changed system prompt costs a full-context cache miss |
| **the guard** | `tools/pre-execute` | the part that does not depend on the model agreeing |

**The scope is not configured — it is where you already are.** A session's
working directory is recorded immutably when the session is created, so starting
a conversation in `src/controllers/room/occupancy` makes that controller the
facet, and starting one at the project root simply leaves the session unscoped
(which is the honest answer for a conversation that is genuinely about
everything).

**Going outside is a question, not a refusal.** In that same project 41.6% of the
code — shared types, services, infrastructure — sits outside every controller. A
wall that cannot be opened would not confine the agent, it would only make it
wrong, and an agent that cannot reach a shared type does not stop needing it.
So an out-of-scope file call is put to you, and saying yes records the grant for
the rest of the conversation.

### The `facet` tool

| action | effect |
|---|---|
| `status` | the root, the mode, the standing grants and this session's grants |
| `add` | asks you to approve an extra path, then records it for this session |
| `remove` | drops a session grant |
| `reset` | returns to the session's own folder |

`add` is the only one that needs approval. It is also asked in `deny` mode,
because otherwise there would be no way to grant anything at all.

## Install

```sh
dsh plugin --profile web add "/path/to/dsh-facet"
dsh --profile web --dump-config | grep preset-facet    # expect the row
```

The bundle contributes two layers:

- **`cordis.patch.yml`** — the host row `facet-policy`, which owns the mode and
  the standing grants and publishes them as `ctx.facetPolicy`.
- **`presets/facet.patch.yml`** — the agent preset `facet`, which is the shipped
  `standard` composition plus the guard and a configured compaction row.

Then pick **Facet** as the preset for a session — in the Web UI that is the
preset picker in the new-session surface, or *Settings → General → Agent preset*
to make it the default for new sessions. The preset is fixed once a session's
first turn has run, so choose it when you start the conversation.

### Configure it in your profile, not in the package

The host row's config is where this deployment's facts belong — the profile's own
`cordis.patch.yml`:

```yaml
- id: facet-policy
  name: dsh-facet
  config:
    mode: ask              # ask | deny | off
    extraRoots:            # always in scope, in every session
      - ../../shared       # relative to each session's own directory
```

`extraRoots` is for code a module legitimately always depends on. Anything you
grant by hand is per-conversation and is never persisted — "this session may
also see `src/shared`" is a statement about one conversation, and writing it down
would quietly widen every future one, which is the failure this plugin exists to
prevent.

## The compaction row

`presets/facet.patch.yml` also configures `compaction-basic`, because a scoped
session and a budgeted context are two halves of one idea — scoping reduces
context at the source, compaction is the ceiling:

```yaml
thresholdRatio: 0.35    # a 350k ceiling, not the shipped 800k
retainTokens: 80000     # an absolute working set, not 16% of a 1M window
maxTokens: 16384        # the summarisation cap, stated rather than inherited
```

The shipped ratio is `0.80` of a 1,000,000-token window, i.e. 800k. Measured
across this deployment's 40 recorded sessions, the deepest ever reached 787,668
pressure tokens — **the trigger had never once fired**, so every token below it
was re-read on every subsequent step. `maxTokens` is worth stating explicitly:
its default is not 8192 but `headroomTokens`, 65536.

If you want that budget on *every* session rather than only scoped ones,
`presets/standard-compaction.patch.yml` is an opt-in overlay that applies the
same row to the shipped `standard` preset. It is not in the bundle's default
patch list, and the header of that file explains why: a preset declaration
replaces the whole plugin list rather than merging into it, so the file is a
frozen copy of `standard` that will not follow the harness when `standard`
changes.

## What it does not cover

Honest boundaries, because each one is a decision rather than an oversight:

- **`bash` is not guarded.** A shell command cannot be judged reliably from
  argv, so the facet is enforced on the file tools and `bash` remains a
  legitimate way out. The prompt tells the model this rather than pretending
  otherwise.
- **Tools that name a path in a shape the table cannot read are not guessed at** —
  including MCP tools. See `PATH_ARGUMENTS` in `lib/scope.js`; it is a list of
  tools whose path argument is a plain top-level string.
- **This guards the tool pipeline, not the filesystem.** There is no read seam in
  the harness — `dsh-fs-sandbox` states plainly that "reads pass through
  untouched: every mode permits reading" — so anything that reads through
  `ctx.fs` without going through tool dispatch (another plugin, the HTTP
  workspace-files endpoint) is unaffected. Fencing *all* readers would mean
  replacing `ctx.fs` with a stricter `FileSystem` subclass.
- **A grant is not persisted**, so it does not survive a process restart.
- **Sessions at the project root are not scoped at all**, which is deliberate.

## What has been verified, and what has not

Verified:

- 42 tests (`npm test`) over the scope algebra, the policy state, and the guard —
  including that containment is decided on canonical targets (a symlink inside
  the facet pointing outside it is refused), that a prefix is not a parent
  (`/a/room` does not contain `/a/roommate`), that a malformed tool call never
  makes the guard throw, and that every `facet` result satisfies the tool's own
  declared output schema.
- The bundle's patch layers parse, merge and land correctly against the real
  profile: `dsh --profile web --patch ./cordis.patch.yml --patch
  ./presets/facet.patch.yml --dump-config` shows `facet-policy`, `preset-facet`,
  the `facet-guard` row and the compaction config, with `preset-standard`
  untouched. The optional `standard-compaction` overlay was checked the same way.

**Not yet verified: a live session.** The plugin has not been loaded by a running
harness, because that needs the bundle installed. The first thing to check after
installing is that `preset-facet` is not `broken` — a preset whose child row
fails to resolve still appears on the roster, with its diagnostic, and cannot
compose a session:

```sh
dsh --profile web --dump-config | grep -A 3 preset-facet
```

## Releases

`.gitea/workflows/release.yml` runs on every push to `master`: it works out the
range since the last tag, bumps `package.json`, prepends a `CHANGELOG.md`
section, commits and tags `vX.Y.Z`, then creates the Gitea release with the
commit subjects as the body.

The bug it fixes is not tidiness. Installed as a bare `git+https://…/repo.git`,
a plugin is pinned to a **commit** in the profile's lockfile, so with no tags
there is nothing for `dsh plugin update` to move to. Point the profile at
`#semver:^0.1.0` and the updates follow releases instead:

```jsonc
"dsh-facet": "git+https://git.notexpectedyet.com/Not-Expected-Yet/dsh-facet.git#semver:^0.1.0"
```

The bump is read from the commit subjects being released:

| in a commit subject | effect |
|---|---|
| `feat`, as its own word (`feat:`, `feat(x):`) | minor — `0.1.0` → `0.2.0` |
| `feat!:` / `fix(x)!:` / `BREAKING` | major — `0.1.0` → `1.0.0` |
| `fix:`, `docs:`, prose, anything else | patch — `0.1.0` → `0.1.1` |
| `[minor]` / `[major]` | force the bump when the subject cannot carry it |
| `[skip release]` | this push publishes nothing |

Only the **subject** line is read, and `feat` has to be a word — `Fix the feature
flag leak` is a patch, not a minor. With no tags yet, the version already in
`package.json` is what gets tagged, so the first release matches the code.

The logic lives in `.gitea/scripts/release.sh` so it runs without a runner:
`npm run test:release` exercises it — an empty range, a repository with no tags
yet, a `feat` that is only a word — `npm run release:plan` says whether the
current HEAD would release, and `npm run release:notes` prints the notes it
would publish.

## Development

```sh
node scripts/dev-links.mjs   # link the harness's cordis/schemastery/dsh-tools
npm test
```

`dev-links.mjs` links rather than installs those three packages, and for
`@deepseek-ai/cordis` that is a correctness requirement rather than tidiness: a
second copy of Cordis means a second `Context` class, two service registries in
one process, and a plugin whose services are invisible to the harness that loaded
it.

## Layout

```
index.js                     host row: the policy, published as ctx.facetPolicy
lib/policy.js                the stateful half — scope resolution, grants
lib/scope.js                 the pure half — argument extraction, text, reasons
lib/guard.js                 preset row: rule, binding, tool, pre-execute guard
presets/facet.patch.yml      the `facet` agent preset
presets/standard-compaction.patch.yml   optional: the same budget for `standard`
test/                        42 tests
```

## Also in this repository

- [`facet-preset.md`](../facet-preset.md) — the design note this was built from,
  including the harness mechanisms it rests on.
- [`compaction-tuning.md`](../compaction-tuning.md) — the investigation into why
  compaction had never fired. Its measurements reproduce exactly; note that its
  "The change" section prescribes `$DSH_HOME/.agent-presets/`, a directory
  **nothing reads any more** on the installed harness. Presets are bundle patch
  declarations now, which is what `presets/facet.patch.yml` is.