Inbox answer validation isn't atomic with resolving the question

2026-10-16 14:30:50 -07:00
parent f9a5360c33
commit 9f9556b1e4
4 changed files with 20 additions and 8 deletions
@@ -229,6 +229,8 @@ Agents ask questions with the `ask_human` MCP tool. Each question carries a `con
 | `other` (free text in `text`: an answer, a question back, or new instructions) | questions, errors | `answered` |
 | `dismiss` | errors | `dismissed` |

+A submission is all or nothing. `Store.Respond` resolves each item with an `UPDATE` conditioned on `state = 'open'` in one transaction, so when any item was answered, dismissed or withdrawn by someone else in the meantime (a second tab, the lead's `answer_question`, the agent's `cancel_question`), the whole submission is rolled back and refused with 409, and no response is recorded.
+
 Answers reach the agent as one message holding every undelivered `option` and `other` response of the session (`deliveryMessage` in `internal/agents/inbox.go`), never while one of its questions is still open and unanswered (`AwaitingHuman` in `internal/store/inbox.go`); until then they stay held (`inbox_responses.delivered_at` empty). While a turn is running, the task session's PostToolUse hook (`afterTool` in `internal/agents/snapshots.go`, through `deliverMidTurn`) hands them over after the agent's next tool call as the hook's `additionalContext`, after any queued messages (see "Agent sessions"), so the agent reads them alongside that tool's result without being interrupted (for Codex, after each completed tool item, `deliverMidTurn` hands them over with `turn/steer` instead; when the steer fails, `restoreMidTurn` puts the taken queued messages back under their original ids and clears the answers' `delivered_at`, so `Deliver` sends them when the turn ends, and logs `mid-turn delivery restored`); the `user.message` event recording it carries `mid_turn: true` and no `head`, and the transcript doesn't treat it as a turn start. A turn that makes no further tool call leaves them to `Deliver`, which runs after each submission and when a turn ends, and sends them as a new turn once the session is `idle`. The log traces each answer: `inbox response recorded` when it is stored, `deliver held` with the reason, `deliver sent mid-turn`, `deliver sent` with the session's state and whether its agent process had exited or byre was closing, and `undelivered responses` with a reason wherever a session has held answers when its turn ends in a handoff or merge, its agent process ends, startup resumes it, or startup finds it idle. `sqlite3 byre.db "SELECT * FROM inbox_responses WHERE delivered_at IS NULL"` lists the answers held now.

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