I keep running into the same couple of issues with subagents:
- when I request code analysis, the main agent tends to spawn subagents
to read files and output them verbatim to the main chat
- when I request to implement a feature, the main agent often spawns
subagents that edit the same files and conflict with one another,
reverting each other's changes.
This PR updates the `spawn_agent` tool description to mitigate those
issues.
## Problem
The pubsub notification handler in `chatd` re-fetched **all** messages
from the DB on every new message notification, then filtered in Go with
`msg.ID > lastMessageID`. This grows linearly with conversation length —
every new message triggers a full table scan of that chat's history.
The `AfterMessageID` field in the pubsub notification payload was
clearly designed for cursor-based fetching, but no matching query
existed.
## Fix
- Add `GetChatMessagesByChatIDAfter` SQL query with `WHERE id >
@after_id`, so the database does the filtering instead of Go.
- Use it in the pubsub notification handler in `chatd.go`, passing
`lastMessageID` as the cursor.
- Implement the dbauthz wrapper (was a `panic("not implemented")` stub
from codegen) with the same read-check-on-parent-chat pattern as
adjacent methods.
- Add dbauthz test coverage for the new method.
**Not changed:** The initial snapshot in `Subscribe()` still loads all
messages — that's correct, since a newly-connecting client needs the
full conversation state. The waste was only in the ongoing notification
path.
## Summary
Remove the `workspace_agent_id` column from the `chats` table and
dynamically look up the first workspace agent instead.
## Problem
When a workspace is stopped and restarted, the workspace agent gets a
new ID. The `workspace_agent_id` stored on the chat at creation time
becomes stale, making the agent unreachable. This caused chats to break
after workspace restarts.
## Solution
Instead of persisting the agent ID, dynamically look up the first agent
from the workspace's latest build via
`GetWorkspaceAgentsInLatestBuildByWorkspaceID` whenever an agent
connection is needed. The `workspace_id` on the chat remains stable
across restarts.
This behavior may be refined later (e.g., agent selection heuristics),
but picking the first agent resolves the immediate breakage.
## Changes
- **Migration 000425**: Drop `workspace_agent_id` column from `chats`
- **SQL queries**: Remove `workspace_agent_id` from `InsertChat` and
`UpdateChatWorkspace`
- **chatd.go**: `getWorkspaceConn` and `resolveInstructions` now look up
agents dynamically from workspace ID
- **chatd.go**: Remove `refreshChatWorkspaceSnapshot` (no longer needed)
- **createworkspace.go**: Stop persisting agent ID when associating
workspace with chat
- **subagent.go**: Stop passing agent ID to child chats
- **SDK/frontend**: Remove `WorkspaceAgentID` / `workspace_agent_id`
from Chat type
---------
Co-authored-by: Kyle Carberry <kylecarbs@gmail.com>
Two changes:
1. **Gate subagent tools behind `!chat.ParentChatID.Valid`** so child
agents never receive `spawn_agent`, `wait_agent`, `message_agent`, or
`close_agent`. Previously all 4 tools were given to every chat.
`spawn_agent` would fail at runtime ("delegated chats cannot create
child subagents") but the other 3 had no guard at all — meaning a child
could theoretically operate on sibling chats. Removing the tools
entirely is cleaner and saves context window.
2. **Rewrite tool descriptions to explain *when* to use them**, not just
what they do. `spawn_agent` now says to use it for clearly scoped,
independent, self-contained tasks (e.g. fixing a specific bug, writing a
single module, running a migration) and explicitly says *not* to use it
for simple operations you can handle with
`execute`/`read_file`/`write_file`. It also states that child agents
cannot spawn their own subagents. The other 3 tools get similar
guidance-oriented descriptions.
Co-authored-by: Coder <coder@users.noreply.github.com>
Hugo Dutka