Adds the compounding knowledge loop the task model is built around:
- complete_task(outcome, summary): a nomos-LOCAL, session-scoped tool (the
shared MCP server has no session id). Introduces the local-tool mechanism —
buildTools appends task tools, the agent loop routes them to handleTaskTool
instead of the MCP client. Sets the task's terminal status/outcome/summary,
mirrors it onto the task entity, and emits task.status.
- Knowledge → task linkage: after a successful upsert_knowledge in a task,
nomos links the note to the task entity (documents) and emits
knowledge.recorded, so the task's outcome view shows what it learned. The
note's about-link to the involved entity (written by upsert_knowledge) is the
retrieval path future tasks use.
- SOUL: every chat is a task loop — retrieve prior knowledge FIRST
(get_entity_knowledge on the target), plan, execute, record learnings, then
complete_task. Scales down for trivial read-only tasks.
- deleteSession now cleans up the task entity, its relationships, and its
task-scoped events (was orphaning them); the knowledge doc itself and its
about-links survive, as knowledge should outlive the task.
Verified end-to-end: a task recorded a note and completed; task.status +
knowledge.recorded hit the SSE stream; status=done/outcome=success persisted;
the note linked to both lxc:caddy (retrieval) and the task; a future
get_entity_knowledge(lxc:caddy) surfaces it; delete cleaned edges+events (0/0/0)
while the knowledge survived.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
As the agent runs a task, record which entities each tool call references:
write an idempotent task —involves→ entity relationship and publish one
entity.touched event per entity (correlation_id = session, data {slug,tool}).
Extracted from tool ARGS only — never results — so a bulk fleet query can't
drag every entity into the task graph; bulk/no-slug tools stay silent.
Emitted from the nomos agent loop rather than the shared MCP wrapper, which
has no session id. The involves edges make a task's graph neighborhood its
involved-entity set (queryable via get_relations) — the substrate for the
knowledge loop; the events are the live pulse the context panel consumes in
phase 6.
Verified end-to-end on the local stack: a chat referencing lxc:caddy/lxc:gitea
produced entity.touched on the browser SSE stream with slug+tool+correlation,
and exactly one involves edge per entity despite repeated touches.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Migration 018 adds goal/status/outcome/summary/entity_id to agent_sessions
and creates session_plan_steps + session_questions. Registers a 'task'
entity type and an 'involves' (task→entity) relationship in the ontology
so each session anchors its knowledge and involved-entity edges on the
existing relationships graph.
nomos createSession now mints a task:<session-id> entity (type task) and
links it via agent_sessions.entity_id — best-effort so chat never blocks on
it. listSessions/GET /sessions surface the new task fields.
No behaviour change yet; this is the data foundation for the task board and
live context panel. Verified end-to-end against the local stack: migration
applied, ontology ingested (60 types/47 rels), a new session mints a linked
task entity and the API returns status/goal/entity_id.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
From the last (successful) TypeType deploy session, two gaps the operator hit:
1. Knowledge write-back — the missing half of the loop.
The agent could read the knowledge base (search_knowledge/get_entity_knowledge)
but had no way to WRITE it, so everything it learned (the Dragonfly memlock
rlimit gotcha, the NAT-hairpin DNS issue, etc.) lived only in an ephemeral
chat message and was lost — the system could never actually "get better."
This is the `upsert_knowledge` MCP tool the 2026-07-08 gaps plan called for.
- internal/mcp/server.go: upsert_knowledge(title, content, about?, tags?,
kind?) writes a document/investigation/runbook entity + knowledge_entities
row (search column is generated), upserts by slug so re-titling updates in
place, and optionally links it to the entity it's about so
get_entity_knowledge surfaces it there.
- SOUL.md: capture non-obvious findings/deploys/gotchas as part of finishing
work, not only when asked "what did we learn".
2. "I had to ask for status multiple times."
The clearest cause: a long working turn (64 tool calls) that exhausted the
iteration cap ended with a bare "max iterations reached without final
answer" — a dead end that forced the operator to ask what happened.
- cmd/nomos/agent.go: on exhaustion, make one final no-tools LLM call
(finalSummary) asking for a status report — what was accomplished, current
state, what remains — so the turn always ends with a real outcome.
- maxIterations 25 -> 40 (the decomposed per-step pct_create flow legitimately
needs more steps).
- SOUL.md: always end a turn with a clear outcome; never end silently or on a
bare tool call — the operator can't see the tools working and reads silence
as "nothing happened".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator: "I'd like to be able to see in the chat what the agent is actually
running, right now I just wait while nothing happens." Two compounding gaps:
1. The auto-continuation worker (cmd/nomos/continue.go) had zero live push —
its result only appeared on a manual page reload, so approving a plan and
watching the chat looked completely dead even while the agent was actively
working.
2. Even with polling, continueSession only persisted ONE message at the very
end of a continuation — a continuation that runs several tool calls before
concluding would still show total silence for however long that took.
Fixed both:
- web/src/lib/stores/chat.ts: polls the current session's messages every 3s
between turns (never while a live stream owns the message list) and merges
in anything new. Started after a live turn ends and when a session loads;
stopped on new-chat/session-switch.
- cmd/nomos/store.go: insertMessageReturningID/updateMessage — lets a message
be created as a placeholder and updated in place.
- cmd/nomos/continue.go: continueSession now inserts a placeholder the
instant it starts (renders as the existing "thinking" dots — immediate
feedback that something is happening) and updates that SAME row after
EVERY tool call, not just at the end. A poll within ~3s of any tool call
landing shows it — individual `run` commands appear as the agent issues
them, not just the final rolled-up summary.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Closes the two remaining open points from the auto-continuation work.
1. Atomic pct_create (observability, the bigger of the two):
pct_create used to bundle create + apt install + post_install script into
one black-box multi-minute SSH call — the agent got back a single opaque
success/fail with no way to see (or fix) which step actually broke.
Removed the whole post-create provisioning block (and the now-dead
provisionScript/sanitizePkgs helpers + their tests). pct_create is now
create + start + register ONLY — fast, and its result is fed back to the
agent via auto-continuation almost immediately. The agent installs
packages and runs setup as its OWN sequence of `run` calls against the new
lxc:<hostname>, observing each command's real output and able to diagnose
and retry exactly the step that failed — the same recovery loop already
proven for the general case, now applied to installs too, instead of
requiring a separate black-box mechanism.
- services/post_install removed from the pct_create params struct and
from the MCP tool schema/SOUL.md docs.
- SOUL.md: explains the new flow, moves the Docker CLI gotcha and DNS
troubleshooting guidance to be steps the agent runs itself.
2. Scoped destructive window (targeted autonomy for recovery):
Verified live in the previous session that a destructive recovery (a
failed destroy needing stop-then-destroy on the same container) required
TWO separate typed confirmations for what was clearly one recovery
action. Added a narrow, TARGET-scoped 15-minute grant
(destructive_window.agent:<id>.target:<slug> in autonomy_settings,
shared key format across cmd/nomos and internal/mcp) that opens only
after an EXPLICIT typed confirmation (never loose assent) or an explicit
button-approval of a destructive step, and only ever covers further
destructive commands against that SAME target. A different target always
needs its own fresh confirmation — this narrows risk instead of loosening
it globally, unlike broadening the general assent window to cover
destructive actions would have.
- cmd/nomos/store.go: openDestructiveWindow/destructiveWindowActive/
executionTarget.
- cmd/nomos/agent.go: opens the window when a typed confirmation grants a
destructive chat-assent execution.
- internal/mcp/server.go: `run` tool checks the window before gating a
destructive command; auto-runs if active.
- internal/httpapi/phase3.go: DecideApproval opens the same window when a
destructive execution is approved via the button/API, for parity with
the chat-assent path.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Verified live: the new auto-continuation worker (previous commit) worked end
to end for the happy path (provision -> auto-verify -> report success, zero
operator ticks). But testing a failure-recovery case (a destroy that failed
because the container was still running) surfaced a real bug: continueSession's
emit closure only captured "text" events, so when chatWith ended the turn on
an "error" event (LLM returned an empty/refusal response, internal retry also
empty), the worker persisted a completely blank, uninformative "auto" message
— no sign anything had gone wrong, undermining observability of the very
mechanism just built.
- Capture "error" events and, if the turn produced no text/tool_calls at all,
persist an explanatory placeholder instead of blank.
- Add one outer retry of the whole chatWith call when the first attempt
produces nothing — the principle behind this whole feature ("don't give up
on the first error") should apply to the continuation mechanism itself, not
just the homelab commands it's continuing.
Also verified live: recovery-from-failure works via the normal chat path once
prompted, and cleaned up the test container.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The root cause behind "the agent stops at the first error and doesn't recover":
provisioning executions run ASYNCHRONOUSLY (pct_create fires the SSH work in a
goroutine and returns "running" immediately), so the agent's turn ENDS before
the result exists. The agent literally isn't running when the step fails — it
can't react to a failure it never observes. The only thing that fed results
back was the operator typing "continue" after every async step: the human was
the event loop. (In the flagged 18-message session the operator typed
continue/proceed/?? eight times while the agent correctly diagnosed each failure
but couldn't advance a step on its own.)
This makes the system the event loop instead:
- migrations/017: nomos_plan_executions links each gated execution to the chat
session that started it.
- cmd/nomos: after a tool result, any "execution <uuid>" it started is linked
to the session. A background worker (continue.go) polls for those executions
reaching a terminal state and — while the agent has an open assent window (an
approved plan is in flight) — re-invokes the agent with the result
("execution X completed/failed: <result>"), so it proceeds to the next step
or diagnoses+fixes the failure, with no operator tick. Guarded against loops
(mark-continued before running) and bounded by the 30-min window.
- chatWith(): chat() variant that injects the finished-execution note after
replayed history without persisting a fake user turn.
- DecideApproval: approving a step by ANY route (button or chat-assent) now
opens the assent window, so auto-continuation works regardless of how the
operator approved — previously only typing "go ahead" opened it.
- SOUL: the agent is told it will be auto-re-invoked when async steps finish —
don't poll get_execution_status, don't wait for "continue"; end the turn and
keep going step by step until the goal is verified or a genuine blocker.
This is the root fix, not another per-command patch: you can't enumerate every
failure of an unbounded action space, but you can give the agent a loop that
observes each result and adapts — because "do anything" always includes "the
first attempt failed."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three fixes for the session where the agent proposed a plan, waited
for 'proceed', then re-queued instead of being auto-approved:
1. Chat-assent fallback: when the operator says 'proceed' but the
preceding turn had NO pending approvals (agent proposed plan in text
without calling request_execution), inject a system note telling the
agent to execute the plan now. Opens the assent window so subsequent
config_mutation commands auto-run.
2. SOUL.md: instruct agent to ALWAYS call request_execution/run when
proposing a plan, not wait for 'proceed' first. This ensures a
pending approval exists for chat-assent to grant.
3. SOUL.md: stronger Docker instructions — Debian 13's docker.io package
installs the daemon but NOT the docker CLI binary. Must use
get.docker.com in post_install. Added 'handling errors' section:
diagnose, try alternatives, continue — don't stop after one failure.
Agent stopped after every approval step, forcing operator to type
'continue' 7× per deploy session. Root causes and fixes:
1. Compound read-only commands (e.g. 'systemctl status; journalctl')
defaulted to config_mutation — now splits on ;/&&/||/| and classifies
as read_only if all segments are inspection verbs. Added grep, wc,
sort, uniq, cut, tr, dpkg -l, apt list, docker stats to allowlist.
2. curl|sh was classified destructive, forcing typed confirmation for
legitimate installs (get.docker.com). Demoted to config_mutation —
loose assent grants it, no typed phrase needed.
3. SOUL.md said 'STOP after queuing' — replaced with 'continue working
on non-blocked steps'. Added assent window section instructing agent
to carry out the full plan after approval.
4. Assent window: when operator approves a plan via chat assent, a
30-minute window opens where config_mutation commands auto-run
without re-approval. Agent writes expiry to autonomy_settings; MCP
run tool checks it before gating. Destructive never auto-runs.
5. System note after approval now says 'CONTINUE executing the full
plan — do not stop and wait for continue.'
Root cause of "chat gave me no further feedback — had to go to Ops": two
compounding bugs, found by reading the actual production session transcript.
1. InlineApproval.svelte — all of last session's live-status/self-heal work —
was never imported or rendered anywhere. Chat.svelte had its own separate,
much dumber approval bar (no status tracking, no destructive handling, just
silently disappears after clicking) that WAS the one users actually saw.
Deleted the dead bar and its state; InlineApproval now renders per-message.
2. chat.ts's extractApprovals hardcoded `tool.name === 'request_execution'`,
so any approval raised by the newer `run` tool was invisible — no card, no
feedback, nothing to self-heal, forcing the operator to the Ops page with
zero acknowledgement in the conversation. This was the actual proximate
cause of last night's destroy-135 session. Fixed to match on response
shape, not tool name, so it doesn't silently break again for the next new
gated tool.
3. Nomos was telling operators "type something like 'I confirm destroy 135'"
for destructive actions (SOUL.md) but no backend path ever consumed that
phrase — chat-assent explicitly (and correctly) excludes destructive from
loose assent, but I never built the alternative. Added
isTypedConfirmation() (cmd/nomos/assent.go): stricter than loose assent,
requires an explicit "confirm" statement, only applies to destructive-
flagged pending approvals.
4. InlineApproval's completed-state hardcoded "Provisioned successfully" —
wrong/confusing for a destroy or arbitrary `run` command. Now says
"Completed on <target>" and shows the actual command output, verified live
against the real destroy-135 execution.
Verified live in a real browser against the production API/DB (dev server
proxying to :8090): the historical stuck session now retroactively renders
both executions as resolved with correct wording and real output.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Implements the first slice of plans/2026-07-10-general-gated-execution.md:
Nomos gets one general execution tool instead of only a fixed action enum,
gated by an automatic risk classifier, and approval can be granted by the
operator just replying in chat instead of clicking a button.
- internal/policy/command.go: ClassifyCommand(cmd, declaredRisk) — rule-based
read-only allowlist + destructive denylist, default-escalate to
config_mutation for anything else. Classification can only ESCALATE the
caller's declared risk, never de-escalate it (destructive always wins even
if declared read_only). Compound commands (&&, ;, |, $()) never qualify for
the read-only fast path. Full test corpus.
- internal/mcp/server.go: new `run` MCP tool — target (host:/lxc:), command,
purpose, optional declared_risk. Read-only commands execute immediately;
everything else queues an approval exactly like pct_create today, executed
via httpapi's existing executeApprovedAction. Also fixes a real latent bug:
pct_exec resolved an LXC's host attribute without the "host:" prefix, so it
could never find the Proxmox host — new resolveExecTarget/resolveRunTarget
helpers (mcp + httpapi) fix this for both the new `run` action and existing
actions that route through the same execution path.
- internal/httpapi/phase3.go: "run" case in executeApprovedAction; fixes two
bugs found while wiring this up — (1) DecideApproval hardcoded risk_class to
'config_mutation' on every approve, silently corrupting the audit ledger for
every other risk class; (2) denying/revoking an approval never updated the
linked execution's status, so it stayed 'pending_approval' forever instead
of reflecting the decision.
- cmd/nomos/assent.go: deterministic (not LLM-judged) chat-assent detection.
Scoped to the immediately-preceding assistant turn's pending approvals only
— an old "yes" can't retroactively approve something new. Destructive-risk
actions are excluded from loose assent. Approves via the same HTTP decision
endpoint the UI button calls, so both paths share one audit trail.
- web/.../InlineApproval.svelte: self-healing poll — a pending approval card
now picks up being decided via ANY path (chat assent, Ops page, Matrix), not
just its own button. Previously the banner stayed stuck showing
Approve/Deny even after the action had already run elsewhere.
- nomos/SOUL.md: `run` is now the general capability ("no fixed menu, only a
risk gate"); documents chat-assent behavior and the destructive exception.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Root cause of "asks permission but never acts": the approved pct_create
execution failed to parse because the LLM emitted `"privileged":0` /
`"nesting":1` (numbers) into strict `bool` fields, so the container was
never created. Compounded by a hardcoded template name (debian-13.0-1)
that no longer exists on the host, and no way for the agent to read the web.
- flexBool: accept 0/1, "true", bool for privileged/nesting (the exact prod failure)
- pct_create template pre-flight: list host cache, validate/auto-pick newest debian
- pct_create services[] + post_install: one approval provisions a working service
- new http_get MCP tool (sanitized, size-capped, SSRF-guarded) — agent can read repos/sites
- request_execution description: target=host, full JSON schema + example
- SOUL.md: agent CAN fetch the web; prefer one-step provisioning
- default model deepseek-v4-flash -> v4-pro; maxIterations 15 -> 25
- unit tests for flexBool, template resolve, pkg sanitize, HTML sanitize + SSRF block
Verified live on host:strong with a throwaway VMID 999: template auto-resolved,
container created + booted, services installed, post_install ran, then destroyed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Empty/refusal responses retried once, then surfaced as errors instead of silent blanks
- Chinese refusal boilerplate detected via denylist + non-ASCII heuristic
- Bulk-tool preference added to SOUL.md (list_lxcs over per-entity get_lxc_state)
- Tool results truncated to 4KB on persist; get_state_snapshot filters null-state entities
- Session delete (DELETE /sessions/{id} + confirm-on-second-click UI)
- Session titles auto-generated from assistant answer instead of raw user message
Problem: every host/service/lxc/etc. entity_status row was permanently
stuck at 'unknown' since creation. Verified against the live DB:
metric_samples had 17,559 rows, 100% attached to type='check' probe
entities and 0% to any real monitored entity; only 25 check entities
ever had real health written. check_defs.entity_id (the probe's own
bookkeeping entity) and check_defs.target_id (the host/service actually
being observed) were both real fields, but the scheduler wrote
UpsertEntityStatus/InsertMetricSample/emitSchedulerEvent keyed by
entity_id instead of target_id — so every check ran and every result
was real, it just landed on the wrong row. This is the mechanism behind
observed drift: the agent's dashboard/health tools reported the
internal probes' state, never the actual fleet.
Change:
- scheduler.go: runCheck/resolveSignal now resolve targetID from
cd.TargetID (falling back to the check's own id if unset) and write
status/metrics/events there. Signals stay keyed by the check entity,
unchanged, matching their existing resolution logic.
- Added a staleness sweep to housekeeping(): an entity whose last
observation is older than 3x its fastest enabled check's interval
(floor 5m) is marked 'stale' and emits health.stale, so a stalled
scheduler or disabled check_def can no longer look like current data
forever.
- migrations/016: deletes the now-orphaned check-entity entity_status
rows so dashboard/fleet-health rollups stop double-counting probes as
monitored entities. Historical metric_samples on check entities are
left as-is (time-series data, not safe to reattribute).
- openapi.yaml + regenerated gen code: Entity gains health/last_check_at;
'stale' added to the health enum everywhere it's used.
- dashboard.go / GetFleetHealth / nomos's get_health_summary MCP tool:
exclude type='check' entities from rollups.
- nomos/agent.go: replay prior turns' tool_use/tool_result pairs into
the conversation instead of dropping them (previously only final text
was replayed, forcing the agent to re-derive fleet state every turn),
and inject a compact live fleet-health snapshot into the system prompt
each turn so it starts oriented instead of spending an iteration on
discovery.
Risk: config_mutation (schema-adjacent — new migration, no destructive
DDL, additive DELETE only on orphaned rows). No behavior change until
oikos-api/oikos-scheduler/nomos are rebuilt and redeployed.
Verification: go build/vet clean across the repo. Ran this worktree's
own API binary against the live dev Postgres on an alternate port
(read-only from the live containers' perspective) and confirmed
/api/v1/entities now returns health/last_check_at, and the dashboard
health rollup dropped from double-counting to an honest 168 unmonitored
entities (matches reality pre-deploy — the live scheduler hasn't run
the fixed code yet). Confirmed check_defs.target_id correctly maps
multiple checks to host:hubris via direct psql query.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
After an api (MCP server) restart, nomos held a dead session id and every
tool call failed with "unexpected end of JSON input" until nomos was manually
restarted — which happens on every deploy. The MCP client now detects a
rejected session (4xx or empty body) and transparently re-initializes and
retries once. Also raise the SSE scanner buffer to 4MB so large tool results
don't exceed the 64KB default token limit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
