tools, mcp: a description is a hook, not a manual ...

With 24 tools in a profile the schemas are the largest fixed block of every
request, and they are paid for whether or not the tool is called. Eleven of
them carried a manual's worth of prose in their `description` — examples,
error tables, "common mistakes", the mechanics of the file areas. Reading
them against the manuals first, the manuals already held all of it, and
richer: this was duplication sitting in the one place the model cannot avoid
reading, not knowledge that had nowhere else to live. So the descriptions
became selection hooks — what the tool is for, when to pick it over its
neighbour, and the one rule that cannot wait — and the detail moved to
tool_manual("<tool>"), which costs nothing until the tool is actually in
play.

filesystem, spawn_agent, schedule_recall, manage_recall, scratchpad, plan,
share_file, content_publish, reflect, todo and peer. Descriptions drop from
18.4 KB to 11.5 KB, those tools' schemas from 25.5 KB to 16.8 KB, and a
profile's whole native toolset from 38.3 KB to 29.6 KB (server_admin,
developer; secretary 33.7 → 25.0, navi_code 32.9 → 25.9, tool_developer
37.9 → 29.2, modeler_3d 33.4 → 24.8). Stated as a budget rather than a byte
count: roughly 4k tokens of the model's window per request, back.

Two things were deliberately not shortened. The filesystem edit ladder
(`edit` → `edit_lines` → `smart_edit`, last resort, costs an LLM call) and
todo's mandatory `validation` on `done` both exist to prevent an extra
round trip; a shorter description there would trade tokens for turns. What
todo lost is the prose around the rule, not the rule. `enabled.json` was
left alone too: weather, gmail and get_current_datetime are opt-in and the
DB shows 12, 16 and 40 calls, so they are opt-in tools that are actually
used.

peer had no manual at all, which is how this surfaced: its description was
the only documentation the tool had. manuals/peer.md is now written from
the tool and its /peer route — the ask/status/list actions, the fact that
the hive is only a phone book and the question travels peer-to-peer, the
one-concurrent-answer semaphore, the two independent recursion guards, and
the six error codes.

The MCP server instructions leave the system prompt the same way. They were
8 KB of always-present prose per request, most of it workflow detail the
model only needs when it is about to use that server. Each server now
contributes one line — a new optional `summary` field in mcp_servers.d/*.json,
defaulting to the first sentence of its `instructions` — and
tool_manual("<server>") returns the full text plus the tool names the server
declares. server_admin's MCP block goes from 8.3 KB to 1.3 KB, secretary's
from 8.1 to 1.2. tool_manual learned to answer for a server (a tool name
still wins over a server of the same name, and dash/underscore spelling is
tolerated), and the index names the servers alongside the tools.

One judgement call worth recording: gnexus-book's and navi-web's
instructions end in an absolute "NEVER bypass these tools with filesystem,
terminal or code_exec" rule. Moving that on demand would have been a
behavioural regression dressed as a token saving, so those two `summary`
fields carry the prohibition verbatim alongside the hook, and it stays
always visible.

docs/tools.md gains a section on the split (a description is paid for every
request, a manual only when the tool is used), which is where the next
person will look before trimming a description back into a manual.

Full suite green (1577 passed, 1 skipped). No frontend change and no new
dependency, so the deploy is a pull and a restart.

Fix scratchpad tool: rename op→action, add examples, improve error messages ...

- Rename primary parameter from 'op' to 'action' for consistency with
  all other tools (terminal, filesystem, todo, etc.). Legacy 'op' still
  works as a fallback to avoid breaking old calls in compressed context.
- Add JSON examples directly in the tool description so the model sees
  the exact structure to produce.
- Improve all error messages to include the correct JSON example,
  making it obvious what the model did wrong.
- Add manuals/scratchpad.md for tool_manual support.
- Update and expand tests for new syntax and error cases.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Pass explicit ToolContext to tools instead of hidden ContextVars ...

Add ToolContext dataclass (session_id, event_sink, stop_event, model,
user_id, user_role, user_info) and thread it through the execution chain:
Agent._execute_tools_with_sink → ToolExecutor → tool.execute().

All ~25 tools updated to accept ctx parameter. Tools that previously
read ContextVar now prefer ctx when provided, falling back to
ContextVar for backward compatibility.

Tests updated to pass ToolContext explicitly — no more test fixtures
that set current_session_id / current_user_id ContextVars.

ContextVar setters remain as fallback for non-tool consumers
(ai_helper, context_builder, planning) and will be removed in a
follow-up refactor.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Fix scratchpad get_section user_id and filesystem diff newline bugs ...

- get_section: use _uid() instead of None so multi-user lookups match
  the user_id-scoped writes done by the scratchpad tool execute()
- filesystem _diff: remove erroneous [l + \"\\n\"...] wrappers around
  splitlines() output; difflib.unified_diff already handles line lists

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Enhance native toolset and add persistent KV store ...

- Add PostgreSQL-backed KvStore (navi/store/) for session-scoped data.
- Migrate todo and scratchpad from in-memory dicts to KvStore.
- Filesystem: add copy, grep, diff actions; compress description.
- CodeExec: remove language param, expose working_dir in schema.
- ImageView: resize to 1024px JPEG + Content-Type guard for URLs.
- Memory list: return distinct categories instead of all facts.
- SSH: add scp action with upload/download support.
- Update CLAUDE.md (Postgres-only), docs/tools.md, add docs/store.md.
- Fix agent/planning/context_builder async signatures for todo helpers.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Refactor: move tool helper modules into _internal subpackage ...

Moves non-tool infrastructure out of navi/tools/ root so that only
actual tool classes live there:

  base.py           → _internal/base.py
  loader.py         → _internal/loader.py
  middleware.py     → _internal/middleware.py
  logging_middleware.py → _internal/logging_middleware.py
  _time_parser.py   → _internal/time_parser.py

All imports updated across core/, api/, mcp/, tools/, and tests/.
No proxy files remain in navi/tools/ root.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Planning debug panel, todo auto-populate, scratchpad/persona improvements ...

- Planning debug panel: new Planning tab in debug/index.html shows raw
  phase 1/2 outputs and token counts per planning run, stored in
  session.planning_logs (new column in both SQLite and PostgreSQL)
- New GET /sessions/{id}/planning API endpoint
- PlanningDebugData internal event wires _run_planning() output into
  session storage; never forwarded to WebSocket clients
- Phase 3 (plan critic) disabled — to be reworked with reflect integration
- Todo tool: auto-populated from plan steps after phase 2; model only
  needs to call update/view, not set
- Scratchpad: clarified description and persona instructions; removed
  context_transfer from user-facing docs (internal mechanism only)
- web_search: switched to ddgs package, SearXNG as primary backend,
  DDG html-only fallback; added find_up action to filesystem tool
- Persona: added SCRATCHPAD and TODO sections with clear usage rules;
  added NAVI.md project context instructions
- chat.js: fixed subagent planning event fallthrough into parent UI;
  statusLabel cleared on first stream delta

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Improve subagent system: isolated tools, custom prompts, context transfer, timeout ...

AgentProfile:
- New fields: subagent_tools, subagent_planning_enabled, subagent_system_prompt
- loader.py: loads subagent_tools/subagent_planning_enabled from config.json,
  reads optional subagent_system_prompt.txt per profile

Profiles:
- Each profile now has a dedicated subagent_tools list (focused subset, no admin tools)
- subagent_planning_enabled: false (configurable per profile)
- New subagent_system_prompt.txt per profile with executor-focused instructions

run_ephemeral:
- Uses profile.subagent_tools instead of enabled_tools
- Builds subagent context without persona or profiles block (focused executor)
- Injects subagent_system_prompt after profile.system_prompt
- Accepts context_transfer: priming exchange injected before task message
- Wall-clock timeout (default 5 min) checked per iteration
- Returns (result_text, completed: bool) instead of bare string
- Optionally runs planning phase if profile.subagent_planning_enabled

spawn_agent:
- Removed briefing param; task is now fully self-contained
- Added system_prompt param: custom injected prompt for this specific task
- Auto-reads parent scratchpad context_transfer section via get_section()
- Result prefixed with [STATUS: completed|limit_reached]
- Timeout 300s

scratchpad:
- Added get_section(session_id, section) helper for cross-session reads

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Planning phases, context compression, and tool improvements ...

Agent:
- Planning now a 3-phase async generator: Analysis → Execution plan → AIHelper critic
- Yield PlanningStatus events before each phase (UI progress labels)
- Phase 1 runs with think=True for deeper analysis
- Phase 2 includes available tool list so executor assignments are accurate
- Phase 3: independent critic pass validates and corrects TOOL: names against real tool list
- Planning converted from list return to async generator (fixes token accounting)

Backend:
- Context compression threshold: 80% → 70% to trigger earlier
- Compressor summary prompt: structured sections (goal, work state, key facts, outputs, errors)
- Terminal output capped at 5000 chars to prevent context flooding
- Web search: region=wt-wt for DDG, country=ALL for Brave, language=all for SearxNG
- Scratchpad: mandate writing a 'goal' section at start of multi-step tasks
- secretary max_iterations: 40→25, temperature: 0.7→0.5
- server_admin max_iterations: 40→20

Webclient:
- ThinkingCard strips <thought> XML tags leaked by Ollama
- planning_status WS event wired to chat.onPlanningStatus()

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Restructure profiles: directory-based format with config.json + system_prompt.txt ...

Each profile is now a subdirectory under navi/profiles/ containing:
  config.json       — model, temperature, enabled_tools, and other settings
  system_prompt.txt — raw system prompt, editable without touching Python

Added navi/profiles/loader.py for auto-discovery of profile directories.
Removed individual profile .py files (secretary, server_admin, smart_home, developer).
profiles/__init__.py now simply calls load_profiles_from_dir() at import time.

New profiles can be added by creating a directory with the two required files —
no Python changes needed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

self edited

Add planning phase and scratchpad tool for smarter task execution ...

- ScratchpadTool: session-scoped working notepad with named sections
  (write/append/read/clear). Lets Navi capture intermediate findings
  between tool calls instead of losing track of them.

- Planning phase: when profile.planning_enabled=True, a fast pre-loop
  LLM call (think=False, no tools) outlines a numbered plan before
  any actions are taken. The plan is injected into session context as
  an assistant message so the model naturally continues from it.

- PlanReady event + plan_ready WebSocket message + plan card in UI
  (green-tinted, collapsible, mirroring thinking card design).

- secretary and server_admin profiles: planning_enabled=True,
  scratchpad added to enabled_tools, system prompts updated with
  explicit execution discipline instructions.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>