feat(persona-registry): warn when an agent's persona.json is stale by willwashburn · Pull Request #321 · AgentWorkforce/workforce

willwashburn · 2026-08-20T16:28:45Z

An agent directory whose persona.json is older than its persona.ts loads the compiled spec with none of the edits sitting in the authoring file. Nothing about the result looks wrong — the persona appears in list, resolves in agent, deploys — it is simply the previous version.

#316 warned about a persona that was never compiled. This covers the quieter case: one that was compiled once and has drifted.

$ agentworkforce list        # in ../sales, after editing persona.ts
warning: [cwd:agents] proposal-agent: persona.json is older than persona.ts, so this
persona is loading without the latest edits; re-run `agentworkforce persona compile
.../agents/proposal-agent/persona.ts`.

PERSONA         SOURCE      HARNESS  MODEL
proposal-agent  cwd:agents  claude   claude-opus-4-8

The persona is still served. Dropping it would turn a forgotten compile into a missing persona — a worse failure than an out-of-date one, and one that would break deploy and agent rather than just informing them.

Verification

Exercised against the real ../sales checkout: warns after touching persona.ts, clears after persona compile. Two new tests backdate the artifact with utimesSync rather than sleeping, covering both orderings. local-personas suite passes (53).

Semver: patch — a new diagnostic on an existing path, no resolution behavior changes.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

coderabbitai · 2026-08-20T16:29:20Z

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 1dc92a46-f9a9-46cd-a4ad-9a12ef9625f8

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 558784d and 946f52a.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

packages/cli/src/local-personas.test.ts
packages/persona-registry/src/local-personas.ts

Included review availability: Your plan provides up to 1 included review per hour; 0 remain after this review.

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Nested persona loading now compares authored source and compiled artifact modification times. Stale compiled personas remain available with a warning. Missing compiled personas remain skipped. CLI tests cover stale and current artifacts.

Changes

Persona mtime loading

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Mtime-aware nested persona loading `packages/persona-registry/src/local-personas.ts`, `packages/cli/src/local-personas.test.ts`	The loader detects stale compiled personas by comparing modification times. It warns when `persona.json` is older than the authored source and still loads the compiled spec. It retains the missing-compile warning and skips entries without compiled files. Tests cover stale and current artifacts.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 946f5

This change adds a warning for stale persona artifacts while preserving existing loading behavior; no actionable merge-blocking risk remains.

Suggested reviewers: khaliqgant

Poem

I thump my paws; the times now align,
Old compiled leaves receive a sign.
Fresh personas hop in clear,
Missing ones stay out of here.
— A careful rabbit 🐇

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 66.67% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the new stale persona.json warning.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description accurately explains the stale artifact warning, preserved loading behavior, tests, and user remediation.

✨ Finishing Touches 💡 1

📝 Generate docstrings 💡

Create stacked PR
Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

Create PR with unit tests
Commit unit tests in branch feat/warn-stale-agent-persona

Thanks for using CodeRabbit! It's free for OSS, and your support helps us grow. If you like it, consider giving us a shout-out.

❤️ Share

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

chatgpt-codex-connector

💡 Codex Review

Here are some automated review suggestions for this pull request.

Reviewed commit: 946f52af9e

ℹ️ About Codex in GitHub

Your team has set up Codex to review pull requests in this repo. Reviews are triggered when you

Open a pull request for review
Mark a draft as ready
Comment "@codex review".

If Codex has suggestions, it will comment; otherwise it will react with 👍.

Codex can also answer questions or update the PR. Try commenting "@codex address that feedback".

chatgpt-codex-connector · 2026-08-20T16:31:19Z

+    const authored = NESTED_PERSONA_SOURCE_FILENAMES.map((file) => join(sourceDir, file)).find(
+      (candidate) => fileMtimeMs(candidate) !== undefined
+    );


Inspect every authoring candidate for staleness

When an agent directory contains multiple supported authoring files—for example, an old persona.ts remains after development moves to persona.js—this fixed-order find() always selects the TypeScript file. If persona.json is newer than that old file but older than the actively edited JavaScript file, the stale persona loads without any warning. Compare all recognized sources and use the newest modification time (and its path) for the diagnostic.

Useful? React with 👍 / 👎.

cubic-dev-ai

All reported issues were addressed across 2 files

_{Reply with feedback, questions, or to request a fix.

Re-trigger cubic}

An agent driven by its `onEvent` entry has no interactive launch to configure, so `harness`, `model`, and `systemPrompt` — already optional on `PersonaSpec` — are optional here too. Requiring them kept exactly the agents the `agents/` directory was added for out of the registry, reporting a valid deployable persona as malformed. `onEvent` and `cloud` now survive parse and merge. An overlay that tweaks env no longer strips the handler entry that makes its base deployable, so the merged spec is a complete agent rather than a partial one. `harnessSettings` stays required: `PersonaSpec` types it non-optional, and `reasoning`/`timeoutSeconds` have no defensible default to invent on a persona's behalf. `onEvent` is validated as a relative path that cannot escape the agent directory, matching the sidecar rule. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Hand-rolling the guard drifted from persona-kit twice over. It validated the raw string and stored a trimmed copy, so `" ../x/agent.ts "` cleared the `..` check as the segment `" .."` and escaped the agent directory once trimmed. And it never checked the handler extension, so `onEvent: "README.md"` counted as a handler and skipped the interactive fields the persona never declared. `parseOnEvent` owns both rules and returns the exact string it validated, so the stored value cannot differ from the one that passed. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

willwashburn · 2026-08-20T17:19:08Z

Rebased onto #323 and retargeted there, so this shows only its own diff and merges without a conflict.

Merge order: #318 → #323 → #321 → #322. GitHub retargets each to main automatically as the one below it lands.

Worth knowing why: left on main, #321 and #322 each collided with #323 in local-personas.test.ts, and the collision was not the harmless kind. Git factored the shared trailing });\n}); out of both sides, so accepting both halves produced a test truncated mid-body that would not compile — a reviewer taking "keep both" at face value would have merged broken code. Resolved once here instead.

Full stack verified: 65 tests in local-personas, 322 across the CLI suite.

Order matters in both directions. Validating the raw string and storing a trimmed copy let `" ../x/agent.ts "` clear the `..` check as the segment `" .."` and escape once trimmed. Validating without trimming stored `" ./agent.ts"`, which passes every check and then resolves against a directory named `" ."` at deploy. Trimming before `parseOnEvent` makes the validated value and the stored value the same string. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

An agent directory whose `persona.json` is older than its `persona.ts` loads the compiled spec with none of the edits sitting in the authoring file, and nothing about the result looks wrong. #316 warned about a persona that was never compiled; this covers the quieter case where it was compiled once. The persona is still served. Dropping it would turn a forgotten compile into a missing persona, which is a worse failure than an out-of-date one. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

… file A directory that still carries an abandoned `persona.ts` after development moved to `persona.js` was measured against the file nobody edits, so a `persona.json` newer than the dead source but older than the live one read as fresh. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

chatgpt-codex-connector Bot reviewed Aug 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

cubic-dev-ai Bot reviewed Aug 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread packages/persona-registry/src/local-personas.ts Outdated

willwashburn and others added 2 commits August 20, 2026 12:53

willwashburn force-pushed the feat/warn-stale-agent-persona branch from d77be7d to 7303cc5 Compare August 20, 2026 17:18

willwashburn changed the base branch from main to feat/registry-handler-personas August 20, 2026 17:18

willwashburn mentioned this pull request Aug 20, 2026

feat(persona-registry): load personal agents from the workforce home #322

Open

willwashburn and others added 3 commits August 20, 2026 13:24

willwashburn force-pushed the feat/warn-stale-agent-persona branch from 7303cc5 to 3425fa1 Compare August 20, 2026 17:26

willwashburn changed the base branch from feat/registry-handler-personas to main August 20, 2026 17:30

willwashburn closed this Aug 20, 2026

willwashburn reopened this Aug 20, 2026

Navigation Menu

Uh oh!

feat(persona-registry): warn when an agent's persona.json is stale - #321

feat(persona-registry): warn when an agent's persona.json is stale#321
willwashburn wants to merge 5 commits into
mainfrom
feat/warn-stale-agent-persona

willwashburn commented Aug 20, 2026 •

edited by cubic-dev-ai Bot

Loading

Uh oh!

coderabbitai Bot commented Aug 20, 2026 •

edited

Loading

Walkthrough

Changes

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Uh oh!

chatgpt-codex-connector Bot left a comment

Uh oh!

chatgpt-codex-connector Bot Aug 20, 2026

Uh oh!

cubic-dev-ai Bot left a comment •

edited

Loading

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

willwashburn commented Aug 20, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

1 participant

Uh oh!

Conversation

willwashburn commented Aug 20, 2026 • edited by cubic-dev-ai Bot Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Verification

Uh oh!

coderabbitai Bot commented Aug 20, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Walkthrough

Changes

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Uh oh!

chatgpt-codex-connector Bot left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

💡 Codex Review

Uh oh!

chatgpt-codex-connector Bot Aug 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

cubic-dev-ai Bot left a comment • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

willwashburn commented Aug 20, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

1 participant

willwashburn commented Aug 20, 2026 •

edited by cubic-dev-ai Bot

Loading

coderabbitai Bot commented Aug 20, 2026 •

edited

Loading

cubic-dev-ai Bot left a comment •

edited

Loading