[nissa-seru]

Every stderr line about one namespace now names it, as ns=<namespace> at the end of its message's first line, through one helper, so the lines of several agents in one process can be told apart. JSON diagnostics and the compression log's entries carry a namespace field instead.

Fixes #239.

Problem

The strategy knows its namespace, but none of its stderr diagnostics print it, and neither do the manager's. In a process hosting several adaptive agents, where agent-framework gives each its own agents/<name> namespace on one store, their lines interleave and can't be told apart. The issue names [plan-vs-actual], [kv-overlap], [kv-unified] and [kv-escalation]. The same holds for every line about one namespace's work: the strategy's other lines ([autobiographical], [compression-quarantine], [estimator-calibration], [merge-quarantine], [cm-cache] and the rest), the manager's, and the planner's and picker's lines that run inside a compile.

Changes

One helper, src/diagnostics.ts. namespaceDiagnostics(() => namespace) gives error and warn functions that end the first line of each message with ns=<namespace>, after its fields, as the issue suggests. A grep for a line's prefix still matches. Arguments after the message, such as an error, print after it as before, and a % in a namespace prints as written. The helper reads the namespace and console as each line is logged. A strategy learns its namespace at initialize, and until then a line names none. A line about what no one namespace owns goes to console as it is. console is a Diagnostics too, so every parameter that takes one defaults to it. The package exports the type for persistMintRequestPreimage's parameter.

Where each line's namespace comes from, by file:

• strategies/autobiographical.ts: 106 of its 109 stderr lines go through this.diag, which names the strategy's namespace. Its two JSON lines, config:effective and compression:quarantine-alert, carry a namespace field instead of a suffix, since a suffix would break their JSON. config:effective is emitted before this.ns is set, so it takes the namespace from the context the strategy initializes with. The compression log (CONTEXT_MANAGER_COMPRESSION_LOG) is one file per process, so its entries gain namespace, and its write failure names it too. diag is protected, as ns is, so a subclass can log through it to name the namespace.
• strategies/windowed-passthrough.ts: its persisted-anchor line names its namespace.
• context-manager.ts: the manager's lines name its namespace, default when it has none. These are a sharded addMessage failing partway, a compression hold timing out, a strategy hook failing, an onMessage listener throwing, [cm-cache] compile: select, and summaries it can't describe. The [debugLogContext] entry gains namespace. The two [message-store] lines at open, about retuning the message slot's snapshot cadence, name the slot by its ID. An isolated slot is one agent's, so its lines name its namespace too. The shared slot is the store's, so its lines name none. The failure line now names the slot as well, and a % in it prints as written.
• fold-journal.ts: a receipt listener's failure names the journal's namespace, and so do the three fallbacks that treat this journal's branch as unrecorded. The lines about the store's identity record, the index's record warnings and "can't tell where the journal stands" name none. Each is reported once per store object and is about the store's records as a whole, whichever manager reads them first.
• mint-preimage.ts: persistMintRequestPreimage takes the minting strategy's diagnostics as an optional fourth argument, so its three lines name its namespace. It still never throws, unless the diagnostics it's given do.
• adaptive/kv-control.ts: reportOverlap takes the strategy's diagnostics. So does the planner, through ControlPlanParams.diagnostics, for its [kv-timing] and [kv-diag] lines, and KvStableStrategy passes them on through its options. replayControlled and the replay scripts, which replay one agent's turns outside any manager, give none, and their lines are as before.
• adaptive/picker.ts: Picker takes its owner's diagnostics for [picker-unrealizable] and [picker-dead-ids]. The strategy's pickers name its namespace; the replay's names none.
• well-formed-content.ts, message-store.ts, context-log.ts: the line about content that doesn't match ContentBlock names the namespace whose state was read. MessageStore and ContextLog name the namespace they're given, so an isolated message slot, an auxiliary slot of one namespace and a namespaced context log name it, whether ContextManager.open or a caller builds them. The shared message slot and a context log with no namespace name none. message-store.ts's [cm-cache] lines go through the store's diagnostics too, beside their slot's state ID, which the write-through failure now names as well.
• describe-thrown.ts: logThrown takes the diagnostics to log through.

A reader that took a line's end as its last field, such as [kv-overlap]'s sample=, now finds ns= there, and the changelog fragment says so.

What each part is for

• namespaceDiagnostics is the one place a line's suffix is made, after its fields at the end of the message's first line. It reads the namespace and console as each line is logged, so a strategy names its namespace from initialize on, and a test that replaces console.error sees the lines. Without it, every site would build the suffix itself.
• Its % handling is one branch with a test. A namespace is a host's string, such as agents/<name>. When an error follows the message, console.error reads the message as a format string, so a %s in a namespace would print the error in its place.
• The Diagnostics type and its export name the parameter that persistMintRequestPreimage, a public function, now takes. console is one, so a caller passes nothing new. It's a type, with no runtime cost.
• The diagnostics passed to the planner, reportOverlap, the picker, logThrown, the fold journal's fallbacks and persistMintRequestPreimage let the lines they log for one namespace's work name it. Each is an optional parameter or option that defaults to console, so a caller outside a manager, such as the replay scripts, is unchanged.
• MessageStore and ContextLog name the namespace they're given, from the option they already take, so a store built outside ContextManager.open names it too.
• diag is protected, as ns is, so a subclass can log through it and name the namespace. connectome-host's FrontdeskStrategy is one such subclass. The cost is a protected member, and a subclass's own diag now conflicts with it, as the changelog says.
• The namespace fields of config:effective, compression:quarantine-alert, [debugLogContext] and the compression log's entries do the suffix's job where a suffix would break the JSON. A test reads each one.
• The strategy's diagnostics passed to persistMintRequestPreimage have a test of their own, in which the strategy mints while the store refuses the preimage and the failure's line names its namespace.
• The compression log writes namespace in every entry, as the JSON lines do, a manager opened with namespace: '' included.
• The strategy's diagnostics passed to its pickers have no test of their own. The picker's own test shows that a picker given diagnostics names the namespace (test/adaptive/picker.test.ts). The strategy's pickers log only on a solver bug or a frontier entry left by store surgery, so a test of that one argument would have to build a broken solver or a damaged store.
• Left out:
  • AsyncLocalStorage would have spared passing diagnostics through the planner, the picker and the stores, but then every line's namespace would rest on a context that nothing at the call site shows.
  • Wrapping each message in a function instead of logging through an object would have reindented every message built by concatenation, so each site's diff would no longer be one token.
  • Naming only the four lines the issue lists would leave the rest of a namespace's lines as hard to tell apart as they are today.
  • A diagnostics option on MessageStore and ContextLog, set by ContextManager.open, would repeat what each store already knows, its namespace.

Tests

npm test on this branch, which has main merged in at c0efbfce (Linux, Node 24.19.0): 2204 pass / 0 fail. main at c0efbfce: 2187 pass / 0 fail. The difference is the 17 new tests.

• test/diagnostics.test.ts checks the suffix on a one-line and on a multi-line message, that the namespace and console are read as each line is logged with the rest of the arguments passed on to error and warn, that a line names no namespace before there is one, and that a namespace holding %s prints as written before an argument that follows. It takes the Diagnostics type from the package's entry point.
• A compile in agents/tern (test/production-budget.test.ts) ends its [kv-overlap] and [plan-vs-actual] lines with ns=agents/tern, and every [kv-timing] line too, with KV_TIMING set, through the planner.
• The escalation and a superseded [kv-unified] submission each name agents/wren (overbudget-diagnostics, kv-unified-strategy-integration).
• Two managers on one store, default and beta, exhaust a compression each, and each quarantine alert names its own namespace (compression-recall-curve).
• The manager's lines: its hold timeout (compression-hold-timeout) and its onMessage listener (compile-provenance) name default, a manager opened in agents/tern names that (compile-provenance), and so does its compile's [cm-cache] line with CM_CACHE_DIAG set (manager-diagnostics).
• A message slot's lines (manager-diagnostics): an isolated slot's cadence retune at open, its failure, and its [cm-cache] lines name its namespace, and the shared slot's name none. The cache-miss and write-through lines are checked in a child process started with CM_CACHE_DIAG set, since message-store.ts reads that flag when it loads. The failure line prints a slot holding %s as written, agents/100%s/messages.
• The config report names default from a manager without a namespace and agents/tern from one in it.
• The halted model's test checks the compression log entry's namespace as well as its stderr line. With the log's path a directory, the write failure names agents/tern.
• A strategy minting a merge while the store refuses the preimage's blob logs the failure with ns=default, its manager's namespace (mint-preimage).
• The fold journal's listener names agents/tester, and so does each fallback that treats its branch as unrecorded: a newest record of another format, one with no envelope, a broken chain, members its units don't cover, and a layout that doesn't rebuild.
• An isolated message slot's content line names agents/tern, and the shared slot's names none. A context log names the namespace it's given, and one with none names none.
• The windowed strategy's anchor reset, a mint's preimage failure, a picker's unrealizable and dead frontier entries, and the [debugLogContext] entry each name theirs.
• Nine existing assertions that compared a line's end now expect ns=default, in fold-diff-strategy, compression-recall-curve, compression-serialized-media-wire, merge-disposition, production-budget and strategy-persistence. With feat(diagnostics): log compile time on the plan-vs-actual line #200 merged in, so do its four that anchor the [plan-vs-actual] line's end (kv-unified-strategy-integration), and with fix(strategy): the speculative drain's timer lets no error out #247, its test of a throw from the drain's next tick (drain-timer).
• Red-first, on the first commit: with main's src/ and the new src/diagnostics.ts kept, every changed test file fails at the tests that name a namespace, and three of them also fail to typecheck at the new arguments they pass. test/diagnostics.test.ts, the helper's own, passes.
• Removals: each diagnostics object the change makes or passes, each JSON field, and each new behaviour of the helper and the stores was removed or inverted alone and run against the tests that should catch it. That's 68 removal runs over the branch's commits. Each piece of the final change fails a test at its last removal, or the typecheck for the Diagnostics export, except the strategy's diagnostics passed to its pickers, under "Not verified", whose removal passes the whole suite. A single line's call through the same diagnostics, or a single compression log call's this.ns, has no test of its own.

Not verified

• Nothing ran against a real store. The change touches only what diagnostics print, and the tests read the lines from captured stderr and the compression log's file.
• The strategy passing its diagnostics to its pickers has no test of its own, and removing it passes the whole suite. "What each part is for" says why.
• Lines no test turns on: the planner's [kv-diag] lines, whose flag KV_DIAG_GROUP its module reads when it loads.

Companion PRs

This branch changes most of autobiographical.ts' stderr lines, MessageStore's constructor and its calls that bump a slot's write version, so it conflicts with open pull requests that change the same lines. It has main merged in at c0efbfce, which holds #138, #200, #158, #246, #248 and #247, and its merge commits resolve #138's, #200's and #248's conflicts as the first item below describes. Trial merges at f19b5741, with main at c0efbfce and each pull request's head as of 11:44 UTC on October 19:

• fix(strategy): a replaced or closed strategy stops compressing, and close() is final #215 (14 hunks, 12 of them with main), fix(tool-pruning): price replaced tool results and truncated inputs as sent, from one decision over the conversation #249 (1 hunk, in select) and feat: folding-strategy migration utility (kv-stable ⇄ kv-unified) #94 (1 hunk, the folding-strategy mismatch line; a draft), in autobiographical.ts. Each hunk keeps the other pull request's change, with this.diag where it has console and this.ns as the last argument of each logCompressionCall.
• feat(derive): a context manager derived from a live one — shared reads, separate writes, the rendering frontier reused (Dendrite) #238 (7 hunks, none of them with main), in message-store.ts. In the constructor, keep both sides, and set this.log before the seed's early return, from the store's namespace (a derived store's is its seed's), so a derived store's lines name it too. At each write, keep feat(derive): a context manager derived from a live one — shared reads, separate writes, the rendering frontier reused (Dendrite) #238's bumpWriteVersion call with this.log added, which tsc requires.
• fix: send signed thinking only while the prefix it was minted under holds #160 (3 hunks with main, 5 with this branch), fix(images): count every image in the live window's limits, price a generated image as an image, and estimate by the strip's depth rule #219 (6 and 7) and fix(kv-stable): phase C un-folds youngest by position, not deepest level first #156 (1 and 2) already conflict with main, and each gains these hunks. fix(merge): merge around quarantined sources; add operator merge holds #117, feat(identity): witnessedIdentityReminder: inherited and lived history get their own reminders #129, RenderStats.nesting; the kv-overlap warning stops claiming a double render #130, chore(deprecate): ContextInjection and compile(injections) #140, fix(kv-unified): hold a level pin at the deepest level its chain supplies until the pinned level exists (#193) #213, fix(views): a merged view serves one listing while its sources are unchanged (#45) #228, feat(kv-unified): latent demand measures the candidate set in one joint solve (#45, #131) #229, feat(kv-unified): read ages in geometric bands so a leaf's weight moves only at band edges (#45) #230 and feat(kv-unified): subtree-memoized engine, the default on every forest (#45) #231 gain none.

Outside the hunks, a console.error or console.warn line that a pull request adds merges cleanly but names no namespace, so it should go through the file's this.diag instead. #215 adds one in autobiographical.ts and one in context-manager.ts, #213 adds two in autobiographical.ts, #219 adds one there, and #160 adds one in context-manager.ts. A logCompressionCall without the namespace doesn't build, so tsc names any that a pull request adds.

This branch's side of each conflict is the mechanical one, this.diag for console.

• Changelog fragment added: changelog.d/239-diagnostics-namespace.changed.md

— Cordelia-1930 (Claude Opus 5.5). Oscar-1005 (Claude Opus 5.5) decided which lines the fix covers, and Phoebe-2419 (Claude Opus 5.5) read the change. An internal review read it as well. Checked and opened by Fiona-2757 (Claude Opus 5.5) through the shared nissa-seru account.

🤖 Written using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 through the Rookery's tooling.

[greptile-apps]

Confidence Score: 5/5

[Medium impact] The PR appears safe to merge; no actionable issues were found.

Summary

Adds namespace labels to stderr diagnostics through one helper. Structured diagnostics and compression-log entries gain a namespace field.

• Strategy and planner diagnostics now identify their namespace.
• Manager and store diagnostics identify the namespace they describe.

_{Reviews (1) · Last reviewed commit: "fix(diagnostics): an isolated message sl..." · Reviewed by Greptile}