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Key the Workspace-Edit Rule to the Session a Reload Drops, Not to Where the Editor Runs #2835

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@ptr727

#2815 merged with no reviewer coverage, because the only Copilot request on it returned a quota refusal. A frontier-tier local review of its squash commit, 5bfd54c, run before promotion #2816 merged, raised two findings. The maintainer chose to ship the promotion and track both here.

1. The rule is keyed to where the editing agent runs, not to the session the reload harms

GOVERNANCE.md "Verification Discipline" (and the agent-conduct Skill's include of it) now reads:

An agent running inside VS Code never edits a .code-workspace file that a VS Code window has loaded as its workspace. [...] An agent running in a standalone console is outside the rule and edits the file directly, even while a window has that file loaded.

The rationale the bullet keeps names the harm as "a reload destroys the context of an agent session running in it", meaning the window that has the file loaded. Whether that harm happens depends on whether that window hosts an agent session. Where the editing agent runs does not decide it.

  • Under-binding. A standalone-console agent edits a workspace file that window W has loaded. W reloads, and an agent session the VS Code extension hosts in W loses its work in flight. The rule now permits this edit. The wording before Bind the Workspace-Edit Rule Only to an Agent Running Inside VS Code #2815 ("wherever the editing agent runs") forbade it.
  • Over-binding. An agent hosted in window A must still hand back an edit to a file that only window B has loaded, although B's reload cannot drop A.

A fix keys the test to whether the window that has the file loaded hosts an agent session. It also has to keep #2815's goal: no hand-back of trivial edits when the agent is the only session in play. That trade is the maintainer's to set.

2. The "Editor and Tasks" pointer bullet's last sentence is stale

Opening the folder rather than the workspace is what keeps a checkout's own file editable.

The same bullet now says a standalone-console agent edits the file directly even while it is loaded. Opening as a folder therefore matters only for an agent hosted in VS Code. A reader of this sentence alone concludes it applies to every agent.

Unrelated, noticed in passing

.agents/skills/python-codestyle/references/profiles.md says editor settings may live in .vscode/*.json. GOVERNANCE.md "Editor and Tasks" says all settings live only in the .code-workspace file. #2815 did not cause this.

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