rx4 0.6.5

The agent harness engine — loop, tools, providers, sessions, permissions, computer-use
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# rotary — agent harness engine

## Mission

Be the best **general-purpose coding agent harness**: embeddable, light,
extensible, protocol-friendly. Product shells live elsewhere (telekinesis).

rotary exposes **capabilities, not policy**. Scheduling, enabled flags, and
lifecycle decisions are the host's job.

## Layers

```mermaid
graph TD
  Host["Hosts<br/>telekinesis TUI/CLI · IDEs · CI"]
  Host -->|typed engine API / cargo add rx4| Ctrl
  subgraph Ctrl["rotary control plane"]
    direction TB
    Agent["agent · tools · permissions · hooks · scopes"]
    Sess["sessions · plugins · skills · guardrails · context"]
    Extra["extract · ranking · guardrails · LSP primitives"]
  end
  Ctrl --> Providers["providers (HTTP/SSE)"]
  Ctrl --> CU["computer-use (Praefectus)"]
  Ctrl --> Mem["memory · graph_memory · embeddings"]
```

## Influences (feature adoption)

| Project | Adopted in rotary |
|---|---|
| **Codex** | sandbox/approvals → `permissions`; non-interactive headless; skills pattern; bounded tool loops |
| **OpenCode** | multi-provider routing; session resume; plugin/tool surface |
| **t3code** | typed event boundary; thin host protocol over IPC |
| **pi / Crush** | event lifecycle; SKILL.md; hook envelopes |
| **Praefectus** | authorized, verified computer-use execution |
| **Hermes Agent** | self-improving learning loop → `background_review`, `skill_curator` |
| **Unthinkclaw** | embeddings module → `embeddings` |

## Core contracts

### Agent loop

```mermaid
flowchart TD
  before["before_prompt"] --> compact{"auto-compact?"}
  compact -->|yes| ac["compaction"]
  compact -->|no| start["agent_start"]
  ac --> start
  start --> turn["turn_start"]
  turn --> msg["message stream"]
  msg --> tools["tool loop<br/>(permission-gated, scope-filtered)"]
  tools --> after["after_turn"]
  after --> more{"more turns?"}
  more -->|yes| turn
  more -->|no| end["agent_end"]
```

### Scopes

Work **scopes** (not named product agents): `coding` | `research` | `plan` |
`ask` | `computer_use`.

### Permissions

`full_access` | `read_only` | `workspace_write` | `deny_all` + allow/deny
lists + host approver.

### Events

Tagged union pushed to subscribers. A temporary IPC adapter may mirror events
as (`method: "event"`), but hosts must treat the typed event stream as the UI
boundary (t3code pattern).

### Capability vs policy

Modules like `dream_scheduler` and `skill_curator` expose the *capability*
to run a consolidation cycle or audit skills. The host decides *when* to
invoke them — rotary never schedules on its own.

## Boundary with telekinesis

rotary is the reusable engine. telekinesis is the product host. Rotary owns
the loop, providers, tools, permissions primitives, session model, compaction
capability, MCP/skills/subagent capabilities, typed lifecycle events, and the
opt-in autoresearch controller's Git/checkpoint capability.
Telekinesis owns persistence implementations for its product state, scheduling,
transport, pi compatibility, ACP, IPC, SSE, slash commands, and surfaces. For
autoresearch, Telekinesis owns the user-facing schedule and approval flow
while rx4 owns the isolated-worktree mechanics and acceptance invariant.

The current `acp.rs`, `ipc.rs`, `sse.rs`, `slash.rs`, and binary wiring are
compatibility inventory. They migrate to telekinesis adapters in phases; they
are not new host contracts.

Session storage follows the same seam: rotary exposes session state and pure
snapshot contracts, while hosts choose JSONL, SQLite, or another repository.
Compaction algorithms remain engine capabilities; hosts choose when and how
to schedule them.

Autoresearch follows the same seam: `AutoresearchController` exposes one
hypothesis-at-a-time execution, measurements, rollback, budgets, cancellation,
and typed events. The host supplies hypothesis generation, the agent/session
callback, UI, and explicit final-patch consent. See
[`docs/AUTORESEARCH.md`](AUTORESEARCH.md) for the minimal Telekinesis contract.

The initial refactor stays within this crate. A workspace split happens only
when separate release or dependency boundaries are proven necessary.

See the canonical decision record:
[telekinesis ADR-001](https://github.com/semitechnological/telekinesis/blob/main/docs/ADR-001-rotary-engine-telekinesis-host.md).

## Versioning

Semver for library API. Bump minor for new modules/tools; patch for harness
fixes. Hosts pin `rx4` versions via Cargo.