> This PR was authored by Mux on behalf of Mike.
Introduce Explore mode, a read-only subagent modality for delegated
discovery and code investigation.
## What
Adds a `spawn_explore_agent` tool that creates child chats restricted to
read-only operations. An admin can optionally configure a
deployment-wide
model override so Explore subagents use a model optimized for large
context
or reasoning without changing the root chat's model.
### Backend
- New `ChatModeExplore` enum value (migration 000471).
- `spawn_explore_agent` tool definition with read-only allowlist:
`read_file`, `execute`, `process_output`, `read_skill`,
`read_skill_file`.
Write tools, file editors, and nested subagent spawning are blocked.
- Deployment config storage for the Explore model override
(`agents_chat_explore_model_override` in `site_configs`).
- Model resolution hierarchy: configured override, then current turn
model,
then global default. Silent fallback with warning log when the override
becomes unavailable.
- RBAC: `AsChatd` for daemon reads, `ActionRead` and `ActionUpdate` on
`ResourceDeploymentConfig` for admin API calls.
- Plan mode root chats can use `spawn_explore_agent` for read-only
research,
matching the planning prompt guidance.
- The Explore override config API now reports malformed saved overrides
as
"treated as unset" so admins can clear them explicitly.
### Frontend
- `ExploreModelOverrideSettings` component in admin agent behavior
settings.
Uses `ModelSelector`, handles unavailable model warnings, and supports
explicit Save and Clear actions.
- Malformed saved overrides show a warning and require an explicit Save
to
clear, instead of Clear auto-submitting behind the scenes.
### Tests
- Integration: `TestExploreSubagentIsReadOnly` (full spawn flow, tool
verification, prompt overlay, DB state).
- Unit: tool allowlist tests for explore, plan, and default modes.
- Internal: model override resolution with valid, invalid UUID,
disabled, and
unconfigured override scenarios.
- RBAC: `dbauthz_test.go` for `GetChatExploreModelOverride` and
`UpsertChatExploreModelOverride`.
- API: admin set and clear, malformed stored override reporting,
disabled
model rejection, non-admin denial.
> Mux working on behalf of Mike.
## Summary
- add an enabled chat model config lookup by ID for internal callers
- keep `spawn_agent` unchanged while threading an internal model
override through child subagent chat creation
- extend chatd coverage for inherited bindings, plan mode, and internal
override behavior
## Validation
- `go test ./coderd/x/chatd ./coderd/database/dbauthz`
- `make lint`
Add a `chat_client_type` enum (`ui` | `api`) and `client_type` column to
the `chats` table. The column defaults to `api` for new rows so API
callers don't need to set it explicitly. Existing rows are backfilled to
`ui`.
The field flows through `CreateChatRequest`, `chatd.CreateOptions`,
`InsertChat`, and is returned in the `Chat` response via `db2sdk`.
<details>
<summary>Implementation notes (Coder Agents generated)</summary>
### Changes
**Database migration (000469)**
- New enum `chat_client_type` with values `ui`, `api`.
- New `client_type` column, `NOT NULL DEFAULT 'api'`.
- Backfill: `UPDATE chats SET client_type = 'ui'`.
**SQL query** — `InsertChat` now includes `client_type`.
**SDK** — `ChatClientType` type added; `ClientType` field added to both
`CreateChatRequest` (optional, defaults server-side to `api`) and `Chat`
response.
**Handler** — `postChats` maps the request field (defaulting to `api`)
and passes it through `chatd.CreateOptions`.
**Sub-agent** — Child chats inherit their parent's `client_type`.
**db2sdk** — Maps the database value to the SDK type.
### Decision log
- Default is `api` (not `ui`) so existing API integrations get the
correct value without code changes.
- Backfill sets existing rows to `ui` per requirement.
- Child chats inherit `client_type` from parent rather than defaulting.
</details>
> This PR was authored by Mux on behalf of Mike.
## Summary
- add persistent plan mode for chats and the chat-specific plan file
flow
- add structured planning tools such as `ask_user_question` and
`propose_plan`
- keep `write_file` and `edit_files` constrained to the chat-specific
plan file during plan turns
- allow shell exploration in plan mode, including subagents, via
`execute` and `process_output`
- block implementation-oriented, provider-native, MCP, dynamic, and
computer-use tools during plan turns
- update the chat UI, tests, and docs for the new planning flow
## Problem
`resolveDeploymentSystemPrompt` was called inside `InTx` closures in
both `CreateChat` (`coderd/x/chatd/chatd.go`) and
`createChildSubagentChatWithOptions` (`coderd/x/chatd/subagent.go`).
That method uses `p.db` (the root store) internally to call
`GetChatSystemPromptConfig`, which requires a second DB pool checkout
while the transaction already holds one connection.
Under concurrent chat creation load (e.g., the chat scaletest at 4800
chats), this causes pool starvation: every in-flight create holds one
connection and blocks waiting for another, leading to `idle in
transaction` pileups and cascading timeouts across the entire coderd DB
pool — including unrelated background work like prebuild metrics and the
chat acquire loop.
## Fix
Move the `resolveDeploymentSystemPrompt` call before `p.db.InTx(...)` in
both call sites. The system prompt config is a read-only
deployment-level setting that does not need transactional consistency
with the chat insert, so fetching it before the transaction is both safe
and preferable (it also shortens transaction lifetime).
## Backporting
The `CreateChat` instance of this bug is also present on `release/2.32`
(`coderd/x/chatd/chatd.go` line 907). The `subagent.go` instance is not
— the child-subagent-chat creation path with its own `InTx` was added
after the branch cut.
This should be backported, but because this is only in the chat creation
path, and that's not typically hit with a great deal of concurrency in
the real world, I don't think an urgent patch for 2.32 is necessary.
## Lint gap
The existing `InTx` ruleguard rule in `scripts/rules.go` catches direct
outer-store usage (`p.db.GetFoo()`) and passing the outer store as a
function argument inside `InTx` closures, but it explicitly cannot catch
indirect access through receiver methods like
`p.resolveDeploymentSystemPrompt()` — the rule documents this blind spot
at line 273. Catching this class of bug would require interprocedural
analysis (following the callee's body to see if it touches `p.db`),
which is beyond what ruleguard's AST pattern matching can express. We're
considering a lightweight custom `go/analysis` analyzer (similar to
`paralleltestctx`) that does 1-level same-package callee inspection to
detect this pattern. In the meantime, this PR adds guidance to
`AGENTS.md` so AI reviewers can flag the pattern during code review.
Three SQL queries (`GetUserGroupSpendLimit`,
`ResolveUserChatSpendLimit`, `GetUserChatSpendInPeriod`) aggregated chat
spend limits and usage globally across all organizations. A restrictive
group limit in org A would bleed into org B.
## Changes
- Add `organization_id` parameter to all three SQL queries in
`coderd/database/queries/chats.sql`
- When nil UUID is passed, queries fall back to global behavior
(backward compat for HTTP dashboard endpoints)
- When real org ID is passed, limits and spend are scoped to that
organization
- Thread `organizationID` through `ResolveUsageLimitStatus` →
`checkUsageLimit` → all chatd call sites
- Update dbauthz wrappers for new param structs
- HTTP endpoints (`chatCostSummary`, `getMyChatUsageLimitStatus`) pass
`uuid.Nil` with TODO for future org-scoped UI
- Add `TestResolveUsageLimitStatus_OrgScoped` with 5 test cases covering
org isolation, nil-UUID fallback, spend scoping, and user override
priority
Closescoder/internal#1466
> 🤖
Fixes https://github.com/coder/internal/issues/1436
* Adds organization_id to chats with backfill (workspace org → user org membership → default org)
* No support yet for ACLs (follow-up issue)
- Cross-org workspace binding rejected (both in `CreateChatRequest` and in `create_workspace` tool
- Adds `OrganizationAutocomplete` to `AgentCreateForm`
- Docs updated with `organization_id` in chats-api.md
> 🤖 Written by a Coder Agent. Reviewed by many humans and many agents.
---------
Co-authored-by: Mathias Fredriksson <mafredri@gmail.com>
Adds `coder exp chat context add` and `coder exp chat context clear`
commands that run inside a workspace to manage chat context files via
the agent token.
`add` reads instruction and skill files from a directory (defaulting to
cwd) and inserts them as context-file messages into an active chat.
Multiple calls are additive — `instructionFromContextFiles` already
accumulates all context-file parts across messages.
`clear` soft-deletes all context-file messages, causing
`contextFileAgentID()` to return `!found` on the next turn, which
triggers `needsInstructionPersist=true` and re-fetches defaults from the
agent.
Both commands auto-detect the target chat via `CODER_CHAT_ID` (already
set by `agentproc` on chat-spawned processes), or fall back to
single-active-chat resolution for the agent. The `--chat` flag overrides
both.
Also adds sub-agent context inheritance: `createChildSubagentChat` now
copies parent context-file messages to child chats at spawn time, so
delegated sub-agents share the same instruction context without
independently re-fetching from the workspace agent.
<details><summary>Implementation details</summary>
**New files:**
- `cli/exp_chat.go` — CLI command tree under `coder exp chat context`
**Modified files:**
- `agent/agentcontextconfig/api.go` — `ConfigFromDir()` reads context
from an arbitrary directory without env vars
- `codersdk/agentsdk/agentsdk.go` — `AddChatContext`/`ClearChatContext`
SDK methods
- `coderd/workspaceagents.go` — POST/DELETE handlers on
`/workspaceagents/me/chat-context`
- `coderd/coderd.go` — Route registration
- `coderd/database/queries/chats.sql` — `GetActiveChatsByAgentID`,
`SoftDeleteContextFileMessages`
- `coderd/database/dbauthz/dbauthz.go` — RBAC implementations for new
queries
- `coderd/x/chatd/subagent.go` — `copyParentContextFiles` for sub-agent
inheritance
- `cli/root.go` — Register `chatCommand()` in `AGPLExperimental()`
**Auth pattern:** Uses `AgentAuth` (same as `coder external-auth`) —
agent token via `CODER_AGENT_TOKEN` + `CODER_AGENT_URL` env vars.
</details>
> 🤖 Generated by Coder Agents
---------
Co-authored-by: Michael Suchacz <203725896+ibetitsmike@users.noreply.github.com>
The agents chat interface displays thumbnails for videos recorded by the
computer use agent. Currently, to display a thumbnail, the frontend
downloads the entire video and shows the first frame. This PR starts
storing a new thumbnail file in the database for every recorded video,
and exposes the file id in the `wait_agent` tool result alongside the
recording file id, so the frontend can fetch just the thumbnail.
This PR introduces screen recording of the computer use agent using the
virtual desktop.
- Screen recording is triggered by a `wait_agent` tool call. Recording
is stopped by a successful `wait_agent` tool call or when there hasn't
been any desktop activity for 10 minutes.
- Recordings are handled by the `portabledesktop` cli via the `record`
command. The videos are sped up in periods of inactivity.
- Recordings are saved to the database to the `chat_files` table.
There's a hard limit of 100MB per recording. Larger recordings are
dropped.
- A successful `wait_agent` on a computer use subagent tool call returns
a `recording_file_id`, later allowing the frontend to display the
corresponding video.
## Summary
Adds a process-wide cache for three hot database queries in `chatd` that
were hitting Postgres on **every chat turn** despite returning
rarely-changing configuration data:
| Query | Before (50k turns) | After | Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| `GetEnabledChatProviders` | ~98.6k calls | ~500-1000 | ~99% |
| `GetChatModelConfigByID` | ~49.2k calls | ~500-1000 | ~98% |
| `GetUserChatCustomPrompt` | ~46.7k calls | ~1000-2000 | ~97% |
These were identified via `coder exp scaletest chat` (5000 concurrent
chats × 10 turns) as the dominant source of Postgres load during chat
processing.
## Design
Follows the established **webpush subscription cache pattern**
(`coderd/webpush/webpush.go`):
- `sync.RWMutex` + `tailscale.com/util/singleflight` (generic) +
generation-based stale prevention + TTL
- 10s TTL for provider/model config, 5s TTL for user prompts
- Negative caching for `sql.ErrNoRows` on user prompts (the common case
— most users don't set custom prompts)
- Deep-clones `ChatModelConfig.Options` (`json.RawMessage` = `[]byte`)
on both store and read paths
### Invalidation
Single pubsub channel (`chat:config_change`) with kind discriminator for
cross-replica cache invalidation. Seven publish points in
`coderd/chats.go` cover all admin mutation endpoints
(create/update/delete for providers and model configs, put for user
prompts).
_This PR was generated with mux and was reviewed by a human_
## Summary
This change removes the steady-state "resolve the latest workspace
agent" query from chat execution.
Instead of asking the database for the latest build's agent on every
turn, a chat now persists the workspace/build/agent binding it actually
uses and reuses that binding across subsequent turns. The common path
becomes "load the bound agent by ID and dial it", with fallback paths to
repair the binding when it is missing, stale, or intentionally changed.
## What changes
- add `workspace_id`, `build_id`, and `agent_id` binding fields to
`chats`
- expose those fields through the chat API / SDK so the execution
context is explicit
- load the persisted binding first in chatd, instead of always resolving
the latest build's agent
- persist a refreshed binding when chatd has to re-resolve the workspace
agent
- keep child / subagent chats on the same bound workspace context by
inheriting the parent binding
- leave `build_id` / `agent_id` unset for flows like `create_workspace`,
then bind them lazily on the next agent-backed turn
## Runtime behavior
The binding is treated as an optimistic cache of the agent a chat should
use:
- if the bound agent still exists and dials successfully, we use it
without a latest-build lookup
- if the bound agent is missing or no longer reachable, chatd
re-resolves against the latest build and persists the new binding
- if a workspace mutation changes the chat's target workspace, the
binding is updated as part of that mutation
To avoid reintroducing a hot-path query, dialing uses lazy validation:
- start dialing the cached agent immediately
- only validate against the latest build if the dial is still pending
after a short delay
- if validation finds a different agent, cancel the stale dial, switch
to the current agent, and persist the repaired binding
## Result
The hot path stops issuing
`GetWorkspaceAgentsInLatestBuildByWorkspaceID` for every user message,
which is the source of the DB pressure this PR is addressing. At the
same time, chats still converge to the correct workspace agent when the
binding becomes stale due to rebuilds or explicit workspace changes.
Child chats created via `spawn_agent` and `spawn_computer_use_agent`
were not inheriting the parent's `MCPServerIDs`, meaning subagents lost
access to the parent's MCP server tools.
## Changes
- Pass `parent.MCPServerIDs` in the `CreateOptions` for both
`createChildSubagentChat()` and the `spawn_computer_use_agent` tool
handler in `coderd/x/chatd/subagent.go`.
## Tests
Added 3 tests in `subagent_internal_test.go`:
- `TestCreateChildSubagentChat_InheritsMCPServerIDs` — verifies child
chat gets parent's MCP server IDs (multiple servers)
- `TestSpawnComputerUseAgent_InheritsMCPServerIDs` — verifies computer
use subagent gets parent's MCP server IDs via the tool
- `TestCreateChildSubagentChat_NoMCPServersStaysEmpty` — verifies no
regression when parent has no MCP servers
Nine subtests covering the poll loop, pubsub notification path,
timeout, context cancellation, descendant auth check, and both
error-status branches in handleSubagentDone.
Wire p.clock through awaitSubagentCompletion's timer and ticker
so future tests can use quartz mock clock. Tests use channel-based
coordination and context.WithTimeout instead of time.Sleep.
Coverage: awaitSubagentCompletion 0%->70.3%, handleSubagentDone
0%->100%, checkSubagentCompletion 0%->77.8%,
latestSubagentAssistantMessage 0%->78.9%.
- Moves `coderd/chatd/`, `coderd/gitsync/`, `enterprise/coderd/chatd/`
under `x/` parent directories to signal instability
- Adds `Experimental:` glue code comments in `coderd/coderd.go`
> 🤖 This PR was created with the help of Coder Agents, and was
reviewed by my human. 🧑💻
Hugo Dutka