contextmatrix-harness

README

contextmatrix-harness

The FSM-free engine that drives one LLM session: an agentic tool-use loop plus the model client, tool registry, secret redaction, and event stream it needs — and nothing about what the session is for.

This module is consumed by both backends in the ContextMatrix ecosystem:

• contextmatrix-agent wraps it with a task FSM (orchestrator/worker) to execute board cards.
• contextmatrix-chat wraps it with an interactive driver using the Inbox, compaction, and seeded-history surfaces to power chat sessions.

Packages

Package	Responsibility
events	typed event stream → stdout + JSON transcript
llm	raw-HTTP OpenAI-compatible client (default OpenRouter): Send/SendStream, SSE, models[] failover
tools	jailed filesystem/shell Tool registry, read-only subset, Skill tool
harness	the loop: Run, Verify, SpawnSubagents, the Inbox seam, Config
redact	literal-secret masking, injected into the loop via Config.RedactToolOutput

Boundary invariant

harness imports only events, llm, tools (+ stdlib). The module has zero external module dependencies in non-test code (testify is the only test dependency). CI enforces the harness import allowlist and rejects any contextmatrix-* module dependency via scripts/deps-gate.sh (make deps-gate). Keep the loop free of orchestration, protocol, transport, and policy concerns — those belong in the consuming backend. The harness is likewise language-neutral toward the target workspace: it bakes in no target-language tools, prompts, or defaults — toolchain specifics enter only from the caller through its seams (system prompt, verify check, bash env, skills mount, tool set).

Entry points

harness.Run, harness.Config, harness.Inbox, harness.Result, events.Emitter, tools.Registry, tools.Tool, tools.Terminal, llm.LLM, llm.Catalog.

Terminating tool

By default Run ends when the model emits a turn with no tool calls. A consumer can instead let the model end the run with an explicit action: register a tool that implements tools.Terminal.

type Terminal interface {
	Terminal() bool
}

A successful call to such a tool ends Run that turn with Result.Completed = true, Result.Reason = "done", and the call's arguments on Result.CompletionArgs (a json.RawMessage the consumer unmarshals into its own type; empty arguments normalize to {}). Other tool calls in the same turn execute if they precede the terminating call and are skipped if they follow it.

Termination gates on execution: a terminating tool that returns an error, or whose arguments fail to parse, does not end the run — the model receives the error and retries. If the model ends by omission instead, CompletionArgs is nil. A registry with no Terminal tool behaves exactly as before.

Developing

Contributor conventions, verification commands (make test, make test-race, make lint, make deps-gate, make build), and commit discipline live in AGENTS.md.