Ask AI: stop the agent's interim narration repeating after each tool round - #434
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📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThe chat renderer now splits interim narration into sentences and removes sentences emitted in earlier tool rounds. It computes deduplicated text for each assistant message before rendering. Interim blocks with no new content render nothing. The final answer block continues to render the complete answer. Priority: ⬇️ Low Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to Ask AI interim narration can still repeat during normal spaced multi-tool responses, leaving the primary user-visible issue unresolved. The current helper formatting also requires correction for the configured lint check to pass before merge. 🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1❌ Failed checks (1 warning)
✅ Passed checks (4 passed)
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In `@src/js/react/components/ChatInterface.jsx`:
- Line 245: Update both helper declarations, including splitNarration and the
second function declaration around it, to include a space between each function
name and its opening parenthesis so they comply with the active
space-before-function-paren lint rule.
- Line 249: Update the sentence-splitting replace expression near the
ChatInterface parsing logic to recognize punctuation followed by normal
whitespace before the next sentence, while preserving existing handling for
punctuation immediately followed by an uppercase letter. Ensure inputs like
“Searching docs. Found a result.” split into separate values so repeated
narration can be deduplicated by seen.
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micheleRP
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Looks good, and the SDK claim checks out: in the installed @kapaai/agent-core@1.0.0, assistantText is declared once before the tool loop (dist/index.mjs:309) and only ever appended (:369), exactly as described. Tests and lint pass on the branch after the merge with v4.1.0 main (which only collided on the test registration lines in package.json and the workflow; both entries kept).
One non-blocking question, not a defect. The answer block is skipped by design because it is markdown. But the replay mechanism does not distinguish the final round: the buffer is posted back on every continuation, and the final round is only identified after streaming ends. So if the server ever echoes assistantText into the answer round, the Answer would open with the whole run-together log, and that instance survives this fix. Your live capture showed the full replay on 2 of 11 continuation rounds, so whether it reaches the answer round is a rate question the fixture does not settle (it appends the # Answer text with no prefix). If it does show up, the exact-prefix strip alone (content.startsWith(replayed) ? content.slice(replayed.length) : content, never the sentence fallback) is markdown-safe and could be applied to the answer block too. Fine as a follow-up if you would rather wait for evidence.
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Requesting changes for one thing that is not the code. The code change in a31bb92 is approved as is.
Blocker: a31bb92 commits a node_modules symlink. The tracked entry node_modules is a symlink to /Users/jakecahill/Documents/docs-ui/node_modules. It slipped through because .gitignore has /node_modules/, and the trailing slash matches directories only, so a symlink by that name is not ignored. Anyone who checks out this branch has their real node_modules replaced by the dangling link, because git treats ignored paths as expendable; I hit exactly that and had to npm ci to recover. CI stayed green only because a clean install deletes and recreates the path first.
I checked the blast radius: not on main, not in 431, 436 or the merged 429. Only this branch.
Two-line fix: git rm --cached node_modules in this PR, and change the ignore rule to /node_modules (no trailing slash) so a symlink is ignored too.
The answer-block strip: this is the follow-up I described at approval, done the way I hoped. Exact prefix only, never the sentence fallback, no trim so a leading indented code block survives, and a non-match is a no-op. The replayed prefix is the concatenation of every earlier text block, which is how the SDK's buffer accumulates and what the fixture models. Ran test:interim-narration on a31bb92 in a clean worktree: 11 pass. eslint clean on the helper.
Once the symlink is out I will approve.
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Fixed in df28e30, and thank you for catching it. That was my mistake, and the recovery you had to do was on me. Cause: I staged that commit with Both fixes are in, because it took two things to go wrong:
I also checked the blast radius across everything I pushed today rather than only here, since you had only checked docs-ui.
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The rule was `/node_modules/`, and a trailing slash matches directories only, so a symlinked node_modules was never ignored and could be committed by a `git add -A`. Verified empirically both ways: with the slash the symlink shows up as untracked, without it, it does not. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
…source
On long tool chains the Ask AI agent panel repeated its whole thinking log
after every tool round, growing each time, with sentences run together without
spaces. Measured on production with a fresh conversation and 11 tool rows: 28
sentences rendered, 10 distinct, worst single sentence rendered 5 times, so 64%
of the narration on screen was repeat. Interim block lengths ran 127, 102, 134,
122, 163, 648, 191, 271, 1850, 138, 135, 127 chars against a ~130 char norm.
The cause was in @kapaai/agent-core 1.0.0, which agent-react 1.0.0 pins
exactly: `assistantText` was declared once before the tool loop and only ever
appended to, so every round posted the running total back as
`{ role: "assistant", content: assistantText, tool_calls }`. Round 3's request
carried rounds 1+2+3 of narration, which came back as `partial_answer` and
landed as a new text block because a tool_calls block was at the tail.
agent-core 1.0.1 keeps a `roundTextStart` cursor and sends only the text
produced in that round. `messagesToChatHistory` had the same bug and got the
same treatment. Running both versions' history builder over one 3-round tool
conversation:
1.0.0 assistant "IGNORED_CUMULATIVE" +tool_calls (a single entry, and the
second tool round is
dropped altogether)
1.0.1 assistant "Looking up tiered storage. " +tool_calls
assistant "Checking the config reference. " +tool_calls
assistant "Here is the answer."
agent-react's own dist is byte-identical between 1.0.0 and 1.0.1, so this
upgrade is purely that dependency pin.
This replaces the render-side de-duplication this branch carried earlier.
Stripping replayed text in the renderer was the right call before an upstream
fix existed, but it cannot tell a replay from an answer that legitimately
repeats a sentence, so with the cause fixed it is a hazard rather than a
safety net.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Heads up that this PR changed shape, so the diff you approved is no longer what ships. Worth a fresh look, though it is much smaller now. Kapa published So the render-side helper is gone, along with its tests, its npm script and its CI step. The branch is now two commits: the I checked the upstream fix by running both versions' history builder over one 3-round tool conversation rather than trusting the diff: Reason for removing rather than keeping the helper as a backstop: the interim path fell back to splitting into sentences and dropping any already seen, which cannot tell a replay from an answer that legitimately repeats a sentence. With the cause fixed that is a hazard, not a safety net. Both CodeRabbit threads were against that helper, so they go away with it. Also note this needed a rebase onto main first, which hit the usual
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micheleRP
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Verified the fix: diffed the actual npm tarballs for `@kapaai/agent-core` 1.0.0 vs 1.0.1 and confirmed the described `roundTextStart` cursor fix is real, and that `@kapaai/agent-react`'s `dist` is byte-identical between versions — so this is purely a transitive dependency pin bump with no behavior change from agent-react itself. Also confirmed the `source_group_ids_include` wire contract that version-scoped Ask AI relies on is unchanged between agent-core versions and is covered by CI's `test:kapa-source-groups` step. The lockfile `engines` drift predates this PR.
One non-blocking note: the trailing-slash directory-only `.gitignore` pattern fixed here for `node_modules` also affects the pre-existing `/build/` and `/public/` entries, which have the same latent blind spot for symlinks. Out of scope for this PR, but worth a follow-up cleanup.
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Problem
On long tool chains the Ask AI agent panel repeats its whole "thinking" log after every tool round, growing each time, with sentences run together without spaces.
Measured on production, fresh conversation, 11 tool rows:
64% of the narration on screen is repeat. Interim block lengths were 127, 102, 134, 122, 163, 648, 191, 271, 1850, 138, 135, 127 chars against a ~130 char norm.
It only shows on long tool chains, which is why short answers look fine and this is easy to miss.
Cause
@kapaai/agent-core@1.0.0, which@kapaai/agent-react@1.0.0pins exactly:let assistantText = ""is declared once, before thewhile (iteration++ < MAX_TOOL_CALL_ITERATIONS)tool looponText: (t) => { assistantText += t }only ever appends, never resets per round{ role: "assistant", content: assistantText, tool_calls }So round 3's request carries rounds 1+2+3 of narration. That text comes back as
partial_answer, andprocessStreamChunksappends to the last block only if it is text; by then atool_callsblock is at the tail, so it pushes a brand new text block instead.Our render code was not at fault: it already renders
m.blocksin order and styles all but the last text block as interim.Fix
Upgrade to
@kapaai/agent-react@^1.0.1, which re-pins@kapaai/agent-coreto 1.0.1. That release keeps aroundTextStartcursor and sends only the text produced in that round.messagesToChatHistoryhad the same bug and got the same treatment.agent-react's own
distis byte-identical between 1.0.0 and 1.0.1, so this upgrade is purely that dependency pin.Checked by running both versions' history builder over one 3-round tool conversation rather than reading the diff:
Also included:
.gitignorehad/node_modules/, and a trailing slash matches directories only, so a symlinkednode_moduleswas never ignored and could be picked up bygit add -A. Verified empirically both ways.What changed since the first version of this PR
This branch originally carried a render-side de-duplication helper that stripped the replayed prefix off each interim block. That was the right call before an upstream fix existed, but it cannot distinguish a replay from an answer that legitimately repeats a sentence, so with the cause fixed it is a hazard rather than a safety net. The helper, its tests, its npm script and its CI step are all removed, and the branch is now just the dependency bump.
npm run test:allpasses on Node 20 (the same pre-require(esm)class as CI's Node 18): 95 passing, 0 failing, rc 0.