Mission: agentchat honours everything an MCP server declares

Outcome

Someone points agentchat at an MCP server that uses the extensions chakra says it hosts: server instructions, skills, events and agents, and later MCP Apps and A2A agents. The session behaves the way each spec says a host must, with no glue on the host side. The model is told what the server is for. Skills load only when needed and re-prompt when their content changes. Event hints the server declares take effect. Server agents can be delegated to.

Exercise

make host-exercise

It runs a host.App against a demo server with a scripted model, on both client wires, and prints PASS or FAIL per host obligation (#88). No model or key needed, and CI runs it through make test-examples. make host-exercise-live boots the same server for agentchat and a real model.

What to look at: the table it prints. Known failures are pinned to their tickets in examples/host-exercise/expected.go, and a ticket's fix removes its lines there, so the mission is done when that file is empty.

Done when

make host-exercise passes every check on both wires (expected.go is empty), and the blocked-by list below is closed or moved to another mission explicitly.

Not in this mission

Plain-JSON transport alongside the Connect bridge, for codegen-free clients #79 plain-JSON transport (P3). This is about the wire, not about honouring what a server declares.
Pre-turn message-screening seam: hidden-character and injection-judge checks on inbound human messages #83 inbound message screening and Reply critique gate: judge the model's generated reply against stated principles #85 reply critique gate (P3). These are safety seams, not hosting obligations.
Decision provider seam: structured, calibrated verdicts without full generative calls #84 Decider (waiting on a concrete endpoint).

Merge pull request #115 from panyam/feat/88-host-exercise

#115 merged. make host-exercise is this mission's exercise: a host.App against a demo server with a scripted model, on both client wires, one PASS/FAIL per host obligation. It closes #88. Progress: [2/8 tickets closed]. Next ready: #50 (no-prefetch and content-bound approval), then #81 (event hints).

Exercise @ 3a97d29 plus the v0.8.12 sync (#116), since main went stale on mcpkit v0.8.12 again before I could run it: 3 of 5 obligations fail on both wires, all as expected.

check	legacy	stateless
instructions	PASS	PASS	labelled with server "demo"
no-prefetch	FAIL	FAIL	#50: the default mode reads all 3 SKILL.md files at connect
skill-rotation	FAIL	FAIL	#50: asked once across both loads, and the second load is refused with `size mismatch`
event-hint	FAIL	FAIL	#81: injected raw, `event build.finished from demo: {...}`, not through the server's template
agent-delegable	PASS	PASS	delegated and got the child's answer back

5 check(s) x 2 wire(s), 0 unexpected

Friction:

The skill-rotation row also showed that the host never re-lists skills after the server announces a change. So item 2 of host/skills: unimplemented SEP-2640 host MUSTs — no-prefetch, content-bound approval, frontmatter re-verification #50 needs that before a re-prompt has anything to bind to. I've added it to host/skills: unimplemented SEP-2640 host MUSTs — no-prefetch, content-bound approval, frontmatter re-verification #50.
host: a down or unauthorised server shows ready on the stateless wire #112 (a down server showing ready on stateless) doesn't show up here, because the demo server is always reachable. A down-server row would be where it goes.

#116 merged. mcpkit v0.8.12 pins and a .gitignore line for this exercise's binary. Progress: [2/8 tickets closed]. Next ready: #50.

Exercise @ cab969e: make host-exercise reports 5 check(s) x 2 wire(s), 0 unexpected, same as the first log. instructions and agent-delegable pass on both wires. no-prefetch and skill-rotation still fail as expected (#50), and so does event-hint (#81).

Friction: none.

#135 and #136 merged.

host: apply event hints the server declares, and re-read them on list_changed #135 (closes Events → injection: hints from events/list _meta, and event-type list_changed #81): the host reads each event type's hint from events/list _meta and re-reads it on events/list_changed, on both wires.
skills: catalog by default, approvals bound to a skill's files, re-read on change #136 (closes host/skills: unimplemented SEP-2640 host MUSTs — no-prefetch, content-bound approval, frontmatter re-verification #50): catalog is the default skills mode, so nothing is fetched at connect. A remembered load_skill approval is bound to the skill's files, every uri and digest. Skills are re-listed on resources/list_changed.
deps: sync go.mod files with mcpkit main (v0.8.13) #137 synced every go.mod with mcpkit v0.8.13 along the way.

Next ready: #112 (P2, stateless readiness). Also open: #78, #86 and #87, all waiting.

Exercise @ 653d379: make host-exercise, scripted model, both wires.

PASS  legacy     instructions     present, labelled with server "demo"
PASS  stateless  instructions     present, labelled with server "demo"
PASS  legacy     no-prefetch      no SKILL.md read at connect
PASS  stateless  no-prefetch      no SKILL.md read at connect
PASS  legacy     skill-rotation   asked again after the rotation (2 prompts)
PASS  stateless  skill-rotation   asked again after the rotation (2 prompts)
PASS  legacy     event-hint       rendered as "build passed on main"
PASS  stateless  event-hint       rendered as "build passed on main"
PASS  legacy     agent-delegable  delegated and got the child's answer back
PASS  stateless  agent-delegable  delegated and got the child's answer back

5 check(s) x 2 wire(s), 0 unexpected

examples/host-exercise/expected.go is now an empty map, which is the first half of this mission's done-when. The second half is the blocked-by list being closed or explicitly moved: #112 is open at P2, and #78, #86 and #87 are waiting.

Friction: the skill-rotation check had to wait for the host's re-list after the server's list_changed, since that is asynchronous. A load that races it is refused by the digest check and re-lists, which is safe but costs the model a retry.

#138 merged, and panyam/mcpkit#1648 merged.

host: list_changed on the stateless wire for every kind; skip session-only tests there #138: the host listens for list_changed on the stateless wire for every kind (agents and tools now, events and skills moved onto the same helper). Session-only tests skip on stateless, with their reason.
mcpkit#1648: a stateless Connect fails when the server is down or refuses auth, so a Group stops showing it as ready.

Progress: [4/8]. #112 stays open until chakra bumps to an mcpkit release that includes #1648; that bump closes it. No release yet (the latest tag is v0.8.13).

Exercise @ 33b9540: make host-exercise: 5 check(s) x 2 wire(s), 0 unexpected.

Beyond the exercise, on the stateless wire the host module now fails only TestAppBootsWithDownOptionalServer, TestBearerAuthReachesTheWire and TestOAuthLoginFlowE2E, the three that #1648 fixes. Against the fix (checked through a local go.work), root, host, surfaces and surfaces/web pass on both wires.

Friction: none new.

Merge pull request #140 from panyam/docs/active-mission-89

#139 merged (#112, which was closed by hand, gets its fix here). chakra is on mcpkit v0.8.14, so a stateless Connect fails for a down or unauthorised server, and /servers and needs-login report it properly. #140 moved the active mission here from #57.

Progress: [5/8]. Nothing ready: #78 (A2A agents), #86 (sub-agent router) and #87 (MCP Apps view) are all waiting.

Exercise @ ece41eb: make host-exercise: 5 check(s) x 2 wire(s), 0 unexpected. On v0.8.14 the host and root modules also pass on both wires, the three readiness tests included (checked before the merge). CI runs the legacy wire only.

This mission's done-when has two halves. make host-exercise passing every check on both wires is met. The other is the blocked-by list being closed or moved to another mission explicitly, which leaves #78, #86 and #87 to decide on.

Closing: done. make host-exercise passes every check on both wires with examples/host-exercise/expected.go empty (#89 (comment)), and the blocked-by list is closed or moved:

Closed: host: connected servers' instructions never reach the system prompt #76 (server instructions), host-exercise: one make target that drives every hosted extension against a demo server #88 (the exercise itself), host/skills: unimplemented SEP-2640 host MUSTs — no-prefetch, content-bound approval, frontmatter re-verification #50 (skills: no prefetch, content-bound approval, re-read on change), Events → injection: hints from events/list _meta, and event-type list_changed #81 (server-declared event hints and list_changed), and host: a down or unauthorised server shows ready on the stateless wire #112 (stateless readiness, with client: a stateless Connect fails when the server is down or refuses auth mcpkit#1648 and the v0.8.14 bump).
Moved to waiting, each with its trigger: A2AAgentSource: delegate to an A2A-speaking remote agent #78 (A2A agents, on ext/a2a: A2A protocol client (AgentCard discovery, task messaging, signed webhooks) mcpkit#1576), Capability-based sub-agent router across heterogeneous AgentSource kinds #86 (sub-agent router, on A2AAgentSource: delegate to an A2A-speaking remote agent #78), and Host an MCP App view: app tools, ui/* handlers, update-model-context #87 (MCP Apps view, on a surface rendering ui:// views).

A host connected to a server that declares instructions, skills, events and agents now behaves as each spec says, on both client wires, with no glue on the host side.

Along the way the host's stateless wire went from nine failing tests to none.

Merge pull request #144 from panyam/docs/active-mission-142

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Mission: agentchat honours everything an MCP server declares #89

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Mission: agentchat honours everything an MCP server declares #89

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panyam commented on Oct 25, 2026

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