[Bug][0.1.5-rc.1] Cold session list titles seeded sessions with the workspace folder name until each is opened

[royzhg]

Summary

After a cold start of dsh web, every seeded session (fork / sub-agent / compact-inherited — header carries isSeeded) is shown in the sidebar with the basename of the workspace folder instead of its real title. Opening the session once restores the correct title (it becomes live and does a full cold read), but the regression returns on every restart. Plain, unseeded sessions are never affected.

Two independent gates jointly cause it, and fixing either one alone is insufficient.

Evidence

1. @deepseek-ai/dsh-api-session-controller, projectionsFor(header, session) — the cold branch (session === undefined) short-circuits seeded sessions before trying the listing fallback:

const block = session === void 0
  ? header.isSeeded                       // <-- seeded cold session -> undefined immediately
    ? void 0
    : cache?.cachedSnapshot(header, SessionLogOffset(0))
      ?? cache?.cachedPredecessorTitle(header, SessionLogOffset(0))  // never reached for seeded
  : this.ctx.sessionProjections.cachedSnapshot(session);

With block === undefined, the client displayTitleOf(title, cwd, id) falls back to the cwd basename.

1. The cold list reads only the first header line (it never inspects the log body), so it cannot rebuild a seeded session's lifecycle identity:

• the v2/v3 header encoder accepts inheritedEventCount but does not write it to the header JSON (the real cut only exists later as a body end-seed { inherited: true } marker), and the cold header path supplies inheritedEventCount = 0;
• the cache record is bound to the true value, and lifecycleIdentityMatches requires equality on every field, so it always rejects;
• the oldest checkpoint records additionally predate the isSeeded identity field.

So even after removing the short-circuit in (1), the strict lookup still refuses these records. The correlation is exact: all seeded cold sessions lose their title, all non-seeded ones keep theirs.

Minimal reproduction

1. Create a session, then fork / compact / spawn a child so a seeded session exists and has acquired a title.
2. Fully quit the host and start dsh web cold; do not open that session.
3. The sidebar shows it with the workspace folder name instead of its title.
4. Open it once → correct title appears. Restart without opening it → folder name returns.

Environment

macOS (Apple Silicon), Node v26, @deepseek-ai/dsh@0.1.5-rc.1, single DSH_HOME, sequential hosts (not concurrent).

Workaround

Opening each affected session once restores its title for the live session. Locally we confirmed the split is exactly isSeeded (every seeded cold session affected, every unseeded one fine), and patched around it with no change to live/hydration paths.

Suggested fix

Drop the isSeeded short-circuit and add a deliberately narrow, zero-I/O listing-only title fallback: pin the lifecycle slot with the immutable createdAt + cwd known to the cold header, ignore formatVersion direction and the unavailable inheritedEventCount, tolerate a missing legacy isSeeded only, and expose just the title row (still version-gated). The cleaner long-term fix is to persist inheritedEventCount in a future header version (and backfill on migration), after which the cold list can match strictly and the fallback can be removed.

[Mide69]

Checked this against current upstream master (c291e79, 2026-09-10) and every part of your diagnosis holds up.

list.ts still has the exact short-circuit you quoted: header.isSeeded ? undefined : cache?.cachedSnapshot(...) ?? cache?.cachedPredecessorTitle(...), only in the session === undefined cold branch.

The inheritedEventCount-not-persisted claim checks out at the lowest level I could find it. session-format-v1-to-v2/src/codec.ts's encodeHeader takes inheritedEventCount as a parameter, uses it only to validate cut !== 0 for an unseeded header, then returns an object literal that never includes the field at all. session-persistence-jsonl/src/format.ts's HEADER_KEYS set, the full list of required and optional header keys, has no inheritedEventCount entry either. And fromHeaderLine, the function that turns a decoded header line back into SessionStorageMetadata for the cold read path, hardcodes inheritedEventCount: SessionLogOffset(0) instead of reading it from the line, since there is nothing there to read.

session-projection-cache/src/index.ts's lifecycleIdentityMatches does require exact equality on inheritedEventCount. So a seeded session whose real inherited cut is nonzero will always mismatch against a cold-read identity built with a hardcoded 0, exactly as you describe.

Both gates are real and independent, confirmed at the source level, not just from the symptom. Your fix direction, drop the isSeeded short-circuit, add a narrow zero-I/O fallback keyed on the immutable createdAt plus cwd, and eventually persist inheritedEventCount in a future header version so the strict match can work cold too, looks like the right shape. The maintainers would know if there was a deliberate reason to keep inheritedEventCount out of the header line in the first place.