plat 053

PLAT-053 — Background workshop agents lost the parent tool surface

• State: runtime_reverify
• Assigned: Codex
• Owner: workshop background-agent construction
• Severity: P0 — a reviewer could diagnose a workflow defect but could not persist its finding, create a decision, or repair the workflow.

Evidence

The 2026-08-08 Upwork Pulse run launched Strategy and Engineering+Fix through run_in_background. Both children received the ordinary workflow-step default tool list rather than the parent workshop list. Their logs showed unregistered get_pulse_state, record_pulse_finding, record_pulse_result, record_pulse_verification, update_message_sequence_step, update_step_config, update_schedule, and update_evaluation_plan calls. Folder Guard then denied direct-file fallbacks.

Root cause

runBackgroundTaskAgentSequence called prepareCustomTools(nil). For a plan step, nil deliberately means the restricted default workspace/human/DB set; it does not mean the complete workshop surface. The native workshop tools were also registered only after the parent agent had been constructed, while the child was constructed from the reduced workspace bundle.

Fix

Background workshop children now:

1. receive the parent controller's entire WorkspaceTools and executor bundle;
2. collect the parent workshop's native plan/schedule/execution tools as immutable direct definitions before MCP-agent construction; and
3. register get_workflow_command_guidance in that child definition, because slash-command wrappers require the child to load the exact guidance that dispatched it; and
4. preserve those preconfigured direct definitions when the common agent factory adds the workspace-tool definitions.

There is intentionally no second category allow-list. The per-agent Folder Guard and the child task instruction govern safe scope, exactly as they do for the parent workshop agent.

Acceptance

• The focused registration test proves a child definition includes plan, step-config, schedule, evaluation, and background-execution tools.
• A new Pulse child must successfully call the typed Pulse persistence tools and a safe workflow mutation tool without falling back to shell/SQLite.

Verification

go test ./pkg/orchestrator/agents/workflow/step_based_workflow \
  -run 'TestBackgroundTaskGetsWorkshopMutationToolDefinitions|TestWorkshopMode|TestPrepareCustomTools' -count=1
go test ./cmd/server -run 'Test.*Pulse|Test.*Toolset' -count=1

Both passed on 2026-08-08. Runtime verification requires a server restart and one new background Pulse review; the currently running server predates this code change.