plat 350

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PLAT-350 — Crew identity is role and purpose; the retained-session fingerprint tracks it, not skills

Field	Value
Status	implemented locally; deployment and live acceptance pending
Priority	P1 Crew correctness
Owner	server agent runtime (runner-up: frontend-chat for the identity panel)
Reported	2026-09-22
Related	(none)

Problem

Three defects in how a Crew's identity reaches its agent:

1. Role and instructions were optional and purpose (the project description) never reached the system prompt at all, so Crews ran with no defined role or mission.
2. The retained native-session fingerprint (agentProfileSessionKey) ignored identity. A resumed native CLI keeps its launch-time system prompt, so role/purpose edits never reached an already-running retained session.
3. Skills were fingerprinted by full content, so every skill edit relaunched retained native sessions — pointless, because skills are workspace markdown the agent re-reads from disk on demand (loadOneAttachable + AttachSkill run per query).

Fix

• Users own role and purpose only. The user-editable instructions field is removed from the set_work_identity tool, the identity panel, and the prompt; behavior rules live in the system-owned product template. Legacy stored instructions go inert and are dropped on next save.
• WORK_IDENTITY renders Purpose: (from product.json description) above icon/name/role. Role and purpose are required: the first-chat gate asks for both, and the setup banner opens Identity and sends the setup question through the shared pane-to-chat queue.
• The fingerprint is now definition + MCP server selection + Crew role and purpose (WORK_IDENTITY_KEY). Skills are out: editing, adding, or removing a skill no longer relaunches retained sessions, while identity edits do. Icon/name edits stay out of the key so cosmetic changes don't churn sessions.

Commits: 83fb4708f (purpose into prompt), cbb9b4a61 (identity refactor + fingerprint), c3b7aecd7 (banner via shared queue). Deploy relaunches existing retained sessions once against the new key format.

Verification

• go test ./internal/workproduct/ green, including the reloaded WORK_IDENTITY/WORK_IDENTITY_KEY assertions.
• TestAgentProfileSessionKeyTracksDefinitionAndIdentity, TestAgentProfileSessionKeyTracksMCPSelection, TestResolveAgentProfileUsesSavedMCPScopeBeforeRetainedDelivery pass.
• tsc -b, eslint, and 50 frontend vitest cases pass.
• Full cmd/server suite shows only the 4 pre-existing failures, byte-identical on the pristine tree.
• Live acceptance pending: edit a Crew's role mid-session and confirm the retained native session relaunches with the new identity, and edit a skill and confirm it does not.