feat(agent): a #agent/thread carries capability directly — register its wants as name-keyed pending grants

[unforced]

What

Restore the capability parity the retired #agent/definition had: a #agent/thread now registers its own wants: as pending grants keyed by the agent name, so a thread carries capability directly.

The threads-only model (#174–#178) made a thread be the agent, but parseThreadSpec left a thread's wants: informational only (agent-defs.ts "parsed for parity, not registered"; "threads register no grants — only roles do"). That was a regression: the retired #agent/definition did register its own wants keyed by the agent name. Only #agent/role (path-keyed) registered.

Where the registration hooks in

AgentDefRegistry.instantiateThread — after a successful parse + setupAndRegister, it now:

1. resolveStatusWithGrants({ name, wants, declaredConnections: [] }) — registers each want as a pending grant keyed by parsed.name (= metadata.agent) + derives status (enabled iff all approved, else pending), exactly like the def load path.
2. sets the live entry with the real status / pending / connections (was hardcoded enabled / []).
3. reconcileLiveKeys(threadAgent) — the agent-grants: grant rows orphaned when an #agent/definition note is deleted #96 grant-GC, reconciling to the thread's currently-declared wants.

The injection side was already correct: resolveInjectedGrantsUnion(grants, [spec.name, ...roleKeys]) unions over spec.name, so an approved thread grant injects at spawn. This is a registration-only change. resolveStatusWithGrants / reconcileLiveKeys / resolveDefStatus generalize from ParsedAgentDef to a small GrantBearingSpec so a def and a thread share one path.

Safety (mirrors the def discipline exactly)

• Pending, not auto-granted — the operator still approves each grant. Approval is the security boundary; this is not self-escalation. Roles remain the curated/shared layer, coexisting.
• Reconcile-GC only from a confident live set — register + reconcile run after a clean parse + setup, and only when the thread exclusively owns the name (the dedup gate returns false for a def-owned/other-source name before any grant traffic). A malformed wants: (parseThreadSpec throws AgentDefParseError) or a setup failure returns before register/reconcile, so a transient error can never present a stale/empty set that nukes approved grants.
• Name partition, not role partition — keyed by the agent name; a role's PATH-keyed grants (reconcileRole) are untouched. Injection dedups thread-own vs role wants with spec.name first (existing behavior, verified not re-implemented).
• Disabled threads register nothing (existing gate, unchanged).

Not covered (documented follow-up)

A proper removed-thread grant GC on note deletion needs a thread seen-set + confident removed-thread diff (mirroring pruneRemovedDefs — the poll is the real deletion path since the vault has no deleted trigger). That is a separate, larger change; a deleted thread's approved grants persist until then — a cleanliness gap, never an escalation (grants are always operator-approved). Documented on reloadThread.

Tests

New agent-defs.test.ts block + one grants.test.ts injection test:

• thread wants: register keyed by the agent name; status pending; connections surfaced with hub grant ids
• status → enabled once approved
• wants-free thread stays enabled with no register PUT (byte-identical to before)
• removing a want → reconcile-GC prunes to the reduced set (keyed by name)
• safety: malformed wants: → skipped, never register/reconcile (approved grants not nuked)
• a def-deduped thread registers nothing (def owns the name partition)
• thread name-partition + role path-partition coexist (neither clobbers)
• a thread's approved name-keyed want injects via resolveInjectedGrantsUnion([name])

Gates

• bun test ./src/ — 1450 pass, 0 fail (the daemon gate; the web/ui/src/ browser tests that fail under a loose src/ glob are pre-existing + DOM-dependent, run via test:spa)
• bun run typecheck — clean
• bun run lint — exit 0 (2 pre-existing noExplicitAny warnings in src/transports/vault.test.ts, not touched here)

Version: 0.2.4-rc.1 → 0.2.4-rc.2. rc tag pushed on merge (not here).

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01T6HAzWsgiJy4ndsWSCWY5S