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Remove Startup Recovery section in base prompt - #6161

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salman1993 merged 2 commits into
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codex/turn-contracts
Aug 17, 2026
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Remove Startup Recovery section in base prompt#6161
salman1993 merged 2 commits into
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codex/turn-contracts

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@salman1993 salman1993 commented Aug 17, 2026 •
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Why

Managed channel sessions already receive authoritative per-turn context. The old startup recovery checklist told every new session to scan the global feed,

What

  • Remove Startup Recovery with concise channel and heartbeat turn contracts.

Risk Assessment

Low. This changes prompt guidance and its test only; routing and runtime behavior are unchanged.

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@salman1993
Clarify managed agent turn contracts
fc0ff6a 
Signed-off-by: Salman Mohammed <smohammed@squareup.com>
@salman1993
remove Turn Contracts section
0aa5350 
Signed-off-by: Salman Mohammed <smohammed@squareup.com>
@salman1993 salman1993 changed the title Clarify managed agent turn contracts Remove Startup Recovery section Aug 17, 2026
@salman1993 salman1993 changed the title Remove Startup Recovery section Remove Startup Recovery section in base prompt Aug 17, 2026
@salman1993
salman1993 marked this pull request as ready for review August 17, 2026 20:43
@salman1993
salman1993 requested a review from a team as a code owner August 17, 2026 20:43
@salman1993

salman1993 commented Aug 17, 2026 •
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Why this section is being removed — historical context

This PR drops the Startup Recovery block from crates/buzz-acp/src/base_prompt.md. Context from the team discussion that led here:

The section's original intent was for the agent to run these steps at the start of every session/thread (feed check, catch up on channel history, read AGENTS.md, check workspace dirs). Reviewing it point-by-point, each step is now either redundant or covered elsewhere:

  1. buzz feed get for pending mentions/actions — turn context is now auto-injected per turn. The harness already delivers the triggering @mention and thread contents on each turn, so a manual feed sweep at startup is no longer needed.
  2. Catch up on channel history — this behavior is specific to joining a new channel, not routine startup, so it doesn't belong as a per-session instruction.
  3. Read AGENTS.md for team context — already covered by the workspace/repo guidance elsewhere in the base prompt.
  4. Check RESEARCH//GUIDES//PLANS/ before searching — already covered by the workspace layout / local-first guidance elsewhere in the base prompt.

Additionally, agents ship with a dedicated buzz-cli skill and receive a CLI usage hint with every @mention, so the CLI-onboarding aspect of this section is redundant.

Net effect: removing this section trims base-prompt fat with little-to-no change to other parts of the prompt. A benchmark run over this change showed no regression

Results

  • Versus same-machine main: 5.6% less active time, 11.8% fewer tool calls
  • Versus PR 6128: 19.8% less active time

Added by Leo 🤖

@atishpatel

atishpatel commented Aug 17, 2026

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Benchmarks on a similar change are looking good. Net improvements everywhere

  • August 15, full was 48.2% higher Active-h than persona-only: 0.3315 vs 0.2237.
  • After removing Startup Recovery, full is only 9.9% higher: 0.3188 vs 0.2901.
  • The absolute full-vs-persona gap fell from 0.1078 h to 0.0287 h, a 73% reduction.
  • Median gap also roughly halved: +0.22 min before versus +0.11 min now.
  • However, the extra tool-call count remains: +48 calls now versus +52 before.

atishpatel
atishpatel approved these changes Aug 17, 2026
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@atishpatel atishpatel left a comment •
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Good reason to remove each point
1 - This is auto injected per turn now so can be removed
2 - Catch to recent history feels specific to joining a new channel so probably isn’t needed
3 - AGENTS.md reading is covered in other part of base prompt
4 - Also covered in other part.

image

@salman1993
salman1993 merged commit f64899e into main Aug 17, 2026
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@salman1993
salman1993 deleted the codex/turn-contracts branch August 17, 2026 22:11
@salman1993 salman1993 mentioned this pull request Aug 17, 2026
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morgmart added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 18, 2026
@morgmart
Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into kennylopez-inter-typo…
f0a8ef9 
…graphy-staging

* origin/main:
  test(desktop): cover exact workflow batch limit (#6168)
  chore(release): release Buzz Desktop version 0.5.15 (#6173)
  Preserve managed agent mentions during relay errors (#6167)
  fix(workflows): preserve multi-channel listing semantics (#6009)
  Remove Startup Recovery section in base prompt (#6161)
  fix(desktop): align preview sidebar row styling (#6163)
  fix(desktop): repair dropped team membership links at boot and on edit (#5904)
  fix(cli): keep project replacement timestamps at or after wall clock (#5666)

Signed-off-by: morgmart <98432065+morgmart@users.noreply.github.com>
@salman1993 salman1993 mentioned this pull request Aug 18, 2026
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@adrienlacombe adrienlacombe mentioned this pull request Aug 18, 2026
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@atishpatel atishpatel atishpatel approved these changes
@wpfleger96 wpfleger96 Awaiting requested review from wpfleger96

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