fix(catalog): avoid synthetic compaction on native/routed model switches

[colthreepv]

TL;DR: I wanted to open a side chat with a different model, without first waiting for Codex to summarize a conversation that still fit. This fixes the extra compaction caused by OpenCodex's model metadata. I applied the patch locally and tested the side-chat workflow: it now works as expected, without that automatic compaction. Looks good to me.

Summary

OpenCodex gives routed models a made-up compatibility marker, comp_hash: "opencodex". Native models have a different marker, so Codex can treat a model switch as incompatible and compact before answering, even with plenty of context space left.

This change uses null for unknown compatibility, which Codex already supports. It also clears old OpenCodex markers on retained catalog rows. Native compatibility markers and normal token-limit compaction remain unchanged.

Related: #5796 / #5802 fixed markers changing during catalog rebuilds. This addresses the separate compaction triggered by switching between native and routed models. #5095 describes a related side-chat symptom. Tests and documentation are included.

Verification

Manual test passed: I applied the two runtime changes to my installed OpenCodex 2.71.0 on Windows and tested a side conversation in the Codex app. It no longer automatically compacts before proceeding. Both patched files were verified, and all eight inspected routed catalog rows had comp_hash: null. This confirms the reported side-chat behavior; reverse switching, exact history replay and real context overflow were not separately verified.

Local checks passed:

• bun run typecheck
• bun test tests/codex-integration/codex-catalog.test.ts tests/codex-integration/codex-catalog-sync-hardening.test.ts tests/codex-integration/reserve-catalog.test.ts tests/codex-integration/reserve-catalog-lifecycle.test.ts tests/codex-integration/native-model-toggle.test.ts — 447 passed.
• OCX_TEST_NO_QUEUE=1 bun test tests/codex-integration/catalog-routed-comp-hash.test.ts — 7 passed, 31 assertions; intentional overlap for the focused catalog checks.
• bun run structure:index, bun run structure:check, bun run privacy:scan, bun scripts/file-size-ratchet.ts, and git diff --check.
• In docs-site: bun install --frozen-lockfile and bun run build.

Broader validation is still open. bun run test:changed expanded into a large integration run and overloaded the workstation. I stopped it after about 13.5 minutes. Captured output contained 18,445 passing test lines and 41 failures, including timeouts; the failures remain untriaged. The full bun run test suite was not run. Under the repository's resource exception, broader cross-platform coverage is left to CI; no broad local rerun is planned. Cross-platform CI for this head currently needs maintainer approval to run.

The PR remains draft pending review and broader validation. CodeRabbit has not reviewed it yet. One review question remains: whether empty-string hashes should also become null; this patch preserves existing upstream/foreign string values and removes OpenCodex-generated markers.

Checklist

• Scope stays focused and avoids unrelated cleanup.
• Docs or release notes were updated when needed.
• Security-sensitive changes were reviewed for secrets, auth, and unsafe defaults. No authentication, credential, workflow, dependency, or release changes; privacy scan passed.

Review readiness checklist

This PR stays in draft until every box below is ticked. Tick all four boxes once the requirements are met:

• Required local validation passed; commands, results, and any full-suite exception are documented.

• I pushed my PR to a recent dev commit (at most 10 behind; a maintainer may still ask for the exact tip before merge).

• I resolved all correct Codex and CodeRabbit findings.

• My PR is ready for review.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Routed model switches no longer trigger side-chat history compaction solely because compatibility information is unknown. Native models and explicit Codex-forward aliases retain their upstream compatibility markers.
  • Side-chat history may still be compacted before its first turn or after a model switch when both models have known, differing compatibility markers.
• Documentation
  • Clarified how this behavior differs from context-limit compaction and noted that it does not restore history already compacted.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Routed catalog entries now represent unknown comp_hash compatibility as null. Catalog repair clears legacy hashes from retained OpenCodex-authored rows during provider-discovery outages. Tests and documentation cover the updated behavior.

Changes

Routed model compatibility hashes

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Normalize unknown routed hashes src/codex/catalog/derive-entry.ts, src/codex/catalog/parsing.ts, tests/codex-integration/catalog-routed-comp-hash.test.ts	Routed entries derived from templates no longer inherit the template’s comp_hash. Strict normalization assigns null to non-string values and preserves strings. Tests cover derivation, normalization, and stability across rebuilds and JSON serialization.
Clear hashes on retained authored rows src/codex/catalog/build-entries.ts, tests/codex-integration/catalog-routed-comp-hash.test.ts, structure/catalog.md, docs-site/src/content/docs/guides/sub-agent-surface.md	Retained OpenCodex-authored rows receive a null comp_hash during degraded provider discovery. Tests cover legacy hashes, aliases, foreign rows, and input immutability. The documentation describes compatibility-triggered compaction and the updated hash behavior.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~12 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to 6a208

Routed models now use null for unknown history compatibility, which avoids compaction on native/routed switches. An empty hash string could still trigger avoidable compaction, and that edge case is narrow. Mergeable, with the empty-string handling to be decided.

Security Architecture Review

Security architecture risk: 🔵 Low · up to 6a208

The change avoids unnecessary conversation summarization during some switches. No access-control change or security finding was established, but behavior across all switch and recovery paths has not been verified.

Retained concerns
No architecture-level concerns identified.

Security review details

Security Blast Radius

• inferred — The behavioral reach is catalog rows whose compatibility is unknown and OpenCodex-authored rows retained through degraded discovery. Changing compaction may change the amount of conversation history used after a model switch; the supplied evidence does not establish a new authorization or provider-routing path.

Trust Boundaries and Controls

• observed — Retained-row repair uses a native-alias marker or routed-description provenance to identify authored rows; the tested foreign row keeps its hash. Routed native-access metadata is subject to separate normalization.

Resilience and Maintainability Implications

• observed — Normal token-limit handling remains in the normalization path; tests cover outage repair and rebuild stability, but not every recovery or reverse-switch path.

Hardening Proposals

• proposed — Verify null compatibility in the deployed compaction consumer, including both switch directions, provider recovery, and the conversation history made available after a switch.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: preventing synthetic compaction when switching between native and routed catalog models.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 4 functions across 4 files. (2 skipped: 2 …
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✅ READY

• all PR quality gates passed; the review readiness checklist is complete.

Review readiness checklist

• ✅ Required local validation passed; commands, results, and any full-suite exception are documented.
• ✅ I pushed my PR to a recent dev commit (at most 10 behind; a maintainer may still ask for the exact tip before merge).
• ✅ I resolved all correct Codex and CodeRabbit findings.
• ✅ My PR is ready for review.

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Maintainers: @lidge-jun @Ingwannu

[lidge-jun]

리뷰 · 우선순위 55 / 80

이 PR은 네이티브 모델과 OpenCodex로 라우팅된 모델 사이를 바꿀 때, 대화가 아직 짧아도 Codex가 “호환 안 됨”으로 보고 압축(compaction)을 걸어 버리던 문제를 고친다. 예전에는 라우팅된 모델마다 comp_hash에 가짜 값 "opencodex"를 넣었다. 네이티브 쪽은 업스트림 값(예: "3000")을 쓰니까, 둘이 둘 다 있고 서로 다르면 Codex가 토큰이 남아도 압축한다. 이번 변경은 “모른다”를 null로 두고, 가짜 마커·템플릿에서 복사된 값을 지운다. Codex는 양쪽 해시가 모두 있을 때만 비교하므로, 한쪽이 null이면 그 이유로 압축하지 않는다. 진짜 네이티브 행·Codex-forward 별칭의 업스트림 해시와, 토큰 한도로 인한 압축은 그대로 둔다. 장애로 디스크에 남은 OpenCodex 행도 마이그레이션으로 지우고, 카탈로그 회귀 테스트·가이드 문서를 보강했다. 이슈 #5796/#5802의 후속이고, base는 dev이며 tip에 맞춰 있다(behind 0).

라인 - src/codex/catalog/parsing.ts ensureStrictCatalogFields (~636): 문자열이 아닌 값만 null로 바꾼다. 그래서 빈 문자열 ""은 “있는 해시”로 남는다. 테스트도 "" 보존을 명시한다. Codex는 값이 있으면 비교하므로, 어딘가에서 빈 문자열이 들어오면 네이티브 "3000"과 또 어긋날 수 있다. OpenCodex가 쓰는 경로는 null이라 실사용 위험은 작지만, 빈 문자열도 null로 통일할지 한 줄로 정해 두면 좋다.

라인 - 검증 상태: typecheck·포커스 카탈로그 테스트·structure·privacy·docs 빌드는 초록이라고 적혀 있다. 다만 작성자가 말한 대로 bun run test 전체 게이트는 안 돌렸고, 데스크톱에서 네이티브↔라우팅 전환·실제 토큰 오버플로 압축 확인은 아직이다. 리뷰 준비 체크리스트는 0/4이고 PR은 드래프트다. 카탈로그 단위 테스트는 메타데이터만 보장하고, 앱이 보내는 압축 요청 유무는 증명하지 않는다.

라인 - src/codex/catalog/build-entries.ts 장애 보존 루프 (~784): OpenCodex가 쓴 행(퍼블릭 네이티브 별칭 포함)의 comp_hash를 null로 지운다. Codex-forward 별칭은 이 루프에 안 들어가고 config에서 다시 만든다고 주석에 있다. 테스트도 forward는 "3000" 유지·combo 네이티브 별칭은 null로 나눠 두어, 의도와 코드가 맞다.

메인테이너의 판단이 필요한 지점

빈 문자열 comp_hash를 권위 있는 값으로 둘지, 모르는 값과 같이 null로 정규화할지.

ready로 올리기 전에, PR 본문에 적어 둔 사람 손 테스트(짧은 네이티브 대화 → 사이드챗/라우팅 전환 → 첫 턴에 호환 압축이 안 뜨는지, 반대로 토큰 넘침은 압축되는지)를 머지 조건으로 둘지.

너의 추천

방향·범위·업스트림 #27520 해석·테스트 보강은 좋다. types/config 쪼개기나 닫을 중복 이슈는 이 diff에 없다. 머지 전에는 (1) 체크리스트를 채우고 ready로 올리고, (2) 작성자가 적은 데스크톱 스모크를 한 번 보고, (3) 가능하면 빈 문자열도 null로 맞출지 한 줄로 확정하면 된다. 프리뷰 배포 이야기는 해당 없다.

이 댓글은 grok-bot이 작성했습니다

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @src/codex/catalog/parsing.ts:
- Line 639: Update comp_hash normalization in the parsing code to map empty
strings to null while preserving nonempty strings, and update the empty-string
expectation in the routed comp-hash integration test accordingly.

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📒 Files selected for processing (6)

• docs-site/src/content/docs/guides/sub-agent-surface.md
• src/codex/catalog/build-entries.ts
• src/codex/catalog/derive-entry.ts
• src/codex/catalog/parsing.ts
• structure/catalog.md
• tests/codex-integration/catalog-routed-comp-hash.test.ts

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