Refine agent cancellation guideline

Lead with the observable contract (ctx.Done = graceful suspend,
return is *SuspendedError, framework shields downstream calls) and
mention agent.ErrSuspendForCheckpoint as the recommended cancel
cause for graceful-stop intent. Drop the leak of the WithoutCancel
mechanism — readers need the contract, not the strategy.

Signed-off-by: Aurélien Sibiril <81782+aureliensibiril@users.noreply.github.com>
This commit is contained in:
Aurélien Sibiril
2026-04-27 10:03:52 +02:00
parent f715a806ee
commit 1505bf0b7e

View File

@@ -43,25 +43,32 @@ type Tool interface {
## Cancellation semantics
`ctx.Done()` is a **graceful-suspend signal**, not a hard abort. When the
caller cancels `ctx`, `Run`/`RunStreamed`/`Resume`/`Restore` finish their
in-flight LLM call and tool, persist a checkpoint via the configured
`Checkpointer`, and return `*SuspendedError`. Internally `coreLoop`
shadows the incoming ctx with `context.WithoutCancel(ctx)` and uses the
shadow for every downstream call so the cancel never kills work
in-progress; only the at-boundary check observes the original ctx.
`ctx.Done()` is a **graceful-suspend signal**, not a hard abort. When
the caller cancels `ctx`, `Run`/`RunStreamed`/`Resume`/`Restore` let
the in-flight LLM call and tool finish, persist a checkpoint via the
configured `Checkpointer`, and return `*SuspendedError`. The framework
shields downstream calls (LLM, tools, hooks, guardrails, save) from
the cancellation so they complete naturally; the cancel is only
observed at the next safe boundary.
Use `agent.ErrSuspendForCheckpoint` as the cancel cause when the
intent is graceful suspend — supervisors that distinguish a
graceful-stop request from infrastructure-level causes (lease loss,
heartbeat failure) inspect `context.Cause(ctx)` to dispatch.
Implications:
- A `context.WithTimeout` becomes a "max wall-clock budget then suspend"
— strictly better than today's "deadline kills work outright."
- A `context.WithTimeout` becomes a "max wall-clock budget then
suspend" — strictly better than the alternative where the deadline
kills work outright.
- There is no in-process hard-abort path. Callers that genuinely need
to kill a run terminate the process; stale recovery handles the row.
- Tools that need their own deadline must derive it themselves
(`context.WithTimeout(ctx, ...)` *inside* the tool body).
- Tools receive a non-cancellable ctx; if a tool needs a hard deadline
it must derive its own with `context.WithTimeout(ctx, ...)` inside
the tool body.
The supervisor (`pkg/probo/agent_run_handler.go`) maps a SIGTERM-driven
shutdown broadcast onto a per-run `cancelRun(ErrSuspendForCheckpoint)`,
shutdown broadcast onto a per-run `cancelRun(agent.ErrSuspendForCheckpoint)`,
so the same contract drives both the public Go API and the worker
infrastructure path.