kandev/docs/decisions/0047-plugin-host-conversation-reads.md

0047 — Plugins read conversation content via a capability-gated Host RPC

• Status: accepted
• Date: 2026-07-21
• Area: backend, protocol
• Related: 0043 — Plugin host data API (the pattern this extends), docs/specs/plugins/spec.md ("Host data API")

Context

The Host data API (ADR 0043) lets a plugin read kandev's domain data — tasks, sessions, workspaces, workflows, agent profiles, repositories — over a capability-gated Host gRPC channel. It deliberately stopped short of message content: Sessions() exposes session metadata (identity, agent, timestamps, acp_session_id, code stats) but no transcript.

A downstream "My Daily Standup" plugin needs to summarize yesterday's user/agent conversations and surface issues worth mentioning. Today a plugin cannot read historical message content at all:

• The only place message content is exposed is the message.added bus event (internal/task/service/service_events.go publishMessageEvent). Live event capture is a poor fit for "summarize yesterday" — a plugin would have to be running and recording continuously, and gets nothing for the window before it was installed.
• The message repository has no task-scoped or time-range query. ListMessages is session-scoped only; nothing filters by task id or a created_at window.

Reusing the ADR 0043 escape hatch (open the SQLite file directly) is the exact failure ADR 0043 exists to close: schema coupling, breaks on Postgres, no scoping, only possible because the subprocess is unsandboxed.

Decision

Add one read RPC to the existing service Host, following ADR 0043 exactly.

1. New RPC + DTO. ListMessages(ListMessagesRequest) returns (ListMessagesResponse) on service Host in apps/backend/proto/kandev/plugin/v1/plugin.proto. Message DTO fields: id, session_id, task_id, turn_id, author_type, content, type, created_at (RFC3339). MessageFilter: session_ids, task_ids, since, until (RFC3339, since inclusive / until exclusive), types. Opaque cursor pagination (Page/PageInfo) like every other reader.

2. SDK accessor. Host.Messages() MessageReader with List(ctx, MessageFilter, Page) ([]Message, *PageInfo, error), plus Go-native Message/MessageFilter mirrors in pkg/pluginsdk/data_types.go and an UnimplementedHostData.Messages() default. No proto types leak past the package boundary.

3. Capability gate api_read:messages. A new resourceMessages const and a Messages() accessor in internal/plugins/host_data.go that returns a real, service-backed reader when the manifest declares api_read:messages, else a denied reader whose List returns gRPC PermissionDenied with capability 'api_read:messages' not declared — identical to the other resources. A non-RFC3339 since/until returns gRPC InvalidArgument.

4. Content is sanitized; system prompts never leave kandev. The reader maps models.Message → DTO through messageModelToDTO, which runs sysprompt.StripSystemContent on content — the same <kandev-system> stripping the message.added event applies. Raw system content and the event path's raw_content/has_hidden_prompts are not exposed. author_type is only ever user or agent: there is no system author in kandev's model — system context is inline markup inside an otherwise user/agent message, and it is stripped at read time.

5. Reads go through the service layer. A new Service.ListMessagesForPlugin(ctx, models.PluginMessageFilter) on the task service delegates to a new MessageRepository.ListMessagesForPlugin / SQLite ListMessagesForPlugin — a single filtered query (task_session_id IN, task_id IN, type IN, created_at >= since, created_at < until), ordered created_at ASC, id ASC, with SQL LIMIT/OFFSET. The reader requests page-limit+1 rows to derive HasMore without a second count query; NextCursor is offset+limit, matching the other readers' opaque-offset cursor. The internal/plugins package reaches this via a narrow messageDataSource interface wired by Service.SetDataSources, never importing the task service directly (the same import-cycle avoidance the existing readers use).

Consequences

• A plugin can read a window of conversation content (e.g. "everything on this workspace's tasks since yesterday 00:00") without touching the DB file, and without the plugin having to be running when the messages were created.
• The Message proto is a public contract: fields are additive-only thereafter.
• The new query is the one net-new piece of data access; every other layer is the established ADR 0043 pattern (accessor + denied reader + narrow data source + DTO mapper + in-process/wire capability tests).
• Scoping stays ADR 0043 v1: reads are global to the instance, filters narrow results, and the single server-side data-source hook remains the place a future per-plugin/per-user restriction would attach.

Alternatives considered

• Subscribe to message.added and accumulate. Rejected: only captures messages created while the plugin runs, needs durable plugin-side storage, and gives nothing for the pre-install / "yesterday" window the feature is about.
• Expose the raw message row (including raw_content). Rejected: leaks kandev's injected system prompts to plugins. The event path already strips them; the read path must match.
• A session-only reader (reuse ListMessages). Rejected: the standup use case is task/time scoped ("yesterday, across these tasks"), which the session-only query cannot express without an N+1 fan-out and client-side time filtering. One filtered query is simpler and cheaper.