Strict providers (DeepSeek v4, newer OpenAI) reject an assistant message
carrying tool_calls: [] with HTTP 400. _sanitize_messages_for_api already
strips orphaned tool results, but not an assistant message that literally
stores an empty tool_calls list.
Drop the empty key on ALL THREE sanitized-dict sites that must agree:
_sanitize_messages_for_api, _api_safe_message_positions, and the
_safe_projection inside _restore_reasoning_metadata (so a tool_calls: [] row
projects identically on both sides of the metadata-carry-forward alignment and
doesn't lose its reasoning/id/timestamp every turn — Fable gate follow-up,
folded in).
Added mutation-checked regression tests: empty tool_calls dropped + populated
chain preserved (both sanitizer paths), and metadata carry-forward survives a
tool_calls: [] row.
Co-authored-by: nesquena-hermes <nesquena-hermes@users.noreply.github.com>
When a turn is steered, the agent embeds an
[OUT-OF-BAND USER MESSAGE]...[/OUT-OF-BAND USER MESSAGE] control block, and that
block gets persisted into the session's messages/context_messages (appended onto
a tool-result entry — verified present in real prod session JSON, in both
messages[] and context_messages[]). WebUI then replays context_messages into the
provider-facing conversation history every turn, so the model kept re-seeing the
internal control marker: wasted tokens + stale control data.
Adds a non-mutating, recursive _strip_oob_blocks() (regex, DOTALL+IGNORECASE,
non-greedy) wired into every model-facing chokepoint:
_sanitize_messages_for_api, _api_safe_message_positions,
_restore_reasoning_metadata projection, and the gateway runs-API
conversation_history (context_messages + prefill). The compression path
(/session/compress) inherits the strip via _sanitize_messages_for_api.
The marker stays intact in the persisted transcript (display/reload/audit
fidelity); it's removed only on the way to the provider. Idempotent, only strips
a complete open+close pair, and does not mutate persisted session objects (the
content key is reassigned to a freshly-built value).
Maintainer hardening (Opus gate): relaxed the opening pattern from a mandatory
`]\r?\n` to `]\s*?` so a single-line OOB block is also stripped (DOTALL .*?
already spans newlines) — robustness against a format that omits the newline.
Co-authored-by: Stacey2911 <Stacey2911@users.noreply.github.com>
