yoi/work-items/closed/20260529-235408-provider-stream-trace-profile-spawn/resolution.md

id	slug	title	status	kind	priority	labels	created_at	updated_at	assignee	legacy_ticket
20260529-235408-provider-stream-trace-profile-spawn	provider-stream-trace-profile-spawn	Preserve provider stream trace recording across profile-spawned Pods	closed	task	P2	pod profile session-trace debuggability	2026-05-29T23:54:08Z	2026-05-30T00:38:28Z	null	null

Background

SessionConfig::record_event_trace controls the debug sidecar {segment_id}.trace.jsonl, which records normalized provider stream events and lifecycle markers outside the durable segment log. It is intentionally separate from session replay, but it is important when diagnosing provider failures that are visible only as live events.

During the session-pod-state-boundary implementation handoff, a child Pod showed [ProviderError] with error_code: context_length_exceeded in TUI for a ping request. The child's session JSONL had no run_errored, and there was no .trace.jsonl sidecar. Inspecting the child's runtime manifest showed:

[session]
record_event_trace = false

This suggests the profile/spawn configuration path may have dropped or reset a previously enabled debug trace setting when profiles were introduced or when SpawnPod materializes its child manifest. Even if the immediate provider-error persistence bug is fixed separately, disabling the trace sidecar for child Pods makes diagnosis of live-only provider events much harder.

The current trace sidecar is not fully raw SSE; it records parsed llm_worker::llm_client::event::Event values plus lifecycle/transport diagnostics. Unknown OpenAI Responses SSE events are surfaced as Event::UnhandledSse with bounded previews, while known terminal events such as response.failed become Event::Error.

Goal

Make provider stream/event trace configuration survive profile resolution and spawned-Pod manifest construction so debugging settings remain effective for child Pods, and make the resulting behavior explicit.

Acceptance criteria

• Identify where session.record_event_trace is lost or defaulted during profile resolution, manifestization, SpawnPod, or hidden spawn-config construction.
• Preserve the intended trace setting for spawned Pods when the parent/profile configuration enables it, unless an explicit child override disables it.
• Add focused tests covering profile-resolved manifests and spawned-Pod manifest construction with record_event_trace = true.
• Clarify in docs or comments that .trace.jsonl stores normalized stream events/lifecycle diagnostics, not necessarily byte-for-byte raw SSE.
• Do not make event trace globally enabled by default; it remains an opt-in debugging feature.
• Validate with focused manifest/pod tests and ./tickets.sh doctor.