yoi/work-items/open/20260527-000022-manifest-profiles/thread.md

Migrated

Migrated from TODO.md entry without a legacy ticket file. No legacy review file was present at migration time.

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Plan

Implementation will proceed through a child orchestrator Pod in a dedicated worktree as an experiment in nested Pod delegation.

Initial implementation target:

• Introduce Nix profile resolution as a new manifest source before the existing manifest cascade.
• Start with explicit path-based profiles; discovered-name/default selection and rich TUI picker can be staged after the core resolver if necessary.
• Provide a minimal bundled Nix helper that can produce a typed resolved manifest/config artifact.
• Keep existing TOML manifest loading as compatibility/debug/test infrastructure.
• Persist enough profile identity and resolved snapshot data for future restore semantics; do not silently re-evaluate profiles on resume.
• Secret values must remain references only; plaintext secrets are out of scope for the profile resolver.

The child orchestrator may split implementation among sub-Pods, but final merge/close remains parent-side.

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Review: approve

Reviewed the nested Pod implementation from branch work/nix-manifest-profiles.

Result: approved after blocking fix.

Findings:

• Initial review found one blocking issue: --profile rejected non-empty INSOMNIA_USER_MANIFEST. That contradicted the profile design because a selected Nix profile is a standalone runtime config artifact and ambient user/project manifest cascade should not affect it.
• The child orchestrator fixed this in commit c9a175a fix: ignore user manifest for profiles and added profile_ignores_non_empty_user_manifest_env without invoking real Nix.
• Profile foundation is intentionally a vertical slice: explicit path-based Nix profile resolution, minimal Nix helper, CLI/TUI spawn entrypoints, resolved snapshot metadata, and restore-from-snapshot behavior. Rich discovery/default picker remains future work.

Validation run by reviewer:

• cargo fmt --check
• cargo test -p manifest profile -- --nocapture
• cargo test -p pod --bin insomnia-pod profile -- --nocapture
• cargo check -p session-store -p manifest -p pod -p client -p tui -p provider
• cargo check -p pod -p tui
• git diff --check
• Manual nix eval --json --file smoke check for resources/nix/profile-lib.nix

Non-blocking follow-up candidates:

• Hide or narrow ResolvedProfile::raw_artifact if future call sites might log/persist accidental raw Nix output.
• Add a timeout around nix eval so profile startup cannot hang indefinitely.
• Validate direct client::SpawnConfig construction that combines profile_path with resume_from; TUI currently avoids it.
• Build richer profile discovery/default selection and the full TUI profile picker.

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Plan

Continue implementation beyond the merged Nix profile foundation. The previous nested delegation stopped at a reviewable vertical slice; this phase should keep iterating until the work item acceptance criteria are materially closer to completion or a real blocker is found.

Phase 2 target:

• Add profile discovery/default selection instead of requiring only explicit --profile <path>.
• Support discovered-name selection with source disambiguation where needed, e.g. builtin/user/project/path semantics.
• Add or substantially advance the new Pod profile selection UX so a default can be displayed as profile: coder (default) and changed before spawn.
• Preserve the core design: selected Nix profile resolves to a standalone manifest/config artifact; ambient user/project manifests do not merge into it.
• Keep Pod resume using resolved snapshots rather than silent Nix re-evaluation.
• Keep secrets as references only.

The delegated orchestrator should not return merely because one slice is reviewable. It should internally review acceptance criteria, delegate sub-Pods as needed, and continue with the next reachable slice unless it hits a concrete design or technical blocker. Parent-side merge/close remains reserved for this parent Pod.

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