Jean-Pierre

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RFD D51: Assistant-Scoped Tool Configuration ​

Summary ​

JP's per-conversation tool bindings live under conversation.tools.*, but they are de facto scoped to the single assistant that consumes them. This RFD moves tool configuration to an assistant-scoped assistant.tools.*, keeping conversation.tools.* accepted as legacy input for backward compatibility. It covers the schema change, the compatibility mapping, the negative-delta claims-map field paths, and which documents are updated versus preserved as a historical record.

Motivation ​

conversation.tools.<name> configures which tools an assistant may call and how — source, run policy, access, display, and options. Today a conversation has exactly one assistant, so "the conversation's tools" and "the assistant's tools" are the same set. The key places the configuration on the conversation, but every consumer — query setup, tool rendering, enable and disable flags, and the tool coordinator — reads it as the assistant's tools.

This gap between where the configuration lives and who owns it is a small but real source of confusion, and it blocks any future design in which one conversation hosts more than one assistant. Making the scope explicit, with assistant.tools.* as the canonical location, names the real owner without changing behavior for existing single-assistant conversations.

Doing nothing keeps the mismatch and makes the eventual move more expensive. conversation.tools is referenced across roughly twenty accepted RFDs, the living configuration documentation, and the negative-delta claims map (RFD 070), which enumerates conversation.tools.* field paths directly. The longer the key remains, the more surfaces bind to it. This RFD scopes the migration so it happens once, deliberately, with a defined compatibility window for the legacy key.

Design ​

The core of the RFD. Describe the proposed solution in enough detail that someone familiar with the codebase could implement it. Use diagrams, code snippets, and examples where they help.

Start with what the user or caller sees — the external behavior, API, or experience — before describing internals.

Structure this section however makes sense for the topic. Common subsections include: Overview, Design Goals, Architecture, Data Flow, API Changes, Configuration Changes.

Every section can be brief. A one-sentence Alternatives section is better than no Alternatives section.

Drawbacks ​

What are the known costs of this approach? What does the project give up by adopting it? Argue honestly against your own proposal.

Alternatives ​

What other approaches were considered? Why were they rejected? This section is important — it shows the reader that the solution space was explored and gives future readers context for the decision.

Non-Goals ​

What this RFD explicitly does not aim to achieve, even though a reader might expect it to. This keeps the discussion focused and signals awareness of the broader picture.

Risks and Open Questions ​

What could go wrong? What don't we know yet? What needs to be validated during implementation? It's better to surface uncertainty explicitly than to pretend it doesn't exist.

Implementation Plan ​

How will this be implemented? Break the work into phases or steps. This section bridges the gap between design and execution.

For each phase, briefly describe:

  • What it includes
  • What it depends on (other phases, or other RFDs by number)
  • Whether it can be reviewed and merged independently

If a phase has measurable cost implications (token budget, latency, binary size, API calls), include a brief quantitative estimate.

References ​

Links to related RFDs, issues, documentation, or external resources.