…ped memory

One reusable persona-driven AgentNPC that binds per-pack by config: it wraps
whatever callables a pack surfaces into the per-tick interface, so the same
class serves web/network/terminal/enterprise/social packs with no per-domain
NPC code and no model training.

- comms.py: MailboxStore/ChatStore + identity-neutral surface helpers. NPCs
  communicate through the world (a shared store), never a direct handle. The
  runtime hands one frozen surface to every NPC, so sender is injected NPC-side
  (the persona's actor_id) and omitted from the model-facing signature — cover
  traffic is attributable by construction and a persona cannot forge identity.
- memory.py: ScopedMemory protocol + dependency-free DictMemory, scoped per
  {run}:{actor} (scope injected, not model-chosen) so personas can't read each
  other's or the SUT's recall.
- persona_agent.py: render_persona (persona data -> system prompt with an
  anti-assistant CONSTRAINTS block + independent goal); data-driven _build_tools
  with typed adapters for mail/chat/speak and signature-faithful, single-call
  wrapping for any other affordance (multi-arg supported, no double-fire);
  incoming mail/chat read with a per-NPC cursor and injected into the prompt;
  optional scoped long-term memory tools.
- cyber_webapp wires it end-to-end: surface_extras exposes the shared comms
  callables, collect_extras drains them attributed by sender for grading, and
  reset_episode clears them so a warm-pooled world doesn't leak traffic.

Register per pack with one openrange.npcs entry point (cyber.persona).

Tests: PersonaAgent unit + integration — shared-surface attribution through the
real seam, read cursor, per-persona/per-run memory isolation, signature-faithful
multi-arg tools, manifest/registry resolution, cyber surface+collect wiring, and
scale. ruff + mypy --strict + boundary clean; full suite green.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…verage

Addresses a second adversarial review of the PersonaAgent NPC.

Merge-blocker:
- ci.yml ran `pytest tests`, overriding pyproject `testpaths`, so the pack-SDK
  suite (incl. the persona tests) never gated CI. Drop the positional path so
  testpaths is honored.

Correctness:
- Buffer incoming comms and clear it only after a successful tick, so a failed
  LLM call never drops a message; cap the buffer so it can't grow unbounded.
- Deterministically phase-stagger cadence (crc32(scope) % cadence) so a
  population on one cadence doesn't act in lockstep.
- Skip a persona's own posts when reading mail/chat; guard malformed message
  ids so one bad row can't brick a reader.
- Sanitize strands-reserved tool-param names (self/cls/agent); punctuation-aware
  memory tokenizer.

Believability (no training):
- render_persona gains social grounding (contacts/channels/example_line) + a
  "plain and human" constraint; article agreement + the "You You" fix.
- Diegetic per-tick prompt (no fourth-wall "it's your turn / use a tool").

Docs/examples/tests:
- Move the demo to examples/persona_eval.py (ruff-clean; corrected scale claim).
- Add a pack-author guide (config-key table + local-model note) to start_here.
- New regression tests for each fix + a PersonaAgent-over-real-WebappRuntime
  integration test asserting attributed collect_extras.

ruff + mypy --strict + boundary clean; full suite green (one pre-existing local
docker image-sweep flake, unrelated).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

CI does not install the optional `strands` extra, which surfaced two issues the
local (strands-present) run masked:

- Two `tool_spec`-asserting tests now `importorskip("strands")` — without the
  extra, `_as_tool` returns the plain callable (by design), so those schema
  assertions only apply when strands is installed. The reserved-name test keeps
  its strands-free assertion (the raw tool stays usable) and gates only the
  schema check.
- Unnamed personas now get a monotonic `persona-N` actor id instead of the base
  class's 16-bit-masked id() fallback, which could (and in CI did) collide and
  share a memory scope. Fixes a flaky isolation assertion and the underlying
  defect.

Verified under a simulated no-strands import: 76 passed, 2 skipped, 0 failed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

A dedicated simplicity/YAGNI pass — pure subtractions, no correctness or
security property touched, all tests green.

- Drop the `ScopedMemory` Protocol + `runtime_checkable` + dead `scopes()`; the
  memory feature keeps its one `DictMemory` impl (typed directly). Removes a
  one-impl "seam for later" abstraction.
- Fold `behavior_axes` into `traits` (two overlapping style channels → one);
  `_style_directives` collapses to a few lines.
- Delete the `speak` comms adapter — no pack surfaces it, and it falls through
  to `_wrap_action` unchanged.
- Drop unused prompt knobs `contacts`/`example_line` (kept `channels`, which is
  functional).
- Remove `Message`/`ScopedMemory` from the public SDK surface (no importers).
- Replace the `_MAX_PENDING` overflow breadcrumb with a plain tail slice.

Shipped source ~642 -> ~595 LOC, a leaner public API and config schema. Kept the
load-bearing complexity (single-invoke tool wrap, actor_id injection, the
failed-tick comms buffer, read cursors, cadence stagger, anon-id isolation).

ruff + mypy --strict + boundary clean; full suite green.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Refresh the pinned floor to the current Strands release (Jun 2026); picks up
Ollama correctness fixes (unique toolUseId, latencyMs type), context-window
lookup, and OpenAI structured-output fixes. Lock diff is scoped to the two
strands packages only.

No API changes needed: our usage (`tool(name=...)` + reconstructed schema,
`Agent(..., callback_handler=None)`, `StrandsAgentBackend`) is unchanged and
still current on 1.45; the sole breaking change in the window (Mistral requiring
mistralai>=2.0.0) does not touch the Bedrock/Ollama path.

ruff + mypy --strict + boundary clean; full suite green on 1.45.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…sona

A population built with count=n today is n clones sharing everything but an id.
This adds diverse-by-construction personas with no model and no training:

- Numeric trait intensities: `traits: {"curious": 0.9, "patient": 0.3}` renders
  "very curious, a little patient". Bool flags still render plain (backward
  compatible), so a sampled trait vector reads with variety.
- `sample_persona(seed, roles=[...])`: deterministically samples a distinct
  name, role, and numeric trait vector. `[sample_persona(i, roles=...) for i in
  range(n)]` gives a varied population instead of clones; the pack supplies its
  own role/name/trait vocabulary so it stays domain-neutral.

Addresses the persona-homogeneity gap flagged by recent NPC-diversity work.
Tests: numeric rendering, determinism, population diversity, and a sampled
config driving a real PersonaAgent. ruff + mypy --strict + boundary clean.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Makes the feature ready to merge along the two axes it was missing: UI
integration and measurable properties.

UI: a seated persona was mute — it showed up on the dashboard (topology seats by
name) but emitted nothing per tick. Now, when a persona uses a comms tool, it
mirrors the message text to the dashboard (`{actor_kind:"npc", speak, ...}`,
the same event shape office_persona emits), so it animates with a speech bubble
and activity line. The chat/mail text IS the model's speech (the prompt forbids
tool-narration), so no separate utterance channel is needed.

Evals (deterministic, model-free, CI-gated — `openrange_pack_sdk.npcs.metrics`):
- sender is never forgeable across comms verbs + adversarial content (0/N) —
  separability-by-construction for the grader;
- a sampled population is diverse (unique actor_ids + role entropy >= 0.9);
- the persona prompt doesn't read like an assistant (tell rate < 0.05).
Live-model believability, a non-degeneracy A/B, and per-actor HTTP tagging are
deferred to a follow-up (noted in docs).

Docs: graded runs use only world-mediated comms tools, not http_get (persona
http traffic is un-attributed and pollutes the request log / reached_endpoint);
every persona needs a name (the seating contract); cyber.persona vs
office_persona. ruff + mypy --strict + boundary clean.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Ran the deferred model-gated believability eval against a real local model
(qwen3-4b via Ollama). Adds a runnable harness and one detector fix it surfaced.

`examples/persona_believability_eval.py`: drives N sampled personas through a
live model, extracts each utterance, and reports role entropy + actor-id
uniqueness + assistant-tell rate. Skips cleanly (exit 0) when no model/backend
is present, so it's an artifact, not a dependency.

What the run showed (qwen3-4b, N=5): the extracted utterances are believably in
character (tell rate 0.00 — e.g. "Q3 report done, but numbers still need a little
tweaking"), BUT the raw stream leaks chain-of-thought as prose ("the user wants
me to act as Dana...") and tool-calling is unreliable at 4B. So the detector now
also flags meta-reasoning leaks (`the user`, `act as`, `stay in character`,
`my character/persona`) — a real believability failure the assistant-only
patterns missed; the generated persona prompt still scores < 0.05. Takeaway
(docs already note it): prefer a non-thinking instruct model for clean
tool-driven cover traffic; small thinking models leak reasoning + skip tools.

ruff + mypy --strict + boundary clean; the CI tell-detector test now locks in
the reasoning-leak case.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Adversarial front+backend review confirmed the persona seats + speaks on the
dashboard (verified end-to-end through the real DashboardView bridge). Fixes the
LOW findings it surfaced:

- dashboard.js: derive the callout CSS class from `kind` (email/chat), not the
  raw channel name — mail now renders with the email style instead of chat, and
  a channel like "ops" no longer picks a nonexistent class. Empty-cast copy now
  points authors at `cyber.persona` (was `cyber.office_persona`, contradicting
  the docs).
- persona_agent.py: mail emits `kind:"mail"` for the render above; drop the dead
  `goal` key from the presence payload (the SPA has no consumer).
- realize.py: the npc_mail/npc_chat comment no longer claims a grader consumes it
  (none does yet) — "available to a grader" is honest.
- docs: personas animate on comms (seated-but-silent without a comms tool, don't
  walk between desks); anonymous personas late-spawn at the chat hub.

New test (test_persona_episode.py): drives a real EpisodeService + DashboardView
with a tool-calling backend and asserts the persona's present + speak events land
in the bridge buffer attributed to its actor_id, with mail carrying kind:"mail" —
the exact front-back gap that let the render mismatch hide. ruff + mypy --strict
+ boundary clean.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>