deer-flow/scripts/AGENTS.md

Support Bundle Runtime Home

Thread manifests use a nonempty DEER_FLOW_HOME exclusively, resolving relative values from the checkout like the local launcher. Read root .env path settings without exporting secrets; dotenv overrides shell exports, including empty values. Expand unquoted leading tildes, preserving quoted literals. If python-dotenv is unavailable or .env cannot be read/decoded as UTF-8, retain shell/legacy lookup so troubleshooting remains usable. Read the complete file before applying any assignments so a decoding failure cannot partially override shell values. Resolve $NAME, ${NAME} and ${NAME:-literal} in unquoted/double-quoted values using a private environment with checkout PWD and earlier dotenv assignments. Single-quoted values and escaped dollars stay literal. Parse the file without sourcing it or executing command substitutions. When home is unset and DEER_FLOW_PROJECT_ROOT is configured, search the launcher's backend/.deer-flow first, then the standalone harness project root. Scan both legacy threads and user-scoped threads in that root. With no override, retain the two checkout layouts. Display an external home as {DEER_FLOW_HOME} rather than its absolute host path, and never include file contents in the manifest. Coverage lives in backend/tests/test_support_bundle.py. This lookup follows the local launcher's root .env; it does not discover backend/.env or DEER_FLOW_ENV_FILE used by standalone Gateway launches. For those launches, export the effective DEER_FLOW_HOME when collecting a bundle and ensure the checkout .env does not override it. Tests clear all three runtime path variables and compare storage defaults with the launcher's actual shell blocks.

Dependency and Label Checks

check_extension.py uses Gateway's wheel asset validator; CI checks examples in extension-package-check.yml. Tests: backend/tests/test_extension_check_script.py.

check.py: decode UTF-8 with replacement; pnpm uses PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8:backslashreplace. Keep Unicode/exit status in make check in any locale. Tests: backend/tests/test_check_script.py.

doctor.py/setup_wizard.py: at main start, keep stdout's encoding with errors="replace" for legacy terminals/pipes. Guard reconfigure on embedded/captured streams. Offline tests: backend/tests/test_setup_script_encoding.py.

check_label_declarations.py: stdlib-only guard; reject unsupported expressions. Tests: backend/tests/test_label_declarations.py.

Manual Claude OAuth Export

export_claude_code_oauth.py validates Keychain JSON as an object containing an object claudeAiOauth and a nonblank string accessToken before any export action. Malformed containers use the existing token-missing error without exposing their contents. The loader returns the full container together with the validated token; export actions use that token without repeating credential-shape assumptions or trimming its contents. Offline CLI coverage: backend/tests/test_claude_keychain_export.py.

Service Startup Contracts

serve.sh reads DEER_FLOW_GATEWAY_STARTUP_TIMEOUT after root .env for local Gateway port readiness (positive integer seconds, default 30). Reject invalid values before cleanup/startup except --stop; keep frontend/nginx waits. Launcher/wait-loop tests (processes, readiness and time stubbed): backend/tests/test_serve_gateway_startup_timeout.py.

Both launchers call sandbox-mode.sh via Bash; keep it Bash/awk-only. Dev passes $PROJECT_ROOT/config.yaml; prod passes $DEER_FLOW_CONFIG_PATH. For AIO, omitted/blank/empty-quoted/YAML-null URLs (including comments) select aio; preserve quoting so "null" and "~" remain nonempty strings. This is not a general YAML parser or URL validator; aliases, multiline values and environment expansion are out of scope. Offline helper and launcher tests: backend/tests/test_docker_sandbox_mode_detection.py.

The setup wizard offers Webz.io as a news-only web_search provider using deerflow.community.webz.tools:web_search_tool and WEBZ_API_KEY. Keep its entry aligned with the credential check in doctor.py and the example config. The adapter uses async HTTPS requests, offloads lazy config loading, and maps source to provider domain; explicit published_from overrides recency. Explicit max_results overrides the wizard's configured default; omission or null uses configuration or 5. Reject boolean/fractional configured counts before clamping to 1–100. returned_results is the normalized page size, not a match total. Skip malformed page entries with index-only warnings; retain valid neighbors. Reject malformed envelopes and nonempty pages with no valid entries, logging no provider payloads or credentials. Contract tests live in backend/tests/test_webz_tools.py.

Optional browser dependency detection reads the top-level tools: sequence without requiring name to be its first mapping key. Both indented and indentless lists are supported; nested option names and block-scalar text must not enable the browser extra. Keep the detector standard-library-only because it runs before dependency synchronization. Read UTF-8 config files with or without a leading BOM so the first section remains detectable. detect_uv_extras.py checks an existing DEER_FLOW_CONFIG_PATH first, then DEER_FLOW_PROJECT_ROOT/config.yaml, before the legacy checkout candidates. Keep this lookup standard-library-only; test shadowing checkout configs and the CLI under python -S in backend/tests/test_detect_uv_extras.py. For Discord and Buzz, detect the provider extra when either legacy channels.<provider>.enabled is true or both channel_connections.enabled and channel_connections.<provider>.enabled are true. Keep these gates aligned with enabled_transport_providers() in the channel service, including setup wizard output. The provider set includes only channel providers declared in backend/pyproject.toml under [project.optional-dependencies]; update it when a channel gains or loses an extra. Providers whose SDKs are core dependencies must not be added to this set. Nonempty UV_EXTRAS continues to override config-derived extras. serve.sh's config-presence gate also accepts the project-root file when the checkout has no config. tests/test_serve_config_presence.py runs the full launcher through dependency detection with service operations stubbed. setup-sandbox.sh also strips the leading BOM and normalizes CRLF before selecting the image; keep its shell filter compatible with GNU and BSD sed. An Apple Container pull that succeeds on macOS must not fail the setup step just because Docker is absent. Keep the Docker pull when Docker is available, including after an Apple Container failure, and retain the final image-config note rather than exiting early on Apple Container success.

The root PORT value configures Docker's published nginx ingress only; local orchestration pins Next.js to 3000. Local runs bind the Gateway and Next.js to 127.0.0.1; nginx-local-conf.sh keeps nginx on loopback or, for a set BIND_HOST (strict IP/hostname check), renders temp/nginx.local.conf listening there. serve.sh resolves it before stopping anything, so a bad value cannot tear down a running stack. Keep dev.mjs's all-interfaces default: the Docker dev frontend needs it. Runtime commands launch from the already synchronized environment with uv run --no-sync. Production Compose probes Gateway /health, and deploy.sh waits for all services before reporting success; failures print Compose status and recent Gateway logs.

Both compose files mark ../.env and ../frontend/.env optional (path/required: false, Compose 2.24+), so make up, make down and make prod-logs on a fresh checkout neither abort nor create them; an unreadable .env still fails. Do not seed them from the examples in deploy.sh as docker.sh start does: .env.example holds placeholder API keys the production Gateway would receive, and make config skips files that exist. Pinned by backend/tests/test_compose_default_bind_host.py and backend/tests/test_gateway_startup.py.

docker.sh start runs Compose from docker/ without --env-file, so dev-compose interpolation sees only the shell. load_proxy_env_from_dotenv exports the .env keys interpolation needs (proxy variables and AUTH_TRUSTED_PROXIES, whose environment: default would otherwise replace the env_file value); shell exports still win. Pinned by backend/tests/test_compose_auth_trusted_proxies.py.

deploy.sh never sources the repo-root .env; Compose reads it via --env-file, and shell exports outrank that file during interpolation (an exported-but-empty variable still wins). So BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, DEER_FLOW_INTERNAL_AUTH_TOKEN and DEER_FLOW_CREDENTIALS_KEY resolve shell → .env → persisted file under DEER_FLOW_HOME → freshly generated, and a .env-provided value is left unexported so Compose parses it itself. Whether .env provides one is Compose's answer, not a KEY=VALUE grep: Compose also accepts KEY: VALUE lines and interpolates ${VAR} inside values, so the script renders a stub project whose only environment entry is ${KEY} through docker compose config (same --env-file, stub on stdin, project directory docker/) and reads the value back; "" means empty or unset and falls through to the persisted/generated secret. This works on every Compose v2 (the README floor is 2.24; config --environment would need 2.28), and a failing probe stops the script rather than guessing. read_dotenv_value stays for the end-of-run summary only. Do not export a value the script read from .env: that shadows Compose's own dotenv parsing and re-creates the bug where make up replaced the operator's secret with a generated one. The credentials key (a Fernet key) persists as .credentials_key, the file the Gateway itself generates in that runtime home, via a noclobber (O_EXCL) create that reads a concurrent winner back. backend/tests/test_deploy_dotenv_secrets.py pins the order and the probe; its real-Compose cases run against the installed docker CLI and against any standalone binaries listed in DEER_FLOW_TEST_COMPOSE_BINARIES.

Deployment commands check DEER_FLOW_HOME writability before setup and check persisted secret readability only when shell/Compose dotenv overrides are absent. Both failures identify the affected path and print the recursive ownership recovery hint for the runtime home. Existing secrets are only read, so a readable, read-only file is valid. down skips these checks and all secret resolution/generation so permission damage cannot prevent teardown. Coverage: backend/tests/test_deploy_home_writability.py.

doctor.py checks the config file the Gateway would load, not a fixed <checkout>/config.yaml. It mirrors how serve.sh hands the two config-location variables to the Gateway: .env values for DEER_FLOW_CONFIG_PATH / DEER_FLOW_PROJECT_ROOT override the shell (other keys stay shell-first), an unquoted leading ~ in them expands as source does (a quoted one stays literal), and an unset or empty DEER_FLOW_PROJECT_ROOT becomes the checkout. It then asks the harness (AppConfig.resolve_config_path) instead of re-implementing its order. An override the Gateway would reject (DEER_FLOW_CONFIG_PATH missing, DEER_FLOW_PROJECT_ROOT not a directory) fails config.yaml found with the Gateway's error, and the config-dependent checks skip. Any failure to import the harness is reported, never raised: doctor diagnoses broken environments. Pinned by backend/tests/test_doctor.py::TestMainConfigResolution.

Doctor screens Browserless fetch/capture and Crawl4AI, Firecrawl, and fastCRW fetch backends with the runtime's validate_delegated_backend_url, before provider success shortcuts. Keep endpoint defaults, CRW_API_URL precedence, config environment resolution, and isolation acknowledgement coercion aligned with those tools. allow_private_addresses affects targets only. Doctor reports refused delegation with the deployment guide; it does not verify egress policies. Offline coverage lives in backend/tests/test_doctor.py.

CLI credential JSON checks accept UTF-8 with or without a leading BOM, matching the runtime credential loader. Keep _load_json_object on utf-8-sig; malformed JSON and invalid encoding remain missing/invalid sources without exposing tokens. Public doctor/runtime agreement is pinned by backend/tests/test_credential_file_encoding.py.

Root make install runs pre-commit through uv, so uv's tool bin directory need not be on PATH.

config-upgrade.sh upgrades the file the Gateway loads by asking the harness (AppConfig.resolve_config_path) rather than copying its lookup order. It defaults DEER_FLOW_PROJECT_ROOT to the checkout, as serve.sh does, so <checkout>/config.yaml wins over a legacy backend/config.yaml. A missing DEER_FLOW_CONFIG_PATH or invalid project root is an error, never a fallback. Only "no config anywhere" creates <checkout>/config.yaml from the example. backend/tests/test_config_version.py::test_config_upgrade_* pins this.

Multi-Instance Dev Harness

dev_multi_instance.{sh,py} must keep the rendered config passing the real multi-instance gate and every endpoint/data root inside its state dir (backend/tests/test_dev_multi_instance_script.py). Unless keep_channels is requested, disable provider flags in both channels and channel_connections; UI credentials can otherwise connect a bot later. Preserve channels.leader_lease and connection metadata. --out is a file path for render-config, secrets and nginx-conf; a directory, or a file ancestor, is rejected before any write.

Shell Script Invocation Contract

Root Makefile recipes must invoke repository .sh files through RUN_SHELL_SCRIPT. On POSIX this expands to $(BASH); on Windows it uses the Git Bash wrapper. Shell scripts that invoke sibling repository scripts must likewise prefix the target with bash. This keeps documented make commands working when a source archive, core.fileMode=false, or a non-POSIX filesystem does not preserve executable bits.

The Windows wrapper resolves bash.exe under the Git installation root, which is the parent of cmd/, bin/, or mingw64/bin/ depending on the distribution: Git for Windows puts git.exe in cmd/, while PortableGit and GitHub Desktop put it in mingw64/bin/. Bash and sh stay at <root>/bin and <root>/usr/bin in both layouts. backend/tests/support/shell.py mirrors the same rule for the shell-script suites.

make clean deletes backend/.deer-flow (database, users, threads, uploads, secrets), which both compose stacks mount into deer-flow-gateway. Its recipe runs check-data-not-in-use.sh before make stop (which would stop a live stack's sandboxes) and refuses while that container runs; an absent or unreachable Docker passes. make stop must still run before the delete: it stops deer-flow-sandbox* containers, whose thread mounts live in that tree. cleanup-containers.sh must verify an anchored <prefix>- name after Docker's substring name= filter, and use the same rule for Apple Container IDs. Parse Apple Container JSON without interpolating the prefix into Python source; bad entries must not hide later valid containers. Offline stub coverage lives in backend/tests/test_cleanup_containers_script.py. RUNTIME_DATA_CONTENTS feeds both the help line and the deletion notice.

Host-side pnpm calls must go through scripts/pnpm.py. With native Windows Python (os.name == "nt"), it checks pnpm.cmd before the generic pnpm lookup, which uses PATH/PATHEXT and may select an .exe or .bat in the same or an earlier PATH directory. If neither is found, it falls back to Corepack, checking corepack.cmd before corepack. POSIX Python (including MSYS/Cygwin Python) keeps the generic name first for each tool; the gate is based on Python's os.name, not the invoking shell.

Public Skill Review Waivers

review_changed_public_skills.py keeps the analyzer strict and applies narrow CI-only exceptions from .github/skill-review-waivers.v1.json. The manifest is versioned by contracts/skill_review/waiver_manifest.v1.schema.json; each entry must identify one current error by package, source, rule, path, line, and evidence, and pin the complete source file with SHA-256 plus an expiry date. An optional, bounded preapproved_file_sha256s list authorizes reviewed future full-file digests without relaxing the exact finding match. Blockers are never waivable, and waived errors are still printed with their original severity and justification.

For pull requests, only the base revision's manifest is effective. The head manifest is parsed and checked against the current analyzer output, but cannot self-authorize a finding in the same pull request. Push comparisons use the same before/after trust boundary. A waiver-only change can therefore land without weakening its own check, then become effective for later changes after it is part of the trusted base. Preapproved digests must be code-reviewed in that first change; after the corresponding file revision lands, promote the consumed digest to file_sha256 and remove it from the preapproval list.

Backend Static Analysis Commands

The root detect-thread-boundaries target statically inventories execution boundaries under backend/app/ and backend/packages/harness/deerflow/. It prints a concise count by execution domain and writes the complete, versioned JSON payload to .deer-flow/thread-boundary-inventory.json. Every finding has a stable boundary_kind: asyncio_default_executor, dedicated_executor, anyio_worker_thread, direct_event_loop_blocking, separate_event_loop, or unresolved_dynamic_boundary.

The AST inventory covers asyncio.to_thread, default and explicit run_in_executor submissions, imported aliases, simple same-module helper wrappers (after pre-registering dedicated executor targets), set_default_executor, ThreadPoolExecutor construction/submission, additional event loops, synchronous LangChain tools, and direct BaseChatModel fallback inheritance. It remains read-only and does not alter executor routing or sizing.

To supplement the static scan with configured runtime types, run:

python scripts/detect_thread_boundaries.py \
  --runtime-config config.yaml \
  --json-output .deer-flow/thread-boundary-inventory.json

Runtime inspection imports configured tool objects and model classes so it can record concrete tool names/types/modules, sync functions, async coroutines, and _agenerate/_astream ownership. It does not invoke tools, instantiate models, or call external services; import failures remain in the JSON as unresolved_dynamic_boundary records. The detector implementation and focused coverage live in tests/support/detectors/thread_boundaries.py and tests/test_detect_thread_boundaries.py.

The detect-blocking-io target parses app/, packages/harness/deerflow/, and scripts/ with AST. By default it reports only blocking IO candidates that are inside async code, reachable from async code in the same file, or reachable from sync-only AgentMiddleware before/after hooks that LangGraph can execute on the async graph path. It prints a concise summary and writes complete JSON findings to .deer-flow/blocking-io-findings.json at the repository root (both make detect-blocking-io from the repo root and cd backend && make detect-blocking-io resolve to the same repo-root path). JSON findings include priority, location, blocking_call, event_loop_exposure, reason, and code for model-assisted or manual review. priority is a deterministic review ordering from operation type, not proof of a bug. Bare-name same-file calls are resolved by function name, so duplicate helper names in one file can conservatively over-report async reachability. The call graph also resolves multi-hop self./cls. attribute chains (self.store.flush()) and local variables or parameters traced back — within the same function only — to a self./cls. attribute (store = self.store; store.flush()); both fall back to the same bare-method-name resolution as an unresolvable receiver, so they share its over-report risk rather than adding a new kind. Deeper cross-function or cross-module aliasing is out of scope and stays an unreported false negative.

That same-function alias tracing is deliberately narrower than the symbolic names dotted_name() builds for blocking-call pattern matching elsewhere in this module: receiver/alias extraction uses a restricted extractor that only recognizes Name/Attribute chains, so a Call or Subscript result (e.g. factory().flush(), or client = factory(); client.flush() / client = clients[0]; client.flush()) is never treated as inheriting its base's alias-worthiness — including when the unsupported node is buried deeper in the chain (factory().client.flush(), clients[0].client.flush()): an unrecognized shape anywhere in the chain makes the whole receiver unresolved, it never falls back to just the chain's trailing attribute name, or that name alone could still collide with an unrelated traced parameter or local alias. Reassigning a traced name to a non-traceable value (anything other than a self./cls. attribute or an already-traced name) kills its alias instead of leaving it traceable, so a stale alias from an earlier assignment cannot keep exposing an unrelated same-named method after the variable is reassigned to something else; the assignment's right-hand side is always analyzed against the alias state as it stood before this kill-or-add update, matching Python's own evaluate-then-bind order, so client = client.flush() still resolves that call against client's prior (pre-reassignment) alias instead of the state after it's gone. if/else branches get isolated alias state — an alias added in one branch cannot leak into the other — and the state after the whole if is the union of what each branch produced (a conservative may-alias join), so the result no longer depends on which branch is textually body vs. orelse. This branch isolation is deliberately scoped to ast.If only; ast.Try/ast.Match have different, more complex control-flow semantics and keep the older unisolated traversal. Finally, a function's decorators and parameter defaults are analyzed in the enclosing scope rather than the new function's own, and parameter/return annotations get the same enclosing-scope treatment unless the module postpones annotation evaluation (from __future__ import annotations), in which case they are skipped entirely, in either scope — those expressions run at definition time, before the function has ever been called (or, when postponed, never run at all), so a call there is never attributed to the function being defined (it moves to whatever scope actually contains the def, e.g. the enclosing function, or disappears if that scope is module/class level and therefore never async-reachable). PEP 695 type-parameter bounds are not visited in either scope: CPython evaluates each one lazily, in its own hidden function, only if something like T.__bound__ is actually accessed, never as part of running the def statement itself. A lambda's body and a bare generator expression's element/filters/later for clauses are excluded from traversal ONLY while walking another function's own definition-time expressions (decorators, parameter defaults/ annotations, return annotation): there, we know structurally that the enclosing def statement is executing right now, and neither a lambda body nor a generator's element runs just because the lambda/generator object is created — only a lambda's own parameter defaults and a generator's outermost iterable are genuinely eager at that moment. This exclusion is absolute and has no exceptions: even a lambda that is immediately invoked at its own definition site ((lambda: ...)()), or a generator passed directly to an eager-consuming builtin, is still excluded when it appears inside another function's decorator/default/annotation — a narrow, intentional limitation given how rarely a definition-time expression contains an executed call at all, preferred over special-casing specific shapes there.

Everywhere else — module level, class bodies, and ordinary function-body statements — a lambda body or generator expression's element is scanned unconditionally, the same conservative, over-report-rather-than-infer stance this file already takes for reachability elsewhere (the ast.If may-alias union, the bare-name call-graph resolution). This file does not attempt to distinguish a lambda that is invoked immediately, invoked later through a stored variable, passed as a callback, or never called at all, nor a generator that is consumed by an eager builtin (list, sum, any, etc.), wrapped in another lazy iterator (map, filter), or never consumed — telling these apart in the general case would mean inferring evaluation order and consumption across arbitrary code rather than reading a fixed, structural fact, so none of them are special-cased; all are scanned the same way. This is intentionally informational and is not run from CI in this round.

For a diff-scoped view of the same findings, scripts/scan_changed_blocking_io.py (repo root) reports findings on the added lines of git diff <base>...HEAD plus findings new versus the merge base (so a new async caller exposing an untouched sync helper in the same file is still reported) — used by the blocking-io-guard skill (.agent/skills/blocking-io-guard/) as the deterministic scope step before routing each candidate to a fix and/or a tests/blocking_io/ runtime anchor.

Regression tests related to Docker/provisioner behavior:

• tests/test_docker_sandbox_mode_detection.py (mode detection from config.yaml)
• tests/test_provisioner_kubeconfig.py (kubeconfig file/directory handling)
• tests/test_provisioner_request_threading.py (keeps provisioner sandbox CRUD endpoints as sync FastAPI handlers so synchronous K8s client calls run in the Starlette worker pool instead of on the ASGI event loop)

Blocking-IO runtime gate (tests/blocking_io/):

• Wraps every item under tests/blocking_io/ with a strict Blockbuster context scoped to app.* and deerflow.* (see tests/support/detectors/blocking_io_runtime.py). Any sync blocking IO call whose stack passes through DeerFlow business code while running on the asyncio event loop raises BlockingError and fails the test.
• Regression anchors live there: test_skills_load.py (locks the asyncio.to_thread offload around LocalSkillStorage.load_skills, fix for #1917); test_sqlite_lifespan.py (locks the offload around SQLite path resolution plus ensure_sqlite_parent_dir, fix for #1912); test_jsonl_run_event_store.py (locks JsonlRunEventStore's async API — including idempotent singleton-event writes — offloading its file IO via asyncio.to_thread); test_run_journal_callbacks.py (locks RunJournal.run_inline tool callbacks to in-memory/event-loop-safe work); test_integrations_router.py (locks Lark integration install and auth completion route handlers offloading archive filesystem work and lark-cli subprocesses); test_uploads_middleware.py (locks UploadsMiddleware.abefore_agent offloading the uploads-directory scan off the event loop); test_uploads_router.py (locks Gateway upload/list/delete endpoints offloading upload directory creation, staged writes, chmod/cleanup, directory scans/deletes, and remote sandbox sync off the event loop); test_feishu_receive_file.py (locks Feishu attachment path preparation and persistence plus remote sandbox acquisition/sync off the event loop, and skips redundant sandbox sync when thread data is already mounted); test_channel_outbound_files.py (locks Feishu, Telegram, and WeCom outbound attachment open/read/hash work off the event loop); test_openviking_memory_backend.py (locks the official OpenViking backend's async add/context/search entrypoints offloading synchronous SDK and cursor filesystem IO); and test_workspace_changes_recorder.py (locks the offload around the snapshot text cache lifecycle — roots resolution, mkdtemp, and the shutil.rmtree on both the capture-failure branch and record_workspace_changes' finally).
• test_gate_smoke.py is a meta-test asserting the gate actually catches unoffloaded blocking IO and that the @pytest.mark.allow_blocking_io opt-out works.
• Coverage boundary: the gate only sees code that test execution actually touches. Static AST coverage is a separate concern (out of scope for this PR).
• CI: runs on every PR via .github/workflows/backend-blocking-io-tests.yml, hard-fail.

Boundary check (harness → app import firewall):

• tests/test_harness_boundary.py — ensures packages/harness/deerflow/ never imports from app.*

Memory backend async boundary:

• MemoryMiddleware.aafter_agent calls MemoryManager.aadd; network-backed managers must override their a* methods to offload or use native async I/O.
• The mem0 backend requires an HTTPS base_url by default because requests carry an API token. Plain HTTP requires the explicit backend_config.allow_insecure_http: true local-development opt-in.
• Gateway memory routes offload the synchronous management contract with asyncio.to_thread, so backend file or HTTP I/O does not run on the ASGI event loop. Gateway startup and shutdown also resolve the manager off-loop, because a backend's from_config may perform a fail-fast connectivity check.
• A backend may set requires_passive_writes_in_tool_mode = True when tool-mode search is supported but durable writes still depend on conversation-level extraction. Such backends receive memory tools and retain MemoryMiddleware.
• Prompt recall rethrows MemoryManagerError only when backend config declares failure_policy.read: fail_closed; other recall errors preserve the existing log-and-empty-context behavior.

CI: .github/workflows/backend-unit-tests.yml runs these tests on every PR.

Agentic browser sessions are process-local. Browser use is refused when the Gateway runs more than one worker process, because ordinary uvicorn worker dispatch does not provide thread affinity for browser tools, REST navigation, and the Live WebSocket. Keep GATEWAY_WORKERS=1, and on the launchers that pass uvicorn no --workers (scripts/serve.sh, backend/Dockerfile) keep WEB_CONCURRENCY unset or 1 too — that is where uvicorn takes the process count from.

Browser Live screenshots remain JPEG bytes inside the harness and the Gateway's bounded, drop-oldest frame queue. WebSocket clients that request frame_format=binary receive binary messages; control metadata remains JSON. The legacy no-parameter protocol still base64-encodes frames into JSON at the Gateway boundary for backward compatibility. Unknown frame_format values receive a JSON error and close code 1008.

The support bundle's extensions_config.json reader accepts UTF-8 with or without a leading BOM, matching the runtime loader. Preserve redaction and avoid flagging a valid BOM-prefixed file as a syntax error in triage output.

Support-bundle and doctor tool captures explicitly decode UTF-8 with replacement for invalid bytes. Set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8:backslashreplace only in the copied support-bundle child environment so Python helpers can print Unicode and escape surrogates without aborting diagnostics or changing the parent. Keep exit codes, timeouts and redaction intact; do not rely on the host locale. Regressions use real local children, including ASCII/GBK capture defaults, nonzero exits, surrogate characters and malformed output, without invoking provider diagnostics. Doctor covers both _run streams and pnpm runner capture.

Production dotenv selection

deploy.sh resolves DEER_FLOW_COMPOSE_ENV_FILE from the checkout before creating state or probing secrets. Keep Compose interpolation, Gateway and provisioner env files, secret probes, and UV_EXTRAS discovery on that one path. Normalize host paths for Git Bash; quote path arguments rather than sourcing dotenv files. Unset/empty selection preserves the optional root .env default; explicit invalid files reject build/start before Docker. Stopping remains possible after the selected file is removed. Tests: test_deploy_env_file.py and the existing deployment/Compose suites.