feat(agent/agentcontainers): retry with longer name on failure #18513

DanielleMaywood · 2025-06-23T18:44:20Z

We now try (up to 5 times) when attempting to create an agent using the workspace folder as the name.

It is important to note this flow is only ever ran when attempting to create an agent using the workspace folder as the name. If a deployment uses terraform or the devcontainer customization, we do not fall back to this approach.

Closes coder/internal#732 We now try (up to 5 times) when attempting to create an agent using the workspace folder as the name. It is important to note this flow is only ever ran when attempting to create an agent using the workspace folder as the name. If a deployment uses terraform or the devcontainer customization, we do not fall back to this approach.

Copilot

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds a retry mechanism for sub-agent creation when using the workspace-folder-derived name fails due to unique constraint violations, and covers the new behavior with tests.

Implement retry loop (up to 5 attempts) with increasingly expanded names on unique‐constraint errors.
Track when the workspace-folder name is used (usingWorkspaceFolderName) and fall back to expandedAgentName.
Extend the fake client and add tests (TestSubAgentCreationWithNameRetry and TestExpandedAgentName) to validate collision handling.

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
agent/agentcontainers/api.go	Add `usingWorkspaceFolderName`, retry loop with `expandedAgentName`, and PQ error handling
agent/agentcontainers/api_test.go	Enhance `fakeSubAgentClient` for conflict simulation and add retry tests
agent/agentcontainers/api_internal_test.go	Add tests for `expandedAgentName` logic at various depths and edge cases

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

agent/agentcontainers/api.go:22

The retry code uses errors.As, but the standard "errors" package is not imported, causing a compile error. Add import "errors".

	"github.com/lib/pq"

agent/agentcontainers/api.go

mafredri

I suggested some changes to state handling and finalizing the name if creation succeeds (assuming it's not the containers name).

mafredri · 2025-06-24T10:11:36Z

agent/agentcontainers/api.go

@@ -591,6 +593,7 @@ func (api *API) processUpdatedContainersLocked(ctx context.Context, updated code
 				// agent name based off of the folder name (i.e. no valid characters),
 				// we will instead fall back to using the container's friendly name.
 				dc.Name = safeAgentName(path.Base(filepath.ToSlash(dc.WorkspaceFolder)), dc.Container.FriendlyName)
+				api.usingWorkspaceFolderName[dc.WorkspaceFolder] = struct{}{}


Should this check if dc.Name != dc.Container.FriendlyName? Also, also good to ensure there's no conflict with api.devcontainerNames so that we don't accidentally create this agent before the predetermined one and then trigger a reverse conflict.

Oh yep good point. Will do 👍

mafredri · 2025-06-24T10:15:32Z

agent/agentcontainers/api.go

+	recreateSuccessTimes     map[string]time.Time                           // By workspace folder.
+	recreateErrorTimes       map[string]time.Time                           // By workspace folder.
+	injectedSubAgentProcs    map[string]subAgentProcess                     // By workspace folder.
+	usingWorkspaceFolderName map[string]struct{}                            // By workspace folder.


Suggestion: While struct{} works and takes up less space, using a boolean would be a bit cleaner IMO, but up to you.

Happy to make that change 👍

mafredri · 2025-06-24T10:28:06Z

agent/agentcontainers/api.go

+			// We increase how much of the workspace folder is used for generating
+			// the agent name. With each iteration there is greater chance of this
+			// being successful.
+			subAgentConfig.Name = expandedAgentName(dc.WorkspaceFolder, dc.Container.FriendlyName, attempt)


Assuming this isn't "container friendly name", and the creation succeeds on next iteration, we should write it to api.devcontainerNames and avoid re-evaluating it again so it no longer changes.

Sounds good to me

mafredri · 2025-06-24T10:31:53Z

agent/agentcontainers/api.go

+			//
+			// We only care if sub agent creation has failed due to a unique constraint
+			// violation on the agent name, as we can _possibly_ rectify this.
+			if !strings.Contains(err.Error(), "workspace agent name") {


errors.As is a bit tricky but typically works if you have a pointer to the type like:

myErr := &someError{} // or maybe: var myErr *someError if errors.As(err, &myErr) { // ... }

It's very possible I got something wrong there as well.

That is what I was trying. I'll try again because I'm not happy with the solution I ended up with.

I'm not entirely sure why it didn't work but it could possibly be because it is wrapped in xerrors.Errorf and then transported over the wire via drpc. Is it possible that in the serialization and deserialization process some of that information was lost?

coder/coderd/agentapi/subagent.go

Lines 106 to 108 in 03d473f

if err != nil {

return nil, xerrors.Errorf("insert sub agent: %w", err)

}

mafredri · 2025-06-24T10:33:08Z

agent/agentcontainers/api.go

+
+		for attempt := 1; attempt <= maxAttempts; attempt++ {
+			if proc.agent, err = client.Create(ctx, subAgentConfig); err == nil {
+				break


Perhaps we can delete from usingWorkspaceFolder here?

johnstcn · 2025-06-24T10:53:17Z

agent/agentcontainers/api.go

+		originalName := subAgentConfig.Name
+		maxAttempts := 5
+
+		for attempt := 1; attempt <= maxAttempts; attempt++ {


Do we know all sub-agent names for the workspace at this point? If so, could we not do this check in-memory before trying the creation?

Sort of. We know all sub-agent names for this agent. There could be another parent agent that creates dev containers (not really sure why you would but it is possible).

I'm happy to update the logic slightly to first create a known unique name for this parent agent, and then fallback to adding more context again?

Most workspaces are going to only have a single top-level agent. It makes sense to avoid this round trip if we can.

That's fair. I'll try to update the logic to do the best it can before hand (and keep this fallback).

This logic is already a fallback from the assumed default of only 1 devcontainer per workspace (and span up with devcontainer up instead of defined in terraform) so I think it probably isn't going to be a hot path anyways.

johnstcn · 2025-06-24T13:42:21Z

agent/agentcontainers/api_internal_test.go

+		{
+			name:            "path with multiple leading slashes",
+			workspaceFolder: "///home/coder/project",
+			friendlyName:    "friendly-fallback",
+			depth:           1,
+			expected:        "coder-project",
+		},


For funsies, how about a Windows-style path?

C:\Documents and Settings\My Username\Documents\Code\Some Project Version 3\

We can skip if you don't think that's valuable.

mafredri

Looks great, nice work!

DanielleMaywood requested a review from Copilot June 23, 2025 18:44

github-actions bot assigned DanielleMaywood Jun 23, 2025

Copilot AI reviewed Jun 23, 2025

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DanielleMaywood added 5 commits June 23, 2025 18:50

chore: listen to feedback

7cf8181

fix: remove arch: "amd64"

5873a47

chore: maybe use runtime.GOARCH?

fb5079c

chore: skip test on windows

b6b9cea

chore: fix logic and reduce flakiness of test

057360a

DanielleMaywood marked this pull request as ready for review June 24, 2025 09:04

DanielleMaywood requested review from mafredri and johnstcn June 24, 2025 09:04

mafredri reviewed Jun 24, 2025

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chore: map[string]struct{} to map[string]bool

df43868

johnstcn reviewed Jun 24, 2025

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DanielleMaywood added 8 commits June 24, 2025 11:01

chore: delete from another place

c25f651

chore: mark as using folder name when not falling back to friendly name

4c79563

chore: fallback if we're using a name already defined in terraform

15dafc7

chore: use map of known names to help create an agent name

08969ce

chore: testing

14bbb1d

Merge branch 'main' into dm-devcontainer-retry

b8fe8c5

chore: appease linter

257c62d

fix: maybe fix race condition?

627fe9f

johnstcn approved these changes Jun 24, 2025

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mafredri approved these changes Jun 24, 2025

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DanielleMaywood merged commit fcf9371 into main Jun 24, 2025
34 checks passed

DanielleMaywood deleted the dm-devcontainer-retry branch June 24, 2025 18:04

github-actions bot locked and limited conversation to collaborators Jun 24, 2025

	if err != nil {
	return nil, xerrors.Errorf("insert sub agent: %w", err)
	}

feat(agent/agentcontainers): retry with longer name on failure #18513

feat(agent/agentcontainers): retry with longer name on failure #18513

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Pull Request Overview

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DanielleMaywood commented Jun 23, 2025 •

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johnstcn Jun 24, 2025 •

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