ADR 0134: Discord tool work is a status card

Status: accepted (James, 2026-08-26). Extends ADR 0118 and ADR 0024.

Context

Typing says Clankie is alive but not whether a slow turn is browsing, creating media, or working locally. Posting one message per tool call would flood the room, notify people repeatedly, and expose host details through tool names, arguments, or results. Model-authored progress text is useful for social updates, but it is not a reliable execution trace.

Decision

An owner enables deterministic tool activity per guild channel with /clankie tools mode:on; off and status use the same owner-only command. The setting is persisted as discord.toolProgressChannelIds and is off by default.

The captain host projects Pi's tool_execution_start and tool_execution_end events into public-safe categories, counts, and elapsed time. It never projects raw tool names, arguments, results, paths, queries, or service payloads. Discord-social tools are omitted. The first write waits one second so quick tool calls leave no card, later writes are throttled, and one message is edited through running and terminal phases. A silent turn deletes its card so silence remains a real answer.

The official bot renders the message as a quiet Components V2 Container with an accent color and Text Display. The lab user-session body uses an edited blockquote because user accounts do not own application components. The active body mints and remembers the card message id; captain updates may edit or delete only an id minted by that process.

Consequences

• A room can see what kind of work is happening without receiving tool-call spam or host-sensitive details.
• Progress is host-authored evidence, separate from Clankie's voluntary send_text_update speech.
• The terminal card remains as a compact audit for spoken turns. It is not a transcript; detailed evidence stays in Pi's local session tree.
• The toggle applies to new turns. An in-flight turn keeps the visibility mode it started with.

Options weighed

• One Discord message per tool call. Rejected because it is noisy and creates avoidable notification and rate-limit pressure.
• Embed raw tool names or arguments. Rejected because names and values can disclose paths, queries, connected services, and untrusted content.
• Let the model narrate every tool event. Rejected because deterministic lifecycle state belongs to the host; Clankie still decides when to speak.