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multica-mentioning

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Updated 10-16 01:31

About this skill

Mentioning & Delegating

This skill states WHAT a mention link does in the Multica backend, traced to source. WHETHER to mention at all — loop avoidance, staying silent on acknowledgements — is in your runtime brief's Mentions section; follow that and do not repeat it here.

Every claim below is pinned to source in references/mentioning-source-map.md. If behavior ever differs from this document, the source map is where to re-check it.

A mention link is built from a real UUID

The backend recognizes a mention only through this Markdown shape:

[@Label](mention://<type>/<id>)

The parser (util.MentionRe in server/internal/util/mention.go) accepts exactly four <type> values plus the all sentinel, and the <id> group accepts only hex characters and dashes, OR the literal string all:

(member|agent|squad|issue|all)/([0-9a-fA-F-]+|all)

So the link target is a real entity UUID (or all), never a display name. The label between the brackets is free text — that is where the human-readable name goes.

One mention:// form deliberately sits OUTSIDE this parser: [Label](mention://project/<uuid>). project is absent from the type group above, so the backend never parses it and it can enqueue nothing — it is a render-only link every client makes navigable (a chip on web and desktop, an ordinary link that opens the project on tap on mobile). That is the whole point: a project reference should never be able to start a run. Use it freely to point at a project (see the multica-projects-and-resources skill); everything else in this document is about the four types (plus all) the parser does recognize.

Step 1 — look up the UUID with --output json

A name is not a UUID. Look the UUID up first, from the matching list command:

  • a person → multica workspace member list --output json → use user_id
  • an agent → multica agent list --output json → use id
  • a squad → multica squad list --output json → use id

For a person the mention id is the user_id, NOT the membership-row id — the backend's own roster formatter uses user_id for member mentions. Match by display name. If the name is ambiguous or absent, do not guess — say so in your comment instead of emitting a broken link.

Step 2 — the four types and exactly what each enqueues

Format: [@Name](mention://<type>/<uuid>). The <type> and the id source must match, or the link resolves to the wrong entity (or to nothing).

To… type uuid from What the backend does
trigger an agent agent agent.id enqueues a run for that agent (EnqueueTaskForMention)
hand work to a squad squad squad.id resolves the squad's leader_id and enqueues a run for the LEADER agent
link a person member member.user_id renders a link; enqueues NOTHING — no agent run
reference an issue issue issue.id renders a link; enqueues NOTHING — always safe

The mention trigger set is computed by computeMentionedAgentCommentTriggers (server/internal/handler/comment.go); the comment path folds that result into computeCommentAgentTriggers and enqueues it via enqueueCommentAgentTriggers. It acts on two types only: the squad branch resolves the squad and adds its leader to the trigger set; everything that is not agent after that is skipped (if m.Type != "agent" { continue }), then the agent branch adds that agent. A member or issue mention reaches neither branch, so it enqueues no task.

A member mention therefore does NOT make a person "run", and this skill does NOT claim it delivers a notification through the Go comment handler — there is no such code path in that handler (see the source map). What is verified is the contract above: only agent and squad mentions enqueue work.

Preview and per-comment suppression

Newer clients can call POST /api/issues/{id}/comments/trigger-preview before creating or editing a comment. The preview endpoint uses the same computeCommentAgentTriggers function as create and edit re-triggering, so the displayed agent chips come from backend rules, not from a client-side reimplementation.

When previewing an edit, clients may send editing_comment_id. The server validates that the comment belongs to the same workspace and issue, derives or checks the edit's parent comment context, and excludes only pending tasks whose trigger_comment_id is that same comment. Pending tasks from any other comment on the issue still dedupe the preview.

When creating or editing a comment, clients may send an optional suppress_agent_ids array. The server still computes the full trigger set first, then removes those agent IDs as a post-filter. A missing or empty field preserves the old behavior. A valid UUID that is not in the computed trigger set is a no-op; a malformed UUID is rejected at the request boundary.

@all is the broadcast type

@all uses the literal all, never a UUID:

[@all](mention://all/all)

It addresses everyone on the issue. It does NOT make any specific agent run. And it is special at trigger time: a comment that carries an @all mention is treated as a broadcast that SUPPRESSES the issue assignee's automatic on-comment trigger (and the other implicit routing fallbacks — thread parent / conversation owner). Use @all to announce, not to request work from the assignee.

@all only suppresses those IMPLICIT routes. An EXPLICIT @agent / @squad mention in the same comment still fires normally (MUL-5411): a comment reading [@all](mention://all/all) heads up — [@Preflight](mention://agent/<uuid>) please take this enqueues Preflight and nobody else. Explicit mentions win over the broadcast; see computeCommentAgentTriggers in server/internal/handler/comment.go, where the explicit-mention branch is evaluated BEFORE the @all short-circuit.

What does NOT happen (so the result doesn't surprise you)

None of these start a fresh run, and none produce an error response — but they are three different things, and the response tells you which. A mention that never parsed is a truly silent no-op. One that parsed and was refused comes back in trigger_outcomes as status: "blocked" with a reason_code. One whose target is already busy comes back coalesced or deferred: no second run, but your comment IS folded into the task that is already running, so it still gets read. Read that array after posting — it is the only place any of this shows up.

  • A name where a UUID belongs. mention://member/Alice is dead. The id group accepts only hex+dashes or all; the non-hex letters in a typical name make the whole pattern fail to match, so the parser returns nothing.
  • A hex-ish but wrong UUID. A well-formed-looking UUID that no entity owns DOES parse, then no-ops at lookup: the workspace-scoped query finds no agent and the mention is reported blocked with invocation_not_allowed. That code is deliberately ambiguous — a typo'd UUID and a genuine permission denial look identical on purpose, because the id you typed could name a private agent in another workspace and the reason must not confirm that it exists. So when you see invocation_not_allowed, check the UUID against the live roster BEFORE you touch any visibility or invocation setting (MUL-5548); multica squad member list <squad-id> --output json returns the member_id to build the mention from. An id that matches the pattern but is NOT a valid UUID at all (mention://agent/-) is rejected by the id parser and blocked with target_unavailable instead — a non-UUID names no entity anywhere, so it conceals nothing. Neither case is ever an error response.
  • An already-pending task. Even a correct @agent/@squad starts no second run when the target already has a pending task on this issue (HasPendingTaskForIssueAndAgent). This is a fold, not a drop: the comment merges into that task and the outcome is coalesced (same reviewed head) or deferred (different head) — do NOT re-post it as "the mention didn't work". Edit preview is the only exception: editing_comment_id ignores pending tasks from the same comment being edited, because save cancels those old tasks before it re-computes triggers. It is still comment-scoped, not an agent-wide bypass.
  • An archived agent, or one with no runtime bound (likewise a squad whose leader is): blocked with target_unavailable and runtime_offline respectively. Both are checked only AFTER the invoke gate, so a caller who may not invoke the target never learns its state.
  • A private agent you cannot invoke: blocked — the mention path gates on canInvokeAgent for both @agent and @squad. That is the run gate, not the see gate: since MUL-3963 a workspace admin who can open a private agent in the UI still may not trigger it, so being able to view the target says nothing about being able to mention it. (The canEnqueueSquadLeader wrapper is the squad assignment/promote path, not this one; the child-done wake is ungated — see the multica-squads skill.)

A chain that crosses issues keeps its human (MUL-6490). The A2A gate judges the human at the top of your chain, and that human travels on the comment you write: the comment records the run that authored it, so the run it wakes inherits your originator. This holds when you comment on a DIFFERENT issue than the one you are running on — the ordinary "create issue Y, then coordinate there" flow — so a delegation that works on your own issue keeps working on the issue you just created. It does not go the other way: nothing ever substitutes a different human (your agent's owner, or the target issue's originator), so if your chain has no human at its top, member-scoped allow-lists stay closed no matter which issue you move to.

One nuance for automation (MUL-4857): when an UNATTRIBUTED autopilot run (a schedule/webhook dispatch has no human originator, so the A2A gate has no human to key on) delegates by @mention while working on the issue that autopilot created, the invoke gate falls back to the autopilot creator as the effective invoking user — the same principal that admitted the first dispatch. So a mid-run @agent / @squad delegation fires exactly when the autopilot creator could invoke that target (owner / public_to match), and stays skipped otherwise. It is authorization only — the enqueued run's originator/attribution is unchanged. This fallback is bound to verified task lineage: it applies only when the delegating run's own task is the one working on that autopilot issue (author == task agent, task.issue_id == this issue), so a run doing work elsewhere can never borrow another autopilot creator's authority by commenting on its issue. The same authority carries the plain assigned-squad-leader wake (a worker's result comment on the autopilot issue can still wake the leader), and it survives a busy target: if the mentioned agent is already running, the delegation is replayed at that run's completion under the same authority, so it is never lost. An edit is treated as a fresh action — it re-derives the comment's lineage from the editing action. Only the agent author editing its OWN comment re-stamps the lineage to the editing task; any other editor — including a workspace owner/admin editing an agent's comment — CLEARS it. So editing an old autopilot comment from an unrelated issue, or an admin editing an agent's comment (manage rights, not invoke rights), fails closed at the deferred completion-reconcile instead of reusing the original run's authority.

Incorrect → Correct

Incorrect: @alice please review → plain text, no link, parses to nothing, nobody is reached.

Incorrect: [@Alice](mention://member/Alice) please review → "Alice" is not a UUID; the id group rejects the non-hex letters, the pattern does not match, the link is silently dead.

Correct:

  1. multica workspace member list --output json → Alice's user_id = 7f3a…
  2. [@Alice](mention://member/7f3a…) please review → a real user_id parses; the link renders and resolves to Alice.

@all broadcast: [@all](mention://all/all) heads up — addresses everyone, runs no specific agent, and suppresses the assignee auto-trigger.

These exact shapes are pinned by a Go behavior test (TestMentioningSkillTeachesTheParserContract) that feeds them through util.ParseMentions: the name form parses to nothing, the real-UUID form parses, @all parses to {all, all}, and a wrong type with a real UUID still parses (which is why the type must match the id source).

References

references/mentioning-source-map.md — file:line evidence for the regex, the enqueue branches, the @all suppression, and the CLI id-source mapping, plus the explicit note that no member-notification delivery path exists in the Go comment handler.