🐛 Direct conversation messages need a page refresh to appear

[jrosseel]

Symptom

On testv4, a message posted in a Direct conversation does not appear for the other participant until the page is reloaded. It should arrive over the live stream.

Observed 2026-08-19 on testv4 at chart 0.9.2, server sha-1707b462c8d91ee26fcaf2a42c0be871d687c248.

What is already correct

Traced the whole path; three of the four links work:

• The store streams every mode. ConversationWorkspaceStore._StartStream opens a stream for the selected conversation with no mode gate — a Direct conversation gets a stream like an Agent session does (libs/frontend/state/conversation/workspace/src/lib/conversation-workspace.store.ts:285).
• The presenter merges live messages. _LiveMessageViews appends live AG-UI messages that the canonical snapshot does not already contain, so a live message would render (libs/frontend/features/conversation-workspace/src/lib/conversation-workspace.presenter.ts:213).
• The projector expands any stored message. __ProjectAgUiEvents turns any conversation.message source event into TEXT_MESSAGE_START / TEXT_MESSAGE_CONTENT / TEXT_MESSAGE_END, with no run or mode condition — only tool role falls through to a custom event (libs/backend/conversations/projection/main/src/ag-ui-event-projector.ts:24).

So the remaining gap is upstream of the projector: either no conversation.message outbox event is published when a participant posts into a Direct conversation, or the SSE feed does not deliver it to the other participant.

Todo

• Confirm whether prisma-conversation-message-admission-unit-of-work.ts writes a conversation.message outbox event for a Direct conversation, or only inside run admission.
• Check whether the SSE feed selects events by runId; a Direct message has no run, so a run-scoped query would drop it.
• Check that the feed fans out to every participant of the conversation, not only the message author.
• Fix whichever link is missing, then add a test at that boundary. A frontend unit test cannot catch this — the missing piece is server-side event publication or selection.
• Consider covering it in the k3d smoke: two participants, one Direct message, assert it arrives on the second participant's stream without a refetch.

Related

• 🐛 keep the admission advisory-lock key valid PostgreSQL text #688 fixed the NUL advisory-lock key that made Agent-session sends return 503; this is a separate defect on the Direct path.