jif 390b73133b Cache plugin namespace during executor skill discovery (#29831) ...

## Why

Executor skill discovery runs before the remote skills catalog is
available. For a remote environment, each `ExecutorFileSystem` operation
becomes an exec-server RPC.

Previously, every discovered `SKILL.md` independently resolved its
plugin namespace by walking its ancestors and probing both supported
manifest locations. In the common `plugin/skills/<skill>/SKILL.md`
layout, that repeats 8 RPCs per skill even though every skill under the
plugin root uses the same namespace. These lookups happen while skills
are parsed, so their cost grows linearly with the skill count and adds
directly to first-turn latency.

A selected capability root can also contain standalone skills, multiple
sibling plugins, nested plugins, or symlinked directories. The
optimization therefore needs to retain the nearest-ancestor namespace
for each skill rather than assuming the selected root represents exactly
one plugin.

## What changed

- record plugin-root candidates from directory entries already returned
during skill discovery
- prune candidates that are not ancestors of any discovered `SKILL.md`
before reading manifests
- resolve each relevant plugin root once, with one fallback lookup per
canonical traversal root for symlinked directories
- select the nearest cached plugin namespace for each discovered skill
- avoid namespace lookup entirely when the root contains no skills

No additional directory traversal is required. Namespace work now scales
with the number of plugin roots that contain discovered skills, rather
than the total number of skills or unrelated sibling plugins. Standalone
and nested-plugin names keep their previous behavior.

## Benchmarks

I used a temporary counting `ExecutorFileSystem` around the real local
filesystem. Each filesystem operation was counted as one remote RPC and
given 1 ms of injected latency. Each variant ran three times; times
below are medians.

### One plugin with 100 skills

| Operation | Before | After | Delta |
| --- | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| `get_metadata` | 1,002 | 303 | -699 |
| `read_file` | 200 | 101 | -99 |
| `read_directory` | 102 | 102 | 0 |
| **Total filesystem RPCs** | **1,304** | **506** | **-798 (-61.2%)** |
| **Median load time** | **2.890 s** | **0.997 s** | **2.90× faster** |

The namespace-specific work drops from 800 RPCs to 2 in this layout.

### Multiple plugins under one selected root

These runs compare the correct pre-optimization implementation with the
final nearest-plugin-root cache. The total plugin skill count stays at
100 while the number of plugin roots changes.

| Layout | Before RPCs | After RPCs | Reduction | Before | After |
Speedup |
| --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| 2 plugins × 50 skills | 1,312 | 530 | 59.6% | 1,819 ms | 711 ms |
2.56× |
| 10 plugins × 10 skills | 1,344 | 578 | 57.0% | 1,850 ms | 778 ms |
2.38× |
| 50 plugins × 2 skills | 1,504 | 818 | 45.6% | 2,094 ms | 1,086 ms |
1.93× |
| 10 plugins × 10 skills + 10 standalone skills | 1,596 | 630 | 60.5% |
2,209 ms | 860 ms | 2.57× |

The remaining cost grows with the number of relevant plugin manifests.
Each relevant manifest is read once instead of once per skill, while
sibling plugins with no discovered skills are not read. Absolute latency
savings depend on the executor's real RPC latency.

## Tests

- `just test -p codex-core-skills` (109 passed across the library and
integration-test binaries)
- one integration test covers standalone, outer-plugin, nested-plugin,
and unused sibling-plugin layouts, and asserts the exact set of
manifests read

390b73133b · 2026-06-24 17:14:34 +01:00

History

..

src

Cache plugin namespace during executor skill discovery (#29831)

2026-06-24 17:14:34 +01:00

BUILD.bazel

Extract codex-utils-plugins crate (#15746)

2026-03-25 11:05:35 -07:00

Cargo.toml

[codex] Remove hardcoded app ID filters (#28947)

2026-06-18 20:29:01 +00:00