multica-mentioning

name

multica-mentioning

description

Use when an issue comment needs to @mention someone — link to a person, trigger another agent, hand work to a squad, or broadcast with @all. Documents the verified mention contract: how a mention link is built from a real UUID, the four mention types and exactly what each one enqueues (agent → a run for that agent, squad → a run for the squad leader, member and issue → a rendered link with NO run), the @all broadcast and how it suppresses the assignee's auto-trigger, and the silent no-op cases (a name where a UUID belongs, a bad/unknown UUID, an already-pending task, an archived agent, a private agent you cannot access). WHETHER to mention — loop avoidance, staying silent on acknowledgements — lives in the runtime brief's Mentions section, not here. This skill is the backend contract only, traced to server/internal/util/mention.go and server/internal/handler/comment.go.

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.

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 enqueue logic lives in enqueueMentionedAgentTasks (server/internal/handler/comment.go). It iterates the parsed mentions and acts on two types only: the squad branch resolves the squad and enqueues its leader; everything that is not agent after that is skipped (if m.Type != "agent" { continue }), then the agent branch enqueues the run. 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.

@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: in commentMentionsOthersButNotAssignee (server/internal/handler/comment.go), a comment that carries an @all mention is treated as a broadcast that SUPPRESSES the issue assignee's automatic on-comment trigger. Use @all to announce, not to request work from the assignee.

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

These are all silent no-ops — no error, no run:

• 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 loop continues. Same agent-visible result (nothing fires), but the mechanism is the lookup miss, not a parse failure.
• An already-pending task. Even a correct @agent/@squad is skipped when the target already has a pending task on this issue (HasPendingTaskForIssueAndAgent → continue). This is the loop guard — do not retry.
• An archived agent, or a squad whose leader is archived: skipped (RuntimeID invalid or ArchivedAt set).
• A private agent you cannot access: skipped — the mention path gates on canAccessPrivateAgent directly for both @agent and @squad (the canEnqueueSquadLeader wrapper is the assignment/child-done path, not this one).

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.