Adds a pre-call sanitizer that detects assistant messages containing only
reasoning (reasoning / reasoning_content, no visible content, no
tool_calls) and drops them from the API copy. Adjacent user messages
left behind are merged so role alternation is preserved for the
provider.
Mirrors Claude Code's approach in src/utils/messages.ts
(filterOrphanedThinkingOnlyMessages + mergeAdjacentUserMessages). We
drop the whole turn rather than fabricate stub text (the '.' /
'(continued)' pattern from contributor PRs #11098, #13010, #16842 that
were rejected because they put words in the model's mouth).
The stored conversation history (self.messages) is never mutated — only
the per-call api_messages copy. Users still see the reasoning block in
the CLI/gateway transcript; only the wire copy is cleaned. Session
persistence keeps the full trace.
Two call sites covered:
- Main agent loop, after _sanitize_api_messages (catches every turn).
- Iteration-limit-summary fallback path.
Tests: tests/run_agent/test_thinking_only_sanitizer.py — 25 cases
covering detection (string/list content, whitespace-only, tool_calls,
reasoning_details list form), drop behavior, adjacent-user merge
(string+string, list+list, mixed), non-mutation of input dicts, and
system-message handling.
E2E live-tested against 5 providers with a poisoned history (empty
assistant message + reasoning_content): OpenRouter→Anthropic/OpenAI/
DeepSeek-R1/Qwen, native Gemini. All 5 accepted the cleaned request.
Happy-path regression (5/5) confirms the sanitizer is a noop when no
thinking-only turn exists.
Related: #16823 (wontfix — stub-text approach rejected).
Co-authored-by: teknium1 <teknium@users.noreply.github.com>
Teknium
briandevans