ENG-5106 Create new agents at the current view's depth with ctrl+n

[snimu]

Fixes ENG-5106.

What this does

When you are looking at the subagents of a particular agent and press ctrl+n, the new agent is now created under that agent, at that level — instead of always being created as a new top-level agent.

Why

Pressing ctrl+n inside a drilled-in view clearly signals "give me a new agent here". Creating it at the top level instead was surprising and meant extra steps to get the agent where you wanted it.

How it works

• When the view is scoped to a parent agent, ctrl+n now passes that parent along when asking the daemon to create the session, using a metadata field that already existed on the create request — the wire format did not change shape.
• The daemon then records the parent and the level in the new session's header, so the new agent shows up in the right place in the tree.
• Old daemons don't know how to do this, so the feature only turns on when the daemon says it supports it (a new advertised capability). With an older daemon, ctrl+n simply behaves as before. This follows the repository's rules for protocol changes.
• Abandoned drafts created this way are cleaned up the same way top-level drafts are.

Changes

• agents-view-mode.ts: send the parent info when the view is scoped (+15 lines).
• daemon-mode.ts: create the session under the given parent (+20/−1 lines).
• daemon-protocol.ts: advertise the new capability (+5/−1 lines).
• Tests: new coverage in the agents-view and daemon test files (+179 lines).
• One changelog entry.

Lines changed: source +40/−2, tests +179/−0, changelog +1/−0.

Checks

• npm run check clean.
• 254 tests across the four touched test files, all passing.
• Review went through two rounds; the first round led to the capability gating and the draft cleanup fix.

---

Note

Medium Risk
Touches daemon session creation and parent/child tree linkage, which can misplace agents if wrong. Mitigated by capability gating and solid test coverage.

Overview
Ctrl+N in a scoped agents view now creates the new agent under that scope root, instead of always at the top level.

When the view is drilled into a parent, create sends runtimeMetadata with parent linkage. The daemon writes parentSession and rlmDepth into the new session header so it appears at the correct tree depth. Gated on the new scoped_session_create capability; older daemons keep the previous top-level behavior.

Also treats user-created scoped drafts (no rlmChildId) as discardable like top-level drafts, while kernel children stay non-discardable. Worker restore IDs now apply to scoped creates as well as top-level ones.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 232768c. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

Create new agents at the current scope depth with Ctrl+N in agents view

• When Ctrl+N is pressed in a scoped agents view and the daemon advertises the scoped_session_create capability, the new session is created as a subagent anchored to the scope root's parent session file and depth, rather than at the top level.
• AgentsViewMode.createNewSession calls client.waitForHello() and checks for the capability before including runtimeMetadata in the create request; falls back to top-level creation if the daemon lacks the capability or the scope root has no session file.
• The daemon's createRuntime handler uses runtimeMetadata.parentSessionFile to set parentSession and rlmDepth headers on the new session.
• User-created scoped agent drafts (no rlmChildId) are now treated as discardable when empty and idle; kernel-spawned child drafts remain protected.
• Behavioral Change: AgentDaemon.addRuntime now consumes the stored restoreActiveSessionId regardless of runtime metadata kind, clearing it after use.

^{Macroscope summarized 232768c.}

[cursor]

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes and found 1 potential issue.

^{❌ Bugbot Autofix is OFF. To automatically fix reported issues with cloud agents, enable autofix in the Cursor dashboard.}

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit ab75d0b. Configure here.}