Release 0.4.0: AG-UI Protocol Unification

Highlights

0.4.0 restructures the platform around the AG-UI protocol and makes the Next.js gateway the single front door. Streaming, conversation storage, and authentication stop being per-client concerns: the web UI, Slack bot, and dynamic agents all speak one event model and share one conversation API.

Helm values for all three components are restructured. The upgrade guide below has the complete before/after mapping.

Features

AG-UI protocol

• Unified streaming: the AG-UI event model replaces legacy A2A streaming across dynamic agents, the Slack bot, and the UI. Stream events are persisted server-side.
• Stream encoder abstraction: AGUIStreamEncoder and CustomStreamEncoder behind a StreamEncoder ABC.
• Slack bot rewritten on AG-UI: typing indicators with live thoughts, todo-aware streaming, and subagent suppression.

Next.js gateway architecture

• All traffic routes through the gateway: flat /api/v1/chat/ routes authenticated with X-User-Context. Dynamic agents no longer validate tokens or accept direct browser requests.
• Config ownership moved from dynamic agents to the UI: agent CRUD, MCP servers, and the models endpoint now live in local MongoDB.
• Bearer-token auth for service accounts, which is how the Slack bot authenticates.

Shared conversation API

• Server-owned ID generation with an idempotency_key for cross-client dedup.
• A client_type enum (webui | slack) on every conversation; all ten Slack handlers migrated.
• Delta thread context: follow-ups embed only messages since last_processed_ts, eliminating quadratic checkpoint growth on long threads.
• PATCH /api/chat/conversations/[id]/metadata with MongoDB dot-notation $set.

Dynamic agents runtime

• ClientContext and Jinja2 system-prompt rendering.
• New wait and agent_info tools; configurable middlewares.
• NAMESPACE_CONTEXT emitted only on change, UserContext made opaque, and RBAC removed from chat routes (the gateway owns it).
• A metrics endpoint.

UI

• Streaming markdown with rAF throttling, block animations, and cursor improvements.
• Jinja2 syntax highlighting in the system-prompt editor.
• A turns collection, decoupling stream_events from messages.
• Admin: platform statistics with Slack integration, unified filters, user detail panels, and paginated conversations.
• An LLM model config page for adding and removing models through the UI.
• A new System theme that follows the OS setting.

Fixes

• slack: add the escalation_policy field to the VictorOps escalation config; stop the humble-followup prompt from claiming knowledge of a reply the agent never made.
• admin: key feedback dedup on (permalink, user_email) rather than permalink alone, key the Slack feedback upsert on (message_id, user_id), and fix top-user linkage.

Breaking changes

This release contains significant breaking Helm value changes. The upgrade guide below has the complete before/after mapping.

Change	Severity
env: block removed from all components; use the flat config: map	High
caipe-ui.seedConfig.* → caipe-ui.appConfig.* (SEED_CONFIG_PATH → APP_CONFIG_PATH)	High
slack-bot values completely restructured to a flat config: map	High
slack-bot.slack.tokenSecretRef → slack-bot.existingSecret	High
slack-bot botConfig channels: qanda/ai_alerts/ai_enabled → flat agents list	High
dynamic-agents OIDC/CORS keys removed; auth is handled by the gateway	High
dynamic-agents.config.AUTH_ENABLED → DEBUG: "true" for the dev bypass	Medium

Known issues

The Admin Statistics page under-reports Slack conversation counts until an InteractionTracker equivalent is re-implemented in the new AG-UI Slack bot.

Upgrade

helm upgrade ai-platform-engineering \
  oci://ghcr.io/caipe-io/charts/ai-platform-engineering \
  --version 0.4.0 \
  -f your-values.yaml

---

Upgrade guide: 0.3.x → 0.4.0

1. CAIPE UI

Merge env: into config:. All environment variables live in one flat map.

# Before (0.3.x)
caipe-ui:
  env:
    SKILLS_DIR: "/app/data/skills"
  config:
    SSO_ENABLED: "true"

# After (0.4.0)
caipe-ui:
  config:
    SKILLS_DIR: "/app/data/skills"
    SSO_ENABLED: "true"

Rename seedConfig: to appConfig: and drop enabled:. The ConfigMap is created automatically when any of models, mcp_servers, or agents is non-empty. The chart swaps SEED_CONFIG_PATH for APP_CONFIG_PATH on your behalf.

2. Dynamic agents

• Merge env: into config:, then delete the env: block.
• Remove AUTH_ENABLED. For a local dev bypass use DEBUG: "true"; in production omit it.
• Remove OIDC_ISSUER, OIDC_CLIENT_ID, OIDC_REQUIRED_ADMIN_GROUP, and CORS_ORIGINS. These belong to caipe-ui now, because dynamic agents never see a browser request.

3. Slack bot, the bulk of the work

Named keys are replaced by a flat config: map plus a top-level existingSecret:.

Old key (0.3.x)	New key in config:
appName	APP_NAME
botMode	SLACK_BOT_MODE
caipeApiUrl	CAIPE_API_URL
silenceEnv	SLACK_INTEGRATION_SILENCE_ENV
slackWorkspaceUrl	SLACK_WORKSPACE_URL
env.*	move into config:
mongodb.uri	MONGODB_URI (consider a Secret instead)
mongodb.database	MONGODB_DATABASE
auth.enabled	SLACK_INTEGRATION_ENABLE_AUTH
auth.tokenUrl	OAUTH2_TOKEN_URL
auth.clientId	OAUTH2_CLIENT_ID
auth.scope	OAUTH2_SCOPE (omit if empty)
auth.audience	OAUTH2_AUDIENCE (omit if empty)
prompts.responseStyle	SLACK_INTEGRATION_PROMPT_RESPONSE_STYLE
prompts.qanda	SLACK_INTEGRATION_PROMPT_QANDA
prompts.overthinkQanda	SLACK_INTEGRATION_PROMPT_OVERTHINK_QANDA
prompts.mention	SLACK_INTEGRATION_PROMPT_MENTION
prompts.humbleFollowup	SLACK_INTEGRATION_PROMPT_HUMBLE_FOLLOWUP
prompts.aiAlerts	SLACK_INTEGRATION_PROMPT_AI_ALERTS
slack.tokenSecretRef	existingSecret (top level, same Secret)

The Secret contents do not change: SLACK_BOT_TOKEN, SLACK_APP_TOKEN, SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET, and optionally OAUTH2_CLIENT_SECRET.

Bot config file moved. CAIPE_BOT_CONFIG → SLACK_INTEGRATION_BOT_CONFIG (set by the chart), and /etc/caipe/caipe-bot-config.yaml → /etc/caipe/bot-config.yaml in a dedicated *-bot-config ConfigMap. If neither is present the bot starts with no channel configuration and logs a warning rather than crashing.

botConfig channels use a flat agents list. The bot rejects the old keys with an explicit error.

# Before
botConfig:
  C012345678:
    name: "#example-channel"
    ai_enabled: true
    qanda:
      enabled: true
      include_bots: { enabled: true, bot_list: ["example-bot"] }
    ai_alerts: { enabled: false }

# After
botConfig:
  C012345678:
    name: "#example-channel"
    agents:
      - agent_id: "example-agent"
        users:
          enabled: true
          listen: "mention"   # "mention" | "message" | "all"
          overthink: { enabled: false }
        bots:
          enabled: true
          listen: "message"
          bot_list: ["example-bot"]

4. The unified config pattern

All components converge on the same shape:

component:
  config: {}           # flat env vars → ConfigMap → envFrom
  existingSecret: ""   # pre-existing Secret → envFrom secretRef
  externalSecrets:
    enabled: false
  appConfig: {}        # structured YAML file, caipe-ui only
  botConfig: {}        # structured YAML file, slack-bot only

config: is always flat. No nesting, no config.env: sub-keys.

5. Pre-upgrade checklist

• Back up values: helm get values ai-platform-engineering -o yaml > values-backup.yaml
• caipe-ui: merge env: into config:, rename seedConfig → appConfig
• dynamic-agents: merge env:, drop AUTH_ENABLED, drop OIDC/CORS keys
• slack-bot: restructure named keys into config:, set existingSecret
• botConfig: replace qanda/ai_alerts/ai_enabled with the agents list
• helm diff upgrade before applying
• Deploy, then check pod logs for config-loading messages

Rollback

helm rollback ai-platform-engineering <previous-revision> and restore the backed-up values file. These are configuration-only changes, so no data migration has to be undone. The 0.3.x chart expects the old structure and the old values file works as-is.