Agents working with swamp frequently reach for shell tools (jq, grep, awk, curl, gh) to slice or fetch data that swamp models and CEL queries already provide. This is the opposite of swamp's design intent: observe through the model, don't bypass it.

Today the only guidance is whatever the host agent's system prompt or skills provide, and it's not always sufficient. Agents under pressure fall back to familiar shell patterns.

Related: #1075 (straitjacket proposal — declined in favor of this approach).

Proposed solution

Research and improve swamp's skills and documentation so that agents are guided toward the correct patterns as the path of least resistance. This could include:

Skill improvements: Ensure the bundled swamp skill clearly surfaces CEL queries, model methods, and the right swamp commands for common tasks agents try to do with shell tools.
Better model discoverability: Make it easier for agents to find the right method or query instead of shelling out. Improve help output, method signatures, and examples.
Documentation: Add clear guidance on the idiomatic way to accomplish tasks agents commonly get wrong (filtering data, querying relationships, fetching remote resources).
Pattern catalog: Document the common anti-patterns (piping --json through jq, using curl instead of a model method) alongside their correct swamp equivalents.

The goal is to make the right path obvious enough that agents naturally follow it, rather than trying to enforce discipline through guardrails.

Success criteria

Agents using the swamp skill consistently choose CEL queries and model methods over shell-based workarounds without requiring host-level enforcement hooks.

02Bog Flow

Shipped

7/11/2026, 12:36:39 AM

Click a lifecycle step above to view its details.

03Sludge Pulse

stack72 assigned stack727/10/2026, 11:46:42 PM

Bundled extension model cannot deserialize AWS SDK S3 XML that works in direct Deno

gcp/sheets spreadsheets-values: batch_get crashes with "Request with GET/HEAD method cannot have body"

Token creation API and UI scope selector for collective tokens (phase 4 of #960)

Make Cloudflare CRUD methods factory-aware so list-discovered resources can be managed in-place

[sc] quest-grant Mongo ops (recentHeartbeat/signalCounts/countIssueShipped) regressed to ~5s timeouts — missing index

Add @swamp/kubernetes/statefulset model type

serve: workflow.approvals and workflow.run.search still full-scan the workflow-run store after the #1284 data.query pushdown

Sync guard skips bound namespace directory during push — 0 files pushed after namespace migrate

Flaky #1052 preparePush test: mtime-granularity race on Linux tmpfs

command/shell renders JSON-object stdout lines as the literal string 'undefined'

Issue redactor treats the MongoDB authSource parameter as a secret, corrupting reproduction steps

namespace unset --migrate silently deletes artifact history via catalog-rebuild GC (~484k files lost)

Docs: document repo root resolution from subdirectories

Expose the swamp.club feed as an RSS feed

Email invitation is not linked to account created from invite URL

Add serve, datastore, vault, and worker wildcard scopes to token registry (phase 4 prep, #960)

datastore setup extension drops 'namespace' from --config, making extensions that require it impossible to configure

Docs: update manual to document --yes/-y as the standard confirmation-skip flag

Docs: update data.query and CEL expressions references for SQL pushdown

Docs: document collective token CLI usage in API key authentication pages

Add a --release-notes option to `swamp update` (or even make it the default)

Docs: manual should state workflow unknown keys are rejected and placement is step-only (follow-up to #1240)

Make GCP CRUD methods factory-aware so list-discovered resources can be managed in-place

serve: read ops (data.query, workflow.approvals, workflow run.search) linearly scan the whole datastore — ~350–600ms floor regardless of match count

Running "swamp workflow run ..." in a subdir of the swamp repo fails

Guide agents to inspect reports after failed model and workflow runs

serve: main JS thread holds ~40–70% of a core while idle (no clients, no runs, --no-schedule)

Search box collapses to near-zero width on mobile on the Extensions page

Extensions page: Search bar missing on mobile

spreadsheets-values: every method fails with 'Missing required path parameter: spreadsheetId' — implementation reads a global argument the schema does not declare

namespace migrate/set workflow broken for extension datastores: migrate skipped by sync guard, set not idempotent, migrate-index empties shards

ExtensionInfo.latestVersion typed 'string' but registry returns null; harden pull/resolve for prerelease-only extensions

workflow.run: relay a custom model method's output as method_output (command steps already do)

promptChoice infinite-loops on non-interactive stdin

gcp _lib: unconditional x-goog-user-project header causes USER_PROJECT_DENIED (403) for service accounts without the serviceUsageConsumer role

extension push: issue-verdict review is indistinguishable from missing/stale

swamp extension version crashes with 'Invalid CalVer version: "null"' when only a prerelease (beta/rc) version is published

Pushing an extension after creating a public git repo that is the same as other previously pushed extensions doesn't update the "Verified public repository"

`datastore setup filesystem` never transfers content when leaving a sync-based (remote) datastore — copies only the catalog and hardcodes `filesPulled: 0`

Scaleway models: create methods should not require the resource ID they generate (ipId/gatewayId/serverId/...)

gcp/calendar events.list reads wrong array field ('defaultReminders' not 'items') → always returns 0 events

provisioner.provision fails with 'Cannot read properties of undefined (reading trim)' at method_execution_service.ts:852

method_execution_service.ts:852 crashes on undefined.trim() when writeResource receives undefined instance name

CLI support for collective API tokens (phase 3 of #960)

@swamp/gcp/calendar: service-account & ADC auth mint cloud-platform-scoped tokens → 403 on Calendar API

Scope enforcement and whoami introspection for collective tokens (phase 2 of #960)

fix(software-factory): DeclaredSchemaSchema.enum rejects boolean literals

Surface cloud-provider labels (scaleway, digitalocean, oracle/oci) as first-class search/filter facets on the Extensions page

Profile link in genesis subdirectory does not navigate back to main profile

Profile stats: per-user daily rollup table + MV in ClickHouse

Reconcile collective-token CLI activity to members (attribute → bonus → stamp → even-split)

Telemetry stats consumer: unsanitized subcommand in Mongo update path drops user metrics silently

Telemetry stats consumer: insert_id dedup commits before the write it guards — any upsert failure is silently swallowed on retry

Job-level labels: block is silently ignored, not rejected

Issue submission redactor silently corrupts report bodies

CLI telemetry: fold third-level verbs into subcommand + canonicalize aliases

Docs: update extension info reference to document extensions (type grafts) in content metadata

Docs: swamp skill repo-structure reference still documents repo-local .swamp/telemetry/ as live

Add safe adoption and lifecycle methods for existing Hetzner resources

Docs: update manual telemetry reference for user-global spool and telemetry.yaml opt-out

export const extension can graft methods onto foreign-collective types, undisclosed in extension info / contentMetadata

Add lookup support to the Cloudflare DNS records model

Expand token scope registry to full taxonomy (phase 1 addendum, #960)

Docs: document user-global telemetry (telemetry.yaml opt-out, spool location, telemetry stats behavior)

score_daily rollup strands stale grains when a day-less grant re-stamps onto a later day

swamp-club: global rate limiter runs pre-auth and collapses all direct clients into one per-IP bucket — 429s authenticated CLI traffic

Collective API token scopes: domain, persistence, and auth threading (phase 1 of #960)

Telemetry migration from ~/.swamp/telemetry should auto-detect home-as-repo

feed_post_score_events queue grows unboundedly (no TTL, no delete-on-delivery)

Issue-filing skill should require ownership classification before submitting a bug

Interactive finder silently drops the preview pane on narrower terminals, and layout selection is unstable

@-mention autocomplete for users when writing lab ripples

Remove comments from /feed and redesign the page

Interactive finder preview corrupts: overlapping/stale lines when preview content overflows the pane

Score-refresh consumer: harden coalescing against a diverse backlog (bistability)

Remove feed comments — consolidate discussion in Discord

Add a 'my collective extensions' filter to extensions page

Relax the profanity filter

Extension search returns edit-distance noise for short queries ("asdl" → "AWS DEADLINE")

Telemetry recoverOrphaned startup race with multiple replicas (created_at-based)

Grant revoke is never applied to the running server — under `--grant-reload auto` and `manual` alike, a revoked grant stays in force until an explicit `access reload`