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D18 History Fidelity and Summarization, Multimodal Placeholders, Checkpointer Persistence

• When summarizing a long conversation, how do you keep the critical information from being lost — and what is different about this in a multi-agent system?长对话做摘要时，怎么保证关键信息不丢？在多 Agent 场景下这件事有什么特别的？

  Common in ChinaCommon overseasIntermediate#context-compression#multi-agent#reliability

  How to reason about it · think before answering

  1. The hinge is the second half. Answering only keep user constraints and the last few turns is the standard single-agent answer — passable, not memorable. Asking what is different in multi-agent is asking whether you have actually hit this in a collaboration graph.
  2. Get the single-agent half solid first: trigger on thresholds, never a timer. This course uses more than 20 messages or an estimated 8000 tokens, counting one character as one token — deliberately high, because underestimating means the threshold never fires. Keep the last 6 messages verbatim. Align the cut to a turn boundary: cutting between a tool call and its result produces a dangling message and most vendors return 400.
  3. Then name the real difference: in a single agent a summary loses detail; in a multi-agent graph a summary loses the criteria. A critic decides whether output passes by telling apart what is being reviewed from what the requirement was. A smooth narrative summary that flattens speakers reads fine and is useless to the critic.
  4. So multi-agent summarization has one extra hard requirement: every compressed message must leave behind two coordinates — its index and its speaker. The implementation is one line: build the transcript with numbered, role-prefixed entries before handing it to the model.
  5. Add the boundary that shows you have shipped this: summarize natural-language history only, never structured fields. Compressing the shared workspace into a sentence kills every lookup by task id and every comparison against an acceptance requirement, and structured data does not come back. Attachments are even more off-limits — they hold a reference, not content, so summarizing one orphans the underlying object.
  6. Expect the follow-up: which model writes the summary, and what if it fails? A cheaper small model is fine since the job is condensation, not reasoning. On failure the correct behaviour is to skip this round of compression, keep running, and alert — not to fail the whole execution. Setting the threshold at seventy or eighty percent exists precisely to leave that rescue room.

  分析过程 · 先想清楚再作答

  1. 题眼在后半句。只答「保留用户约束、保留最近几轮」是单 Agent 的标准答案，能过但不出彩；面试官问「多 Agent 有什么特别的」，是在看你有没有真的在协作图里踩过这个坑。
  2. 先把单 Agent 那半答扎实：触发用阈值不用定时器，本课口径是消息超过 20 条或估算超过 8000 token（一个字符算一个 token，故意高估，低估会让阈值永远触发不了）；保留最近 6 条原文不动；切口必须对齐到一轮的开头，切在工具调用与工具结果之间会让下一次请求出现悬空消息，多数厂商直接返回 400。
  3. 然后给出多 Agent 那半的关键差别：单 Agent 里摘要丢的是**细节**，多 Agent 里摘要丢的是**判据**。评审者判一份产出合不合格，靠的是分清「这句是待验收的产出、那句是验收要求」；一段把发言人抹平的流水摘要读起来通顺，但评审拿它做不了任何判断。
  4. 所以多 Agent 的摘要有一条额外硬要求：每条被压掉的消息，在摘要里都要留下「第几条 + 谁说的」这两个坐标。实现只有一行——把转录写成带序号和角色前缀的形式再交给模型。
  5. 再补一条边界，这条最能显出你写过：**摘要只对自然语言历史动手，不碰任何结构化字段**。把共享工作区压成一句话，「按 id 找到某条子任务、比对验收要求」就整个失效了，结构化数据压成自然语言就再也回不去。附件字段更是碰不得——它存的是引用不是内容，摘要掉等于把那个对象变成孤儿。
  6. 可以预期的追问：摘要用哪个模型、失败了怎么办？答可以用更便宜的小模型（它只做归纳不做推理），失败时的正确行为是**跳过这一轮压缩继续跑**并告警，而不是让整次执行失败——阈值定在七八成就是为了留出这次抢救余量。

  Key points

  • Trigger on thresholds, not timers: more than 20 messages or an estimated 8000 tokens, counting one character as one token to stay conservative
  • Keep the last 6 messages verbatim and align the cut to a turn boundary, or you ship a dangling tool call and the request 400s
  • The multi-agent difference: a summary loses criteria, not just detail — the critic needs to know who said what and at which step
  • So every compressed message keeps its index and speaker in the summary; the implementation is a numbered, role-prefixed transcript
  • Summarize natural-language history only — never the shared workspace or other structured fields, and never the attachment references
  • A cheaper small model is fine for summarizing; if the call fails, skip compression for this round and alert rather than failing the run

  答题要点

  • 触发用阈值不用定时器：超过 20 条或估算超过 8000 token，token 按一字符一 token 保守高估
  • 保留最近 6 条原文不动，切口必须对齐到一轮开头，否则会出现有调用没结果的悬空消息、请求直接 400
  • 多 Agent 的差别：摘要丢的不是细节而是判据，评审者靠「谁在第几步说的」区分产出与验收要求
  • 所以每条被压掉的消息都要在摘要里留下条号与发言人，实现就是把转录写成带序号和角色的形式
  • 只压自然语言历史，不碰共享工作区这类结构化字段，更不能碰存引用的附件字段
  • 摘要可用更便宜的小模型；摘要调用失败时跳过这一轮压缩并告警，不要让整次执行失败