460 add agent skill flag by SeanAlexanderHarris · Pull Request #463 · prolific-oss/cli

SeanAlexanderHarris · 2026-07-17T00:59:49Z

Summary

Adds a global --skill flag so an AI agent/workflow invoking the CLI can identify itself, for observability into agentic CLI usage.
Supersedes the original plan (a dedicated X-Prolific-Agent-Skill header) with a skill/<value> token folded into the existing User-Agent header, alongside the agent/<value> token from Add ai detection to include the agent or model using the cli Closes #459 #462 — avoids relying on a custom header that's likely scrubbed by the backend.
The composed User-Agent is sent on all requests through Client.Execute(). Dataset upload and collection/batch export downloads hit presigned S3-style URLs directly (bypassing Client.Execute() and Prolific's own request tracing), so the skill/agent tokens are deliberately not sent there — Prolific's backend never observes those requests, so there's nothing to attribute.

Stacked on #462 (459-add-agent-use-detection) since this builds directly on the agentenv AI-agent detection it adds.

Closes #460

Test plan

go build ./...
go test ./... (excluding the pre-existing, unrelated contract_test.TestAPICoverage drift on this branch lineage)
golangci-lint run ./...
Manually verified with PROLIFIC_DEBUG=true: --skill cli-command-create study list sends User-Agent: prolific-oss/cli/<version> agent/claude-code skill/cli-command-create

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

prolific-snyk · 2026-07-17T00:59:58Z

✅ Snyk checks have passed. No issues have been found so far.

Status	Scan Engine	Critical	High	Medium	Low	Total (0)
✅	Open Source Security	0	0	0	0	0 issues
✅	Licenses	0	0	0	0	0 issues
✅	Code Security	0	0	0	0	0 issues

💻 Catch issues earlier using the plugins for VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Visual Studio, and Eclipse.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Adds support for identifying AI-driven CLI invocations (including the specific “skill/workflow”) by folding agent/<value> and skill/<value> tokens into the User-Agent header emitted by the CLI’s HTTP client.

Changes:

Register a global --skill persistent flag on the root command and store it on the API client instance.
Introduce agentenv detection + client.ComposeUserAgent(...), and update Client.Execute() to always send the composed User-Agent.
Add/adjust tests and changelog/contract-test tracking for newly surfaced API operations.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 9 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
contract_test/contract_test.go	Updates operation coverage list (adds AI task builder batch sync ops; removes cost ops no longer present).
cmd/root.go	Registers global `--skill` persistent flag wired into the shared `client.Client`.
cmd/root_test.go	Adds a test ensuring `--skill` is registered with an empty default.
cmd/aitaskbuilder/get_dataset_status_test.go	Small refactor in mock client setup helper.
client/client.go	Adds `Skill` field, introduces composed `User-Agent`, and sets it in `Execute()`.
client/client_test.go	Adds tests for `ComposeUserAgent` and validates `Execute()` sets `User-Agent` correctly.
CHANGELOG.md	Adds a `## next` entry documenting the new `--skill` flag behavior.
agentenv/agentenv.go	Adds environment-variable based agent detection and header-safe token validation.
agentenv/agentenv_test.go	Tests agent detection precedence and header token validation.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 9 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 9 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>

Dataset upload and collection/batch export downloads hit presigned S3-style URLs directly, bypassing Client.Execute and Prolific's own request tracing, so the skill/agent User-Agent tokens sent there were never observable. Remove that plumbing and keep the tokens exclusively on the Execute path, where they're actually attributed. UserAgent() is no longer needed on the API interface as a result; regenerate the mock.

…tion Tighten ValidHeaderValue's doc comment to describe the actual byte-level check (ASCII control chars, DEL, space) instead of the broader "whitespace" claim. Cache the composed version prefix in ComposeUserAgent via sync.OnceValue so it's resolved once per process instead of on every request, avoiding a repeated debug.ReadBuildInfo() call in dev builds. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

SeanAlexanderHarris requested review from a team as code owners July 17, 2026 00:59

SeanAlexanderHarris mentioned this pull request Jul 17, 2026

Add agent --skill flag #460

Closed

SeanAlexanderHarris marked this pull request as draft July 17, 2026 01:05

SeanAlexanderHarris force-pushed the 460-add-agent-skill-flag branch from d582f2e to dd74bd0 Compare July 17, 2026 01:18

prolific-automation added the team-dct label Jul 17, 2026

Base automatically changed from 459-add-agent-use-detection to main July 20, 2026 16:15

SeanAlexanderHarris linked an issue Jul 21, 2026 that may be closed by this pull request

Add agent --skill flag #460

Closed

SeanAlexanderHarris requested a review from Copilot July 21, 2026 22:31

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of SeanAlexanderHarris July 21, 2026 22:31 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 21, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread client/client.go

Comment thread agentenv/agentenv.go Outdated

SeanAlexanderHarris requested a review from Copilot July 22, 2026 12:53

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of SeanAlexanderHarris July 22, 2026 12:54 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 22, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread client/client.go

SeanAlexanderHarris self-assigned this Jul 22, 2026

SeanAlexanderHarris requested a review from Copilot July 22, 2026 16:31

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of SeanAlexanderHarris July 22, 2026 16:32 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 22, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread agentenv/agentenv.go

SeanAlexanderHarris marked this pull request as ready for review July 22, 2026 16:59

cemprolific previously approved these changes Jul 22, 2026

View reviewed changes

SeanAlexanderHarris and others added 9 commits July 22, 2026 18:25

refactor(460): export agentenv header-value validator

4a0c1c1

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(460): compose skill token into client User-Agent

bbe110f

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(460): add --skill root flag

f7be609

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(460): send User-Agent on dataset upload requests

5ea83a5

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(460): send User-Agent on collection export downloads

e77c2d7

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(460): send User-Agent on batch export downloads

9e0954d

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

test(460): fix env-var isolation list in TestExecuteSetsSkillInUserAgent

20ac3fe

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix(460): sync contract test coverage table with OpenAPI spec

2e8c874

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>

SeanAlexanderHarris dismissed cemprolific’s stale review via 4fd3058 July 22, 2026 20:22

SeanAlexanderHarris force-pushed the 460-add-agent-skill-flag branch from 372d481 to 4fd3058 Compare July 22, 2026 20:22

SeanAlexanderHarris enabled auto-merge (rebase) July 22, 2026 20:24

dessskris approved these changes Jul 22, 2026

View reviewed changes

SeanAlexanderHarris merged commit 8cc3f86 into main Jul 22, 2026
6 checks passed

SeanAlexanderHarris deleted the 460-add-agent-skill-flag branch July 22, 2026 21:00

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

Uh oh!

460 add agent skill flag - #463

460 add agent skill flag#463
SeanAlexanderHarris merged 10 commits into
mainfrom
460-add-agent-skill-flag

SeanAlexanderHarris commented Jul 17, 2026 •

edited

Loading

Uh oh!

prolific-snyk commented Jul 17, 2026 •

edited

Loading

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

6 participants

Uh oh!

Conversation

SeanAlexanderHarris commented Jul 17, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Summary

Test plan

Uh oh!

prolific-snyk commented Jul 17, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

✅ Snyk checks have passed. No issues have been found so far.

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Pull request overview

Reviewed changes

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Pull request overview

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Pull request overview

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

6 participants

SeanAlexanderHarris commented Jul 17, 2026 •

edited

Loading

prolific-snyk commented Jul 17, 2026 •

edited

Loading