Windows agents never receive the [Workspace] system-prompt section: workspace_section() gates on a POSIX-only starts_with('/') predicate

[kcao-gss]

Describe the bug

workspace_section() gates the [Workspace] system-prompt block on a raw byte-prefix test for /, so it is silently omitted for every Windows agent. crates/buzz-acp/src/pool.rs:1165-1177:

fn workspace_section(cwd: &str) -> Option<String> {
    if cwd != "/" && cwd.starts_with('/') {
        Some(format!(
            "[Workspace]\nYour absolute working directory is `{cwd}`. All workspace \
             files — `AGENTS.md`, `RESEARCH/`, `PLANS/`, `GUIDES/`, `WORK_LOGS/`, \
             `OUTBOX/` — and any repositories you clone (under `{cwd}/REPOS/`) live \
             here. This is where you already are; do not search `$HOME` or other \
             directories for them."
        ))
    } else {
        None
    }
}

cwd originates from std::env::current_dir() (lib.rs:1547-1550), which on Windows always returns drive-letter form (C:\Users\<user>\.buzz). That fails starts_with('/'), so the block is dropped. There is no cfg(windows) branch and no compensating path (rg 'cfg\(windows\)' over crates/buzz-acp/src yields one unrelated hit, acp.rs:1998).

Scoping this honestly, because the obvious reading overstates it: this is not "Windows agents don't know about REPOS//OUTBOX/." That information is delivered unconditionally on every platform:

• base_prompt.md:84-98 — the full Workspace Layout table, OUTBOX/ and REPOS/ included.
• base_prompt.md:100 — the anti-$HOME-scan instruction, i.e. the omitted section's own stated purpose, is also already unconditional.
• The agent's literal OS cwd is the workspace: the child inherits it (no current_dir call anywhere in acp.rs) from the harness spawn at runtime.rs:566-569, so ls works.
• AGENTS.md on disk repeats the layout (nest.rs:190-194, nest_agents.md:13-14).

So what Windows actually loses is one reinforcing statement of the absolute workspace root inside the system prompt. Expected symptom is a probabilistic uptick in path-guessing or wasted exploration on Windows, not a functional failure. Filing it as a correctness bug rather than a user-facing breakage: it's a one-line predicate fix with a trivially-added test, and a starts_with('/') path predicate left in the tree invites the same mistake again.

Steps to reproduce

The predicate is pure string logic, so this needs no Windows host — the following test fails today on Linux/macOS CI:

// crates/buzz-acp/src/pool.rs, mod tests
#[test]
fn test_workspace_section_windows_cwd_is_some() {
    assert!(workspace_section(r"C:\Users\me\.buzz").is_some());
}

Verified by executing the identical predicate standalone:

         /Users/me/.buzz -> true
       C:\Users\me\.buzz -> false   <-- Windows cwd
       C:/Users/me/.buzz -> false
                       / -> false   (intended sentinel rejection)

End-to-end on Windows: spawn a managed agent and inspect the session/new systemPrompt (the desktop transcript observer renders the section — see agentSessionTranscriptHelpers.test.mjs:327-349). It begins at [Base] with no preceding [Workspace] block; the same setup on macOS begins [Workspace]\nYour absolute working directory is /Users/.../.buzz....

Expected behavior

Windows agents receive the [Workspace] section with their real absolute workspace path, as macOS and Linux agents do.

Version and platform

• Buzz version: main @ 87b3fcd3. Gate is unmodified since introduction, so every release since 2026-06-23 is affected.
• OS: Windows (all versions). macOS and Linux unaffected — their cwd passes the gate.
• Found by code inspection, not a field report. No user has reported the symptom.

Logs / additional context

Origin. Introduced in 1011cea2682a5e8cd92c9da255d5ba6c8f7ced78, "fix(desktop): ground agent workspace, migrate legacy nest, configurable repos_dir" (#1194), 2026-06-23. Never modified since. The guard's own doc comment explains its intent — filtering relative paths and the / fallback that current_dir() produces on failure, because a /-rooted workspace line "would actively encourage the $HOME-wide scan this section exists to prevent." The motivating case in that diff was macOS TCC prompts. Windows appears simply not to have been in scope: every test added alongside it uses POSIX paths (/, /Users/me/.buzz, relative/path, ""). (That last point is inference from the absence of any Windows path in the diff, comment, or tests — nothing expresses an intent to exclude Windows.)

Existing tests — five cover this gate, none with a Windows-style cwd: pool.rs:3809-3822, :3824-3831, :3833-3838, :3840-3844, plus the framed_system_prompt set at :3783-3807.

Suggested fix (one line + one test): replace the prefix test with std::path::Path::new(cwd).is_absolute(), keeping a root/sentinel rejection. Path::parent().is_some() rejects /, C:\, and \\?\C:\ uniformly; retaining the literal cwd != "/" also works, since lib.rs:1548's fallback hardcodes it.

is_absolute's platform-dependence is correct here rather than a hazard: the string comes from current_dir() in the same process on the same host, so the compile-time platform always matches the path's origin. No caller supplies a cwd from elsewhere. Two caveats for whoever takes it:

1. On Windows is_absolute() is has_root() && prefix().is_some(), so drive-relative (\foo) and bare-drive (C:) forms stay false. Neither is producible by current_dir(), so it doesn't matter in practice — just don't describe the fix as "any Windows path works."
2. Do not fix this by normalizing the cwd string at lib.rs:1547. That same string is the ACP session/new cwd (pool.rs:831); changing it alters protocol behavior for every harness.

Two follow-on notes, both out of scope for the one-line fix:

• Once Windows agents start receiving the section, its $HOME phrasing (and base_prompt.md:100's) reads wrong on Windows — %USERPROFILE% may be worth adding.
• {cwd}/REPOS/ at pool.rs:1170 will render C:\Users\me\.buzz/REPOS/ — mixed separators, functional but ugly.

Separate, larger gap found while confirming this (platform-independent, not filed): [Workspace] rides only the session/new systemPrompt. session_new_system_prompt returns None for protocol_version < 2 (pool.rs:185-195), and the legacy user-message framing path (prepend_base_for_legacy, pool.rs:1090-1098, :1593; queue.rs:1431) emits [Base] but never [Workspace]. So protocol-v1 harnesses lack the anchor on macOS and Linux too. Happy to split that out if maintainers want it tracked.

Duplicate search: searched issues for "workspace prompt", "OUTBOX", and PRs for "base_prompt workspace" — none found. Nearest is #2334 (base prompt shown as session title in harness UIs), which is a display concern, not this gate.

[kcao-gss]

Correction to the reproduction snippet above, and a cross-reference.

The suggested test is wrong as written. I proposed:

assert!(workspace_section(r"C:\Users\me\.buzz").is_some());

and claimed it "fails today on Linux/macOS CI" and would therefore serve as a platform-independent repro. The first half is true, but it is misleading: that test will still fail on Linux and macOS after the suggested Path::is_absolute() fix, because is_absolute() is false for a drive-letter path on unix targets. So it cannot be used as a cross-platform regression test.

The is_absolute() platform-dependence is still the right call — cwd is produced by std::env::current_dir() in the same process on the same host (lib.rs:1547-1550), so the compile-time platform always matches the path's origin, and hand-rolling drive-letter detection with string sniffing would re-introduce exactly the class of bug being fixed. But the test has to be gated:

#[cfg(windows)]
#[test]
fn test_workspace_section_windows_cwd_is_some() {
    assert!(workspace_section(r"C:\Users\me\.buzz").is_some());
}

#[cfg(windows)]
#[test]
fn test_workspace_section_windows_root_is_none() {
    assert!(workspace_section(r"C:\").is_none());
}

The consequence worth flagging for review: unless CI runs cargo test on a Windows runner (not just builds), those tests are documentation rather than enforcement.

Related: #3126 — the same [Workspace] section never reaches protocol-v1 harnesses (Claude Code, Codex) on any platform, because the legacy prompt-framing path never calls workspace_section at all. Independent of this predicate bug; neither issue subsumes the other. A Windows Claude Code agent is affected by both.