Persona fold + standalone backfill strand orphaned duplicate agent definitions (duplicate error cards)

[noahjalex]

Summary

The persona fold and the standalone-agent backfill can each create a definition for the same conceptual persona, stranding an orphaned duplicate. The Agents screen renders the orphan as a second card for the same agent in a permanent error state (red badge), with no hint it's a deletable leftover.

What the store ends up with

One agent ("Ron Swanson") after both migrations have run:

record	slug	pubkey	persona_id	created by
definition A	<agent pubkey hex>	empty	—	backfill_standalone_agents (migration/backfill.rs — slug = pubkey by design)
definition B	<uuid>	empty	—	fold_personas_into_agent_store (migration/fold.rs — legacy persona id)
instance	—	<pubkey>	<agent pubkey hex>	linked to definition A

Definition B is referenced by nothing: key-less, instance-less, permanently un-launchable. The UI shows it as a duplicate card with an error badge next to the healthy one.

Why it happens

• fold_personas_in_dir dedupes folded personas by slug against the store — correct in isolation.
• backfill_standalone_agents_in_dir targets instances with persona_id: None and manufactures a NEW definition slugged by the instance's pubkey, without first checking whether a just-folded definition already matches the instance (by name/prompt content). Result: the instance links to the manufactured definition and the folded one is orphaned.

Recurrence trigger

Anything that resurrects personas.json (restoring app data from a backup, or running a pre-fold build against the shared data dir) re-runs the fold and re-imports the UUID definitions — users see duplicates "come back" after cleaning up, which invites destructive app-data wipes.

Repro

1. Pre-fold data dir: personas.json with N custom personas + managed-agents.json with N standalone instances (persona_id: null).
2. Boot a current build: fold imports N UUID-slugged definitions; backfill manufactures N pubkey-slugged definitions and links the instances to those.
3. Agents screen: every agent appears twice; one card healthy, one erroring.
4. Delete the orphans by hand, restore personas.json from any backup, reboot → duplicates return.

Suggested fixes (any of)

• Backfill: before manufacturing, try to adopt an existing key-less definition matching the instance (name + prompt hash), and link to it instead.
• Boot-time GC (or one-shot migration): drop key-less, non-builtin definitions whose slug no instance references.
• UI: surface orphaned definitions as such ("no instance, from an old import") with a delete affordance instead of a generic error badge.

Workaround

Quit the app and filter managed-agents.json: remove records with empty pubkey whose slug is not builtin:* and is not any instance's persona_id.

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