feat(runner): add a typed runner SDK at @qawolf/cli/runner-sdk

[Atchyut Preetham Pulavarthi (theonly1me)]

Overview of Changes

tester-session drives interactive runners by spawning qawolf runner and reading stdout, so every request is argv and every answer is parsed text. A renamed flag or a reshaped payload only surfaces at runtime, inside a pod. The CLI already holds a typed value layer under its command handlers: submitRun, prepareRun, sendRunFlowRequest and readJournal all return discriminated unions, and across the whole runner domain they touch one thing from the command context, ctx.platformClient. Every use of ctx.ui sits in the handlers, which is the layer that throws the typed value away into stdout. This adds a second consumer of that layer which is not a terminal.

• Add @qawolf/cli/runner-sdk, covering all 16 qawolf runner verbs as typed functions over the public API.
• Return the @qawolf/api-contracts output type for the 14 verbs that pass straight through, so the new permanent type surface is one result wrapper, the request types, and the three answers the CLI invents for list, keepalive and a run's fileSync.
• Keep exitCode out of the surface, since a library caller has no process to exit, and report a runner's refusal as value.outcome === "failure" with the contract's own failureReason so a caller can switch on it exhaustively.
• Give every verb an explicit runner id, so nothing is launched or billed implicitly.
• Name each absence rather than making a field optional, so RunSelection is "whole-flow" | { startLine, endLine, linesIn } and a --lines-file with no range cannot be expressed.
• Narrow sendRunFlowRequest, readJournal and submitRun from AuthCommandContext to the new RunnerApiContext, which is Pick<AuthCommandContext, "platformClient">, with no change to what they do.
• Extract listRunners out of handleRunnerList, which mixed the value it computes with the table it prints, with no change to what the command outputs.
• Build dist/runner-sdk.js beside the CLI bundle and emit declarations with tsc, since bun's bundler has none, and map ./package.json in exports so require.resolve("@qawolf/cli/package.json") keeps working for tester-skills.
• Add scripts/checkSdkTypes.ts, which fails when a published declaration imports anything but ./types.js or @qawolf/api-contracts/v1, because a ~/ alias does not resolve for anyone who installs the package.
• Lift resolveSnippetScope out of evaluateSnippet.ts so the handler and the SDK share one implementation rather than the SDK carrying a second copy.

Parity with what tester-session drives today

A per-verb audit compared the contract input each CLI handler sends against the input the SDK sends. Twelve verbs matched exactly, because they call the same contract through the same callPublicApi, so timeout and retry policy are shared rather than reimplemented. Two did not, and both are fixed here:

• importPackage sent npmDependencies: {} instead of the project's own, so an install resolved against nothing. It now reads package.json through readNpmDependencies, as the handler does, and refuses when that file is missing or unreadable.
• evaluateSnippet sent a filePath with no files, so a scoped snippet named modules that never travelled. It now resolves the scope with the same collector the handler uses.

Two behaviours were verified rather than assumed. prepareRun reads QAWOLF_ENVIRONMENT when given neither an env id nor an env file, so environment: "ambient" keeps that fallback. And submitRun recovers from needs-full-sync with one bounded resend, so always passing a resolved rather than launched runner is safe against a stale file manifest.

The SDK never auto-launches, which is the one deliberate difference. qawolf runner run, act and exec start a runner when none resolves; every SDK verb takes an explicit id so a library cannot silently start and bill a pod. An integration that relied on QAWOLF_RUNNER_ID has to pass the id instead.

Testing

bun run typecheck && bun run lint && bun run format:check
bun run knip && bun run test
bun run build && bun run build:types-gate

2096 tests pass, and typecheck, lint, format, knip and the type gate are clean.

• The type gate caught a real leak while this was being built: RunnerSdkOptions first lived beside the context factory and exposed the internal Fs and Logger types. Moving it and dropping those two fields shrank the public surface and removed the need for an alias-rewriting build step.
• Packed the tarball and installed it in a scratch directory outside the repo, then typechecked a file importing createRunnerSdk from @qawolf/cli/runner-sdk. It compiles, and selection: "not-a-selection" fails with TS2322, so the published types bind rather than just resolve.
• dist/runner-sdk.js is 9.7 MB, taking the packed tarball from 3.1 MB to 4.8 MB. Most of it is typescript, bundled because collecting a run's files walks imports with the compiler API. Marking it external would cut that sharply and it is already a declared runtime dependency, so it is worth deciding before this publishes.

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• src/runnerSdk/lifecycleVerbs.ts
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Walkthrough

The pull request adds a typed @qawolf/cli/runner-sdk entry point for in-process runner control. It defines public request and result types, shared SDK context creation, lifecycle, run, event, page, and project verbs, and structured platform-result handling. Interactive runner APIs now accept a narrowed RunnerApiContext, and runner listing exposes reusable structured results. The build publishes SDK JavaScript and declarations, validates declaration imports, and documents SDK usage.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~25 minutes

Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to c18ea

The runner SDK may report keepalive success when a runner is unreachable, causing callers to treat an unavailable runner as healthy. The PR is otherwise mergeable, but this bounded status-reporting issue needs explicit owner follow-up.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Client
  participant RunnerSdk
  participant PlatformClient
  participant RunnerAPI
  Client->>RunnerSdk: createRunnerSdk(options)
  RunnerSdk->>PlatformClient: create shared context
  Client->>RunnerSdk: launch or run request
  RunnerSdk->>RunnerAPI: send runner operation
  RunnerAPI-->>PlatformClient: return API result
  PlatformClient-->>RunnerSdk: return PlatformResult
  RunnerSdk-->>Client: return SdkResult

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🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title follows Conventional Commits, uses the valid feat(runner) format, uses imperative wording, clearly describes the typed Runner SDK, and is 62 characters long.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description provides a detailed overview, testing commands, test results, package validation, and implementation rationale. It omits the template Checklist section, but the required change and ver…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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Explanation

The description provides a detailed overview, testing commands, test results, package validation, and implementation rationale. It omits the template Checklist section, but the required change and verification details are otherwise complete.

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Actionable comments posted: 2

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Inline comments:
In `@src/runnerSdk/lifecycleVerbs.ts`:
- Around line 29-31: Update createLifecycleVerbs.keepalive to inspect
read.value.outcome after a successful readJournal call and return ok: false when
the outcome is "failure"; preserve the existing successful response for other
outcomes and propagate read errors unchanged. Add coverage in the verbs test
suite for an unreachable runner reported by readJournal.

In `@src/runnerSdk/types.ts`:
- Around line 1-9: Move the Runner SDK implementation and contracts from
src/runnerSdk into an approved domain, preferably src/domains/runnerSdk or
alternatively src/domains/interactiveRunner. Relocate types.ts, toSdkResult.ts,
lifecycleVerbs.ts, and verbs.test.ts together, update all imports and
references, and preserve layer-safe dependencies; if using
src/domains/runnerSdk, remove any dependency on the sibling interactiveRunner
domain. Apply this change at src/runnerSdk/types.ts lines 1-9,
src/runnerSdk/toSdkResult.ts lines 1-5, src/runnerSdk/lifecycleVerbs.ts lines
1-19, and src/runnerSdk/verbs.test.ts lines 1-8.

Apply the same fix in `@src/runnerSdk/index.ts` around lines 55 - 61: Move page
operations with the SDK module.

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📒 Files selected for processing (20)

• .changeset/typed-runner-sdk.md
• README.md
• knip.config.ts
• package.json
• scripts/build.ts
• scripts/checkSdkTypes.ts
• src/domains/interactiveRunner/list.ts
• src/domains/interactiveRunner/readJournal.ts
• src/domains/interactiveRunner/sendRunFlowRequest.ts
• src/domains/interactiveRunner/submitRun.ts
• src/runnerSdk/createContext.ts
• src/runnerSdk/index.ts
• src/runnerSdk/lifecycleVerbs.ts
• src/runnerSdk/pageVerbs.ts
• src/runnerSdk/runVerbs.ts
• src/runnerSdk/toSdkResult.ts
• src/runnerSdk/types.ts
• src/runnerSdk/verbs.test.ts
• src/shell/commandContext.ts
• tsconfig.types.json

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