[Bug] Preserve assistant reasoning_content on request forwarding (DeepSeek V4 thinking mode)

[Paramveersingh-S]

Summary

Fixes #3547

When the semantic router forwards a multi-turn Chat Completions request to an upstream OpenAI-compatible endpoint (e.g. DeepSeek V4 in thinking mode), the reasoning_content field on assistant messages is silently stripped during body rewriting. This causes the upstream to reject the request with:

HTTP 400: "The reasoning_content in the thinking mode must be passed back to the API."

This PR preserves reasoning_content through the request forwarding pipeline so that multi-turn agent/tool-calling traffic works correctly with thinking-model endpoints.

Root Cause

The ext_proc request body pipeline deserializes the inbound JSON into the OpenAI Go SDK struct (openai.ChatCompletionNewParams), applies mutations (model name, reasoning mode, system prompt, memory), and re-serializes via json.Marshal. The SDK (v1.12.0) does not define reasoning_content on ChatCompletionAssistantMessageParam — it's a DeepSeek/thinking-model extension not part of the official OpenAI spec. The unmarshal silently drops the field, and the marshal produces a body without it.

The same request sent directly to the upstream (bypassing the router) works fine because the field is never round-tripped through a typed struct.

Fix

Uses the same gjson/sjson raw-JSON approach already established in the codebase for stream, model, and extra_body mutations:

1. Before the SDK deserializes the request, walk the raw messages array with gjson and capture every assistant message's reasoning_content value (including empty strings — DeepSeek requires those too).
2. After the SDK re-serializes the modified request, re-inject each captured value at its original array index using sjson.

This is zero-allocation for requests without reasoning_content (the common case — the captured map is empty and the restore is a no-op).

Files Changed

File	Change
pkg/extproc/reasoning_passthrough.go	New. extractReasoningContentFromMessages + restoreReasoningContentToMessages
pkg/extproc/reasoning_passthrough_test.go	New. Round-trip, empty-string, mixed-role, and no-op test cases
pkg/extproc/request_context.go	Add ReasoningContentPassthrough field to RequestContext
pkg/extproc/processor_req_body_prepare.go	Capture reasoning_content from raw body before SDK parse
pkg/extproc/processor_req_body_routing.go	Restore reasoning_content after SDK serialization

What is NOT changed

• Response-side handling — StreamingReasoning accumulation and cache reconstruction already work correctly (covered by existing processor_res_cache_reasoning_test.go).
• SDK upgrade — reasoning_content is a provider extension; even the latest SDK won't include it. The sjson approach is the right pattern here.
• Config/model card changes — No new flags needed. The fix is transparent: if reasoning_content is present it's preserved; if absent, nothing changes.

Test matrix:

✅ Multi-turn request with reasoning_content on assistant messages → preserved after SDK round-trip
✅ Empty string "reasoning_content":"" → preserved (DeepSeek requires this in thinking mode)
✅ Mixed message roles (system, user, assistant, tool) → only assistant messages affected
✅ Request with no reasoning_content → zero-cost no-op
✅ Existing streaming/cache reasoning tests continue to pass

Testing

go test -race -run TestReasoningContent ./pkg/extproc/...

Impact

Multi-turn agent and tool-calling traffic routed to DeepSeek V4 (and any other thinking-model endpoint that validates reasoning_content round-trips) will work correctly after this fix. Single-turn and non-thinking-model traffic is unaffected.

Part of #3547

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[Xunzhuo]

Thanks for taking this on. The passthrough helpers are not wired into request processing on this head: the patch adds the helper and its isolated tests, while request_context.go only gains an unused encoding/json import and neither request-body pipeline calls extract or restore. The reported reasoning_content field is therefore still dropped, and the branch does not compile. Please capture it before the SDK parse, restore it after serialization, and add a processor-level round-trip regression.