[fix] Tell the user when the model catalog fails to load

[mmabrouk]

Context

When the playground's "Model & harness" drawer cannot reach the harness catalog, it renders its pre-catalog layout: a flat single column with a plain model dropdown, no collapsible sections, no status icons. Nothing tells the user a request failed. It reads as a stale frontend build, which is exactly how it was misdiagnosed on a self-hosted deployment (the real cause was a server-side redirect, fixed in #5487).

The fallback itself is correct for one case. A schema without x-ag-harness-ref predates the catalog, and the basic controls are the right UI for it. The problem is that a failed fetch is indistinguishable from that case: both leave capabilities null, and useModelHarness.tsx:624 branches on that single value.

Changes

harnessCatalogFailedAtom exposes the catalog query's error state, and retryHarnessCatalogAtom refetches it. The drawer now separates the two causes:

harnessRefKey present + capabilities null + query errored  ->  retry notice, then basic controls
harnessRefKey absent                                       ->  basic controls, unchanged

When the schema asked for the catalog and the fetch failed, a warning with a Retry button appears above the controls. The pre-catalog path is untouched, so schemas that never used the catalog render exactly as before.

Tests / notes

• This box has no node_modules (the web image builds in Docker), so pnpm lint-fix and the strict package tsc did not run locally. CI is the gate here. Worth a reviewer's eye on the antd Alert usage and the write-atom signature.
• The failure path is reachable by blocking GET /api/workflows/catalog/harnesses/ in devtools, or on any deployment carrying the redirect bug from [fix] Resolve API trailing slashes in place instead of redirecting #5487.
• Copy is deliberately plain, no status codes or endpoint names, since this surfaces to end users.

What to QA

• Open an agent variant's "Model & harness" drawer with the network tab blocking workflows/catalog/harnesses. A warning appears above the basic controls with a working Retry button. Retry with the block removed loads the full sectioned layout.
• Regression: open the same drawer normally. The Harness, Model, and Provider credentials sections render as before, with no notice.
• Regression: open a variant whose schema has no x-ag-harness-ref. The basic controls render with no warning, unchanged.

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
agenta-documentation	Ready	Preview	Jul 29, 2026 8:43pm

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change exposes harness catalog failure and retry atoms through workflow exports, then uses them in useModelHarness to show a catalog-unavailable warning and trigger catalog refetching.

Changes

Harness catalog recovery

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Catalog failure state and exports web/packages/agenta-entities/src/workflow/state/inspectMeta.ts, web/packages/agenta-entities/src/workflow/state/index.ts, web/packages/agenta-entities/src/workflow/index.ts	Adds atoms for detecting harness catalog query errors and retrying the query, then re-exports them through workflow barrels.
Catalog unavailable notice web/packages/agenta-entity-ui/src/DrillInView/SchemaControls/agentTemplate/useModelHarness.tsx	Derives catalog unavailability and renders a warning alert with a Retry button in the capability-aware controls layout.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Query
  participant WorkflowAtoms
  participant useModelHarness
  participant User
  Query->>WorkflowAtoms: Reports catalog error
  WorkflowAtoms-->>useModelHarness: Provides failure state
  useModelHarness-->>User: Displays unavailable alert
  User->>WorkflowAtoms: Clicks Retry
  WorkflowAtoms->>Query: Calls refetch()

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Possibly related PRs

• Agenta-AI/agenta#4923: Refactors the same model and harness UI hook.
• Agenta-AI/agenta#5096: Changes the same hook’s model and harness drawer flow.
• Agenta-AI/agenta#5461: Updates harness-catalog UI logic in the same hook.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 60.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
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.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly matches the main change: showing a failure message when the model catalog cannot load.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly about the catalog-failure warning and retry behavior added by the PR.

✨ Finishing Touches

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• Commit unit tests in branch fix/agent-drawer-catalog-error

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[github-actions]

Railway Preview Environment

Status	Destroyed (PR closed)

Updated at 2026-07-30T08:55:36.078Z

[mmabrouk]

Live QA on a real deployment: green

Verified on the EE dev stack serving release/v0.106.1 with this branch applied, at head
4c77704ca4, against a saved agent on Claude Code / Sonnet.

The failure was induced the way a real broken deployment produces it: an empty client cache
(the catalog persists to IndexedDB, so a warm cache masks the bug) plus a failing
GET /workflows/catalog/harnesses/.

Step	Expected	Result
Open "Model & harness" with the catalog reachable	Full sections: Harness, Model, Provider credentials	Pass, no notice
Open it with the catalog request failing	Warning "Couldn't load the model catalog" with a Retry button, above the basic controls	Pass
Click Retry with the server reachable again	Warning clears, full sections return	Pass

Two details worth recording, both consistent with the diff:

• With the catalog absent the model label degrades from Sonnet to the raw sonnet, and the
  MCP servers section disappears. Both come back on retry. That is the silent degradation this
  PR is about, now announced instead of hidden.
• The pre-catalog path is untouched. A draft whose schema carries no x-ag-harness-ref renders
  the basic controls with no notice, which is correct.

CI note: the one red check is deploy / deploy, the Railway preview environment. The same job
has been failing across unrelated PRs on this branch today with read timeouts against the
preview gateway. Unit tests and the TypeScript build are green.