[app-cli] Default `raw: true` injection makes full LLM payload logging the out-of-box behavior — events.jsonl grows unboundedly (97% of bytes measured)

[danshapiro]

Summary

amplifier-app-cli runtime/config.py _ensure_raw_defaults() (~lines 404-405) unconditionally injects raw: true into any provider config that doesn't explicitly set it:

# Inject raw: true as the default unless explicitly set.
if "raw" not in config:
    config["raw"] = True

The docstring describes this as "a sensible default for observability." The effect: the providers' own raw: False default (e.g. provider-anthropic __init__.py:499) is effectively unreachable in a normal launch. With raw: true, every llm:request event written to events.jsonl carries the full accumulated conversation payload, so per-session log size grows quadratically with turn count.

The foundation bundle also independently ships session: raw: true (bundle.md:45) and raw: true in its provider sub-bundles (providers/anthropic-*.yaml, openai-*.yaml), so the convention is enabled from two directions.

Measured impact (one real machine, heavy but ordinary interactive use)

• 23.8 GB of events.jsonl across 2,892 session files; individual files reach 1.1 GB
• 13.8 GB written in a single 2-day window
• Byte composition of one 71 MB events.jsonl: llm:request = 69 MB (97%) across just 82 lines, averaging ~840 KB with single lines up to 1.0 MB
• The load-bearing observability events (prompt:submit/prompt:complete/session:*/tool:*) are tiny lines totaling ~3% of bytes

Why it matters

• No retention story pairs with the default: hooks-logging is a pure append-only writer with no rotation/size-cap option (filed separately), and the context-intelligence bundle writes an unconditional second copy of the stream (filed separately).
• Downstream consumers that tail events.jsonl — a legitimate, documented usage per the hooks-logging README, and the integration surface [app-cli] Document events.jsonl (amplifier.log schema) as a stable, versioned integration surface #315 asks to stabilize — must wade through ~1 MB lines that are 97% payload noise. This contributed to real OOM crashes in a consumer terminal-multiplexer app that tails these files for session activity tracking.

Ask

Reconsider the default (off, or opt-in), or pair the default with a retention story. At minimum, document the opt-out: an explicit raw: false in provider config is respected by the injector.

Related doc staleness

amplifier-foundation context/agents/session-storage-knowledge.md still describes the removed three-tier debug/raw_debug verbosity system — _ensure_raw_defaults() itself strips those stale flags (config.py:401-402). This misled automated investigation of the current behavior.