When the tool is waiting for an instruction, send ctx.info() log
notifications to the client every KEEPALIVE_INTERVAL_SECONDS (default 20).
Purpose
-------
These notifications write bytes to the SSE stream, resetting any
transport-level HTTP read timeout on the client side (e.g. httpx
Timeout(read=N)). This prevents premature connection drops when
wait periods exceed the client's inactivity window.
Caveat
------
Application-level wall-clock timers (anyio.fail_after / JS SDK
equivalents) are NOT affected by SSE events -- they count from
request start regardless. This is confirmed by experiments in
tests/test_keepalive.py and tests/run_keepalive_experiments.py.
Experiment results (summarised in tests/run_keepalive_experiments.py)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Exp 1: anyio.fail_after(5s) fires at 5.98s with NO keepalives.
- Exp 2: anyio.fail_after(10s) fires at 10.90s WITH keepalives every 2s.
Keepalives have ZERO effect on app-level timers.
- Exp 3b: httpx read=8s, keepalive=2s -> SUCCESS at 51s.
Keepalives DO prevent transport-level read timeouts.
The Copilot extension 60s limit is almost certainly application-level
(hardcoded wall-clock), so default_wait_seconds=50 remains the correct
mitigation (returns before the 60s deadline). The keepalives provide
defence-in-depth against any proxy/NAT inactivity drops.
On Windows the venv Python binary lives at .venv/Scripts/python.exe,
not .venv/bin/python. Fall back to the Windows path when the Unix
path does not exist so the script works cross-platform.
Brandon Zhang