add new flag to skip hints with the current goal in the hint source t…

[amanjaiswal73892]

This pull request enhances the hint selection logic in src/agentlab/utils/hinting.py to allow skipping hints not only for the current task but also for the current goal. It also improves how the hint database is loaded by parsing certain columns as JSON, making downstream processing more robust.

Hint skipping improvements:

• Added a skip_hints_for_current_goal parameter to the hinting utility, enabling the option to skip hints associated with the current goal in addition to the current task. [1] [2]
• Updated the choose_hints_llm and choose_hints_emb methods to use the new goal-based skipping logic, ensuring hints related to the current goal are excluded when specified. [1] [2]
• Added a new get_current_goal_hints method that retrieves hints associated with the current goal from the hint database.

Hint database loading improvements:

• Modified the CSV loading logic to automatically parse the trace_paths_json and source_trace_goals columns as JSON objects, improving data consistency and simplifying later access. [1] [2]…races

Description by Korbit AI

What change is being made?

Add a new flag skip_hints_for_current_goal to optionally skip hints that relate to the current goal, and implement the underlying logic and data handling to support skipping based on the current goal.

Why are these changes being made?

To allow finer control over hint selection by excluding hints tied to the current goal, reducing noise or leakage of goal-specific hints. This is implemented by parsing stored goal references and filtering hints accordingly, with the new flag applied in both LLM and embedding-based hint retrieval paths.

Is this description stale? Ask me to generate a new description by commenting /korbit-generate-pr-description

[korbit-ai]

Review by Korbit AI

Korbit automatically attempts to detect when you fix issues in new commits.

Category	Issue	Status
	Inefficient row-wise apply for goal filtering ▹ view	✅ Fix detected
	Missing error handling for JSON parsing in CSV converters ▹ view
	Eager JSON parsing during CSV load ▹ view

Files scanned

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File Path	Reviewed
src/agentlab/utils/hinting.py	✅

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[korbit-ai]

Eager JSON parsing during CSV load

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What is the issue?

JSON parsing is performed for every row during CSV loading, even for columns that may not be used frequently.

Why this matters

This eager parsing approach increases memory usage and loading time, especially for large CSV files. If these JSON fields are only accessed occasionally, the parsing overhead is wasted for unused data.

Suggested change ∙ Feature Preview

Consider lazy parsing by keeping JSON fields as strings initially and parsing them on-demand:

# Load without converters initially
self.hint_db = pd.read_csv(self.hint_db_path, header=0, index_col=None, dtype=str)

# Parse JSON only when needed
def _get_source_trace_goals(self, row_index):
    goals_str = self.hint_db.loc[row_index, 'source_trace_goals']
    return json.loads(goals_str) if pd.notna(goals_str) else []

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[korbit-ai]

Missing error handling for JSON parsing in CSV converters

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What is the issue?

The JSON parsing converter does not handle potential JSON parsing errors that could occur with malformed JSON data in the CSV file.

Why this matters

If the CSV contains invalid JSON in the source_trace_goals column, json.loads() will raise a JSONDecodeError, causing the entire hint database loading to fail and breaking the application startup.

Suggested change ∙ Feature Preview

Add try-except blocks to handle JSON parsing errors gracefully:

"source_trace_goals": lambda x: json.loads(x) if pd.notna(x) else [] if pd.notna(x) else [],

Better solution:

def safe_json_parse(x):
    if pd.notna(x):
        try:
            return json.loads(x)
        except json.JSONDecodeError:
            logger.warning(f"Failed to parse JSON: {x}")
            return []
    return []

# Then use:
"source_trace_goals": safe_json_parse,
"trace_paths_json": safe_json_parse,

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[hnekoeiq]

It's a minor issue but if skip_hints_for_current_task is True, there is no need to check for skip_hints_for_current_goal, right?