Structured View Interface

Structured view renders in both the TUI and the web dashboard. This page covers how the two surfaces differ, the keybinds, how the composer behaves across desktop and touch, and how the timeline keeps long turns readable. For setup, see Structured view Setup; for the Structured view overview, start there.

TUI vs web dashboard

Structured view renders natively in the TUI alongside the web dashboard. Both consume the same aoe serve daemon over the same HTTP/WS surface, so the conversation log, pending approvals, and worker state are always in sync.

• Sessions started in structured view appear in the TUI session list with a [acp] badge. Pressing Enter opens the native structured view view, which requires an aoe serve daemon to be already running. If one isn’t, the view renders an actionable error pointing at aoe serve --daemon (localhost), aoe serve --daemon --remote (Tailscale/Cloudflare), or AOE_DAEMON_URL (attach to a remote daemon you already have running). The TUI intentionally does not start a daemon on your behalf, so you keep the choice between localhost, tunnel, and named tunnel explicit.
• Sessions started in tmux mode work in both surfaces as before. The TUI attaches to the pane; the dashboard renders the pane via xterm.js.
• Switching views (web wizard or the per-session “Switch to structured view” / “Switch to tmux” action) destroys the in-memory conversation history for that session. The git worktree, files on disk, and any commits remain. The next prompt starts a fresh conversation under the new view.
• TUI status indicators: a structured view session that’s healthy shows as Idle/Active in the TUI session list, since structured view health is observed via the ACP event stream rather than tmux pane probing.
• --auth=passphrase daemons: the local TUI attaches to a same-host daemon without going through the passphrase exchange. Loopback callers are treated as fs-trusted because the daemon’s serve files under ~/.agent-of-empires/serve.* are already 0600, so the filesystem permission boundary protects same-host access. Remote callers proxied through a tunnel still hit the passphrase wall as expected. See #1525.

TUI structured view keybinds

The TUI structured view has three focusable regions: composer (where you type prompts), transcript (the activity feed), and approval cards (one per pending tool authorization). Tab cycles focus; the status banner at the bottom of the screen shows the current focus.

Focus	Key	Action
Composer	Enter	Send the buffered text, or queue it if a turn is active
Composer	Shift+Enter	Insert a newline (multi-line prompts)
Composer	@	Open the file-mention picker; keep typing to filter
Composer	Enter (empty)	Retry draining the queue when idle (e.g. after a failed send)
Composer	/	Type a slash at the start of an empty line to open the command picker
Composer	↑ / ↓	Move the picker highlight (picker open)
Composer	Ctrl+n / Ctrl+p	Move the picker highlight down / up (picker open)
Composer	Enter / Tab	Insert the highlighted command or file (picker open)
Composer	Esc	Dismiss the picker, or return focus to the transcript
Transcript	j / ↓	Scroll down one line
Transcript	k / ↑	Scroll up one line
Transcript	PgDn / PgUp	Scroll ten lines
Transcript	g / G	Jump to top / bottom
Transcript	i	Focus the composer
Transcript	Tab	Cycle to the approval card (if any pending)
Transcript	o	Open this session in the web dashboard
Transcript	Esc	Close the structured view and return to the session list
Approval	a	Allow once
Approval	Shift+A	Allow always (session-scoped allow-list entry)
Approval	d	Deny
Approval	Esc	Return focus to the transcript
Any	Ctrl+C	Cancel the in-flight prompt
Any	Ctrl+O	Open the session in the web dashboard
Any	Ctrl+X	Clear every queued (not-yet-sent) prompt

Slash-command picker. When the composer holds a single-word slash query (/comp, no spaces yet), a picker floats above the composer listing the agent’s advertised commands ranked against what you typed, the same ranking the web composer uses. Navigate with the arrows or Ctrl+n / Ctrl+p, then press Enter or Tab to insert /{command} into the composer (it does not auto-send, so you can add arguments first). Esc dismisses the picker without inserting; it stays closed until the query text changes, so cursor movement won’t reopen it. A slash query with no matching command is left alone: Enter sends it verbatim. The picker only appears once the agent has advertised commands over the ACP stream.

Focus isolation. Approval keys (a/Shift+A/d) only resolve when the approval card itself has focus. Typing “always allow” into the composer will never silently approve a pending tool; the composer captures every keystroke, including those letters.

Approval card detail. The web dashboard approval card shows a one-line preview of the tool call in its header (the command for a shell call, the path for a read or edit) so you can act without expanding. A benign approval starts collapsed with that preview; a destructive one starts expanded so the full arguments are in view before a hold-to-allow. Click the header to toggle the full argument list, and the Allow / Always / Deny buttons stay reachable in either state. The toggle is per-card and never re-expands on its own after a plan is approved.

Markdown rendering. Agent messages in the transcript are parsed as markdown and rendered with styling: headings and **bold** show in bold, *italics* in italic, `inline code` and fenced code blocks in a dim block, and -/1. lists with bullet or number markers. The raw #, **, backtick, and fence characters are not shown. Styling uses text attributes only (bold, italic, dim) so it tracks your theme colors. Code-block syntax highlighting is deferred; press o to open the web dashboard for full-fidelity rendering. In the web dashboard, links inside transcript messages open in a new browser tab so following a docs, CI, or repo link keeps your structured view session open. Local file references (the path:line links agents like Codex emit when citing source) are an exception: clicking one opens that file in the in-app diff/file viewer and keeps you on the current session, instead of navigating away. A file that is not inside the session’s repo shows a brief notice and leaves the view unchanged.

Tool cards. Tool calls in the transcript render per kind rather than as a single generic line. An edit or write shows the file path and a compact added/removed line diff (colored with your theme’s diff colors); an execute shows the command and a bounded preview of its output; a read shows the path and a content preview; a delete shows the target path. The diff is capped at 20 changed lines and previews at 12 lines, with a “+N more” footer when there is more; press o to open the web dashboard for the full diff and output. Edit cards read the path and diff from the structured diff content the agent emits (Codex routes apply_patch edits this way, one entry per file), falling back to the legacy argument shape when an agent sends that instead; a single patch touching several files shows each file’s path and diff in one card. Any other tool kind falls back to the generic one-liner (name, arguments, output snapshot).

File-mention picker. Typing @ in the composer opens a picker listing the session’s workspace files, fetched once per session from the daemon (the same structured view/files index the web composer uses, capped at 5000 entries). Keep typing to fuzzy-filter; prefix matches rank above substring matches. Selecting a file inserts it as :file[<path>], matching the text the web composer sends, so both surfaces hand the agent identical prompts. The picker closes on Esc and stays closed while you keep typing in that same token until you start a fresh @.

Web composer Enter behavior

On desktop, Enter sends the prompt and Shift+Enter inserts a newline, matching the TUI convention above.

On touch-primary devices (phones, tablets without an attached keyboard), plain Enter inserts a newline and the explicit Send button on the right of the composer is the only path to dispatch. This matches the conventions of WhatsApp, Slack, ChatGPT mobile, and Claude.ai mobile, and avoids the common foot-gun of accidentally firing a partial multi-line prompt by reaching for a line break. An iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard (or any device that reports both (pointer: coarse) and (any-pointer: fine) to the browser) keeps the desktop Enter-to-send convention so hardware-keyboard typing feels natural. See #1129.

iOS Safari dictation

Tapping the on-screen keyboard’s mic icon to dictate into the composer commits each partial recognition exactly once. The composer detects WebKit’s insertReplacementText burst, suspends its assistant-ui controlled-input flush for the duration so WebKit’s dictation range pointer is not invalidated mid-utterance, then drains the final text into the composer state on blur (typically when you tap Send) or after a brief idle period. See #1431.

Composer attachments (images, audio, files)

The web composer can send attachments alongside the prompt text when the active agent advertises support for them. Three ways to add one:

• the paperclip button in the composer toolbar opens a file picker;
• paste an image (for example a screenshot) with Cmd/Ctrl+V while the composer is focused;
• drag and drop files onto the composer.

Staged attachments show as removable chips above the text area; images render a thumbnail. A prompt can be attachment-only (no text), which is handy for “what is wrong here?” screenshots.

Support is gated on the agent’s ACP prompt_capabilities, reported during the initialize handshake. The paperclip is disabled (with a tooltip explaining why) when the current agent does not accept attachments, and the file picker only offers the kinds it does accept:

• image for images,
• audio for audio,
• embedded_context for embedded resources (text / markdown / JSON / PDF).

claude-agent-acp advertises image and embedded_context; other agents vary, so the button reflects whichever agent is running.

The server is the authority: it re-checks the agent capability, enforces a per-attachment size limit (10 MiB), a total-per-prompt limit (20 MiB), a count cap (8), a MIME allowlist (image/svg+xml and HTML are excluded), and sniffs image magic bytes so a mislabeled file is rejected. Oversize or unsupported attachments come back as an error instead of reaching the agent.

Attachments are persisted with the transcript so they re-render on reload. The bytes live in a dedicated store keyed to the prompt and are pruned in lockstep with it (and dropped when the session is deleted), so the event log stays lean. Replayed images are fetched lazily from GET /api/sessions/{id}/acp/attachments/{attachment_id}.

Attachments queue alongside the prompt text. Sending one while the agent is mid-turn, disconnected, or restarting parks the message in the queue (the queued row shows a thumbnail / chip for each attachment) and the drain fires it once the session resumes, the same as a text-only follow-up. The bytes ride the queued row in memory only: they are kept out of the per-origin localStorage snapshot, so a full page reload drops any queued attachment row (you reattach and resend). Audio and embedded resources are sent and stored, but render as a labelled chip rather than an inline player or preview for now.

Queued prompts (mid-turn + inactive session)

The web composer keeps your messages around even when the session can’t accept them yet. Two cases:

1. Mid-turn follow-up. While the agent is producing the current response, the Send button switches to a paper-plane with a small pending-count badge. Click (or press Enter) and your text lands in the Queued (N) strip above the composer. As soon as the agent reports Stopped, the structured view drains the queue per the acp.queue_drain_mode setting (combined, the default, sends every parked entry as one prompt; serial fires them one at a time). See #1031 for the original feature.

2. Inactive session. If the WebSocket is mid-reconnect, the worker is stopped (user_stopped), or the worker is restarting (restart_pending, agent_unresponsive, prompt_orphaned), the composer still accepts submissions. The tooltip swaps to Queue message until session resumes, the strip heading changes to Pending until session resumes (N), and the parked entry stays editable. The moment the WS reopens AND the worker reaches running AND the session-level Stopped flag clears (an AcpSessionAssigned event), the same drain effect fires the queue. See #1359.

3. Idle-dormant session. If the worker was auto-stopped for inactivity (auto_stop_idle_secs, Stopped reason idle_auto_stop), the composer stays fully usable and your prompt does not park indefinitely: the POST itself is the wake path. The server clears the dormancy marker, the reconciler respawns the worker, and the request is held until the fresh worker is ready, then delivered. A prompt you had already queued before the worker went dormant drains the same way the moment the dormancy event lands. See #1689.

Queued entries persist in the per-origin localStorage snapshot at aoe:acp-state:v1:<sid>, so a page reload (and closing then reopening the tab on the same origin) keeps them across the reconnect window. The one exception is queued rows that carry attachments: their base64 bytes are never written to the snapshot (they would blow the storage quota), and the whole row is dropped on reload rather than draining a text-only prompt with the image silently missing. Server-side durability is not currently implemented; clearing site data wipes the queue.

TUI structured view. The TUI structured view has the same client-side queue. Pressing Enter while a turn is active (or while the WebSocket is down) parks the prompt in a Queued (N) strip above the composer instead of sending it; the queue drains on the next Stopped per the daemon’s acp.queue_drain_mode, which the view reads from /api/about so a remote attach honors the remote daemon’s setting. Ctrl+X clears the queue, and pressing Enter on an empty composer when idle retries the drain (useful if a send failed and left prompts parked). Two small differences from the web composer: there is no in-place edit of queued rows (clear and retype), and combined mode slices batches only at the /clear and /new boundaries rather than the full per-agent clear-alias list. The TUI queue is in-memory only, so it does not survive leaving the structured view.

Stopping a turn

While an agent turn is running, the composer shows a Stop button. Clicking it sends a graceful cancel to the agent and the working spinner switches to Stopping… with a short countdown to the escalation deadline.

Some tools the agent runs internally (a monitor or until loop, a long blocking command) do not honor a graceful cancel. When that happens a Force stop button appears next to the spinner, even while a tool is in flight. Force stop ends the turn immediately: it restarts the agent worker and kills the whole command tree the agent had running, so a runaway loop actually stops instead of waiting out the grace window. Clicking Stop again while it already reads “Stopping…” does the same thing.

Force stop is a hard interrupt. The agent resumes from its saved transcript on the next prompt, but any partial output from the tool that was in flight is lost. Reach for Force stop only when a turn is genuinely wedged; the graceful Stop is enough for a turn that is merely taking a while.

Timeline card grouping

To keep the timeline readable, structured view folds two kinds of runs into single collapsible cards:

• Silent tool work. A run of three or more consecutive tool calls with no agent text between them (for example Read, Read, Grep, Read during investigation) collapses into one “actions” card. Expand it to see each call as its normal per-tool card.
• Consecutive TodoWrite updates. When Claude fires three or more TodoWrite calls back-to-back, or OpenCode sends three or more todowrite updates with a structured todos payload, the per-call snapshots fold into one todo card titled “updated N times”. Collapsed, the card shows the latest list (the only snapshot whose pending/in-progress/done mix is current), so you see what the agent is working on without expanding. Expand it to inspect each individual update in order and audit how the plan evolved during the turn.

Folding only fires when every call in the run is the same shape. A TodoWrite or todowrite update sandwiched between real tool work (Read, Edit) stays inline as its own card rather than being hidden inside a group, so a status update between actions is never buried. Two-in-a-row stays inline as well; the fold threshold is three.

Automatic grouping needs an unbroken run, so a phase where the agent narrates between each action (common right after a plan is approved) produces a long stream of individual cards instead. The Compact tools toggle at the top of the transcript collapses every tool card to its header for scanning, and new cards arrive collapsed while it stays on; the agent’s narration stays visible and errored cards stay open so a failure is never hidden. It is a per-browser preference saved locally, and you can still expand any single card while compact mode is on.