Roadmap: refined terminal conversation experience #158

Objective

Refine the terminal conversation experience so long-running coding work remains visually coherent, calm, and predictable without replacing the existing product identity, conversation shell, or fixed composer.

Scope

Deliver the experience through thin, end-to-end TUI slices: mixed-turn hierarchy, streaming and interrupt feedback, composer ergonomics, progressive tool disclosure, diff and failure inspection, and responsive keyboard-accessible rendering. The work must use product-owned interaction patterns and original assets.

Success criteria

• A real mixed conversation can be scanned quickly without large empty regions or repetitive status noise.
• Streaming, waiting, tool execution, interruption, failure, and completion remain explicit.
• The composer, tool details, diffs, and errors are predictable from the keyboard.
• The complete experience remains coherent at 80x24, 120x36, and 160x48 and under NO_COLOR.
• Every behavior-changing child PR publishes real, exact-head tmux interaction evidence.

Delivery order

1. Mixed conversation hierarchy
2. Streaming and interrupt feedback
3. Composer ergonomics
4. Progressive tool disclosure
5. Diff and failure inspection
6. Responsive and reduced-color completion

Children are the execution source of truth; this parent is a planning container.